Mapungubwe artefact to be on loan to Europe museum

LIMPOPO – The defining symbol of pre-colonial civilisation in South Africa, the golden rhino of Mapungubwe in the Vhembe region, could leave the country for the first time next year on loan to the British Museum for an unprecedented exhibition of South African art.

Mapungubwe, in the far north of South Africa bordering present-day Botswana and Zimbabwe, was the biggest kingdom on the subcontinent back in the 13th century.

It had a sophisticated state and economic system, which included agriculture, mining and advanced artisanship, and they traded gold and ivory with Asia and Egypt.

Archaeological records suggest that the site was rediscovered in 1932 and excavated by the University of Pretoria, yielding gold jewellery including anklets, bracelets, necklaces, beads and animal figurines recovered from three elite burials.

For decades it was largely ignored in South Africa because it contradicted the ideology of Apartheid, which taught that history began when the first Dutch settlers arrived in Cape Town in 1652.Few were willing to contemplate that the rhino, made of several pieces of thin gold foil originally nailed onto a wooden carving, could be the work of a much earlier black culture.

“A civilisation like this existed nearly a thousand years ago,” said Theo van Wyk, the head of the arts department at the University of Pretoria.

“The conventional view is that it was dark Africa, but it was a trading point for many.”

Since the dawn of multiracial democracy, Mapungubwe has been declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco and incorporated into a national park.

Now the site is under threat from coal-mining interests.

A museum at the Pretoria University campus holds 9 kg of gold treasures found at the site, the biggest archaeological collection of gold artefacts in sub-Saharan Africa, of which 3,5 kg, including the rhino, are on display.

It could also point to the long and painful history of African treasures being looted by colonisers for display in European museums, many of which have never been restituted.

Such is Mapungubwe’s importance in the post-Apartheid national narrative, that South Africa’s highest honour is the Order of Mapungubwe, of which Nelson Mandela was the first recipient.

Meanwhile, the University of Pretoria plans to move the rhino and other key artefacts to a new, more publicly accessible museum on its campus next year, despite calls to return the rhino to its original Iron Age site.