A Petition To Hrh Prince Charles, Prince Of Wales By Cameron Duodu

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,

This petition is on behalf of the people, not only of Asante, but of Ghana, Africa, and Mankind in General, and is intended to contribute to cementing the friendship that should mark relations between all peoples, but which is often obstructed by political acts of a crass nature that took place in the past.

Your Royal Highness will no doubt have noticed the warmth and spontaneous respect which the King of Asante and his subjects displayed before your eyes and those of your wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, at what has been described as a “mammoth Durbar” held for you in the Asante capital, Kumase, on 5 November 2018.

Your Royal Highness and his party will also have been impressed by the display of gold ornaments and other rich artefacts worn on the persons of many of the chieftains who attended the Durbar, and the other works of art that filled the spaces under their umbrellas – wielded by attendants or standing alone.

May I remind Your Royal Highness that many of such objets d'art, although beautiful to look at, serve a second purpose: namely, many of them seek to represent, in concrete 3D terms, abstract

philosophical concepts absorbed from their national history, that are meant to teach all who gaze on them, such notions as the meaning of life; how to bring peace between men; and a commemoration of cosmic events observed with the naked eye. (For instance, there are many traditional artistic representations of the notion, “Chercher pe aware” [Chercher is a good wife!] which builds on the almost permanent proximity of certain Stars and Planets to each other, which interrogates men and women, as they see the wonders of the sky night after night after night: why can't you men and women could emulate the Stars?!

Another abstract thought captured by the artists of Asante is the saying: Funtum afurufu ne denkyem afurafu: yeafuru ye baako nso yedidi a na yerefom!” [The two crocodiles, Funtum Afurafu and Denkyem Afurafu, are joined together by one stomach, and yet they fight over food!”] In other words, is it not absurd for humankind to fight over material things on earth when such fighting harms not only each other, but themselves as individuals? Or, doesn't all life come from the same one source (as both religion and quantum physics suggest?)

Your Royal Highness, I would like to show such ancient objets d'art, in their original carbon-dated form, to my grand-children; I'd like to do this to prove to their all-too-modern intellects that hundreds of years ago, artists from their birth-place, who are often robbed of their status as great artists by the WEST because it is more or less considered there that these were “primitive” craftsmen who dwelt in “mud-huts” and could not only not conceive of such profound philosophical apothegms but express them in concrete form in works fashioned from gold, brass, copper and terra cotta. It has even been absurdly that their more supremely beautiful works of art were done for them by some unknown foreigners!

However, the truth is that But I am afraid that many of the original artefacts have been pillaged by foreigners, and that what is left for our chiefs and kings to display today are mostly a remembrance of things long lost.

Your Royal Highness is no doubt aware that in 1874, a British punitive force led by Sir Garnet Wolseley, visited on Kumase, one of the worst sackings of a capital known to history. Fortunately, H M Stanley, the intrepid journalist who “found” the lost David Livingstone in Africa, was accompanying Woleseley's expeditionary force, and he documented what was looted from the Asantehene's palace in Kumase as follows:

Quote: "Strings of valuable Aggry beads . . . Gold nugget and bead; bracelet and necklaces. Swords European and native . . . Gold and silver-headed canes; Regalia, staffs, gold-topped, Royal Stools, beautifully carved and ornamented with gold and silver; seven gold masks, each weighing several ounces (writer's emphasis), silken and cotton cloths, Enormous silken umbrellas . . . Gold decorated muskets; several knives with bits of gold on hafts; sandals, gold-plated.”[H M Stanley, Coomassie and Magdala, 1874, pp. 233-4)

Your Royal Highness might be aware that in 1974 – on the 100 year anniversary of the “sacking of Kumase”, the then Asantehene, Otumfuo Nana Opoku Ware II, publicly appealed to the British to return the “sacred objects” stolen from Asante. This current Asantehene, Otumfuo Nana Osei Tutu The Second, repeated this request when he made an official visit to the United Kingdom in May 2000. Both requests were politely rejected by the UK Government on legal grounds.

I am aware, Your Royal Highness, that you have stepped on some toes by drawing the attention of some UK politicians to instances when it has appeared to you that laws were being – or about to be – utilised to promote causes that seemed to you to be unworthy or unwise. Unfortunately, when you become King, it will be constitutionally impossible for you (you have acknowledged) to continue putting in your oar in matters of a “political” nature.

I therefore humbly entreat Your Royal Highness to use the time available to you to intercede with the United Kingdom authorities to bring justice to the people of Asante, by returning all their looted treasures to them.

Your Royal Highness will no doubt be aware that a Report commissioned by M. Emmanuel Macron, President of France, into the return of art treasures to Africa, has just been published, dismissing the usual claims by museums not to be able to return such treasures as are in their possession, “for legal reasons”. Please See: http://restitutionreport2018.com/

It is therefore an auspicious moment for Your Royal Highness to serve the interests of both the UK and Ghana – the UK because you will prevent France from appearing to be more sensitive than the UK to the entreaties of its African friends, and the Ghanaian people because you will make it possible for them to see their art treasures in their natural setting – not in foreign Museums.

In conclusion, may I humbly draw the attention of Your Royal Highness to the sadness that would fill British breasts if they were forced, by “legal reasons”, to be able to watch plays by William Shakespeare and Arnold Wesker only in German theatres; or to hear Sir Malcolm Sargent only in Austria!

I remain, Your Royal Highness,

Your Humble Petitioner,

CAMERON DUODU
Author of THE GAB BOYS
COLUMNIST of: The Ghanaian Times, &The Daily Guide