A new South African video game called Relooted allows players to take back African artefacts held in Western museums through a series of heists, amid growing calls for repatriation of treasures looted by colonial armies.
Players become Nomali, a South African sports scientist and parkour expert, who leaps through museums to retrieve 70 real objects. Among them are an Asante gold mask taken by the British army from Kumasi, now in London's Wallace Collection, and the skull of Tanzanian king Mangi Meli, taken to Germany after his execution in 1900.
Hundreds of thousands of culturally significant items were looted during colonial rule. A 2018 report commissioned by French president Emmanuel Macron estimated that more than 90% of Africa's material cultural heritage is held outside the continent. While some museums have returned items like the Benin bronzes, others, including the British Museum, resist.
Ben Myres, chief executive of developer Nyamakop, said the game offers a 'hopeful, utopian feeling' of what it might be like when artefacts finally come home. The idea came in 2018 after his mother visited the British Museum and was outraged by the Nereid Monument from Turkey.
Created by a team from over ten African countries, the game features voice actors from the home countries of Nomali's heist crew. Narrative director Mohale Mashigo developed an 'Africanfuturist' vision for Africa, while Europe and the US are satirised as 'The Old World' and 'The Shiny Place'. The museums are fictional except for the Museum of Black Civilisations in Dakar, where players return looted objects.
For producer Sithe Ncube, including Zambia's Kabwe Skull (Broken Hill Man) was important. She said learning about the scale of artefact looting was eye-opening: 'I still can't wrap my head around the numbers. It seems quite ridiculous and probably underestimated.'
