By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Jun 25 2002 (IPS)

Alexi is a travelling art dealer from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Sitting on a single bed in a cheap hotel room, he explains his trade. His meagre possessions – a toothbrush and a couple of dirty T-shirts — lie on a table next to him. Trousers hang from the back of the door. The rest of the room is packed with wooden artefacts – chairs, tables, fetishes, statues and masks.

Alexi has just arrived in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, after a three-day drive from eastern Congo. He has spent the last year travelling in a minibus; picking up these treasures from some of the world’s most remote, inaccessible villages.

Now in Nairobi, it is time to sell them. Alexi hopes to double his money, then head home to relax with his wife and children back in eastern Congo – as he has been doing for the last 15 years.

Kenya is East Africa’s largest export hub – and the place to find illicit bargains. It is illegal to export these items. But poorly trained immigration officials can rarely tell the difference between valuable antiquities and cheap tourist copies.

Most of Alexi’s customers are Europeans – mainly Italians and French – or Americans. Some are professional dealers. Others are aid workers or diplomats who ship the pieces back to their own countries, then sell them on to private galleries or collectors.

Home to some of the most ancient cultures on earth, African art was once dismissed as primitive. Now foreign collectors eagerly seek after it.

The plunder of Africa’s heritage began under colonialism. Today, the main culprits are poverty and war. And the looting is worse than ever. Interpol, the international police organisation, estimates that the illicit trade in cultural property from Africa is worth 500 million U.S. dollars a year.

“Not only are these works intrinsically beautiful, they also provide us with important clues about our ancestors’ earliest civilisations,” he says.

Alexi points to some intricately carved chairs, adorned with fetish figures. Fifty years ago, they were used by Congolese chieftains for ceremonies and ministerial meetings. The fetishes offered protection against misfortune.

Now their children have turned to other gods — and sold their parents’ most sacred possessions.

“Their parents were pagans. This generation is Christian. They’ve started believing in God. They see these chairs as devilish. They want to get rid of them,” Alexi explains.

The people of Congo do not have many other options. After decades of mismanagement and four years of civil war, most Congolese are destitute. So when strangers pass through, they readily sell their cultural history for basic necessities, like roofing.

“If their roof is broken, they ask me to bring them roofing materials. If it is left, it will be ruined. If I give them roofing, they will not have to touch the house for 20 or 30 years,” says Alexi.

“I’m sad but I have to do this because I have to make a living. It’s a shame. I am a bit of an exploiter,” he admits.

He blames his customers for fuelling the trade. “If there weren’t buyers – Europeans, Americans, Asians, I couldn’t do this. They have the opportunity to buy what we have.”

He takes a philosophical approach, laughing: “It’s like Africa has all the raw materials but we don’t have the chance to develop them. That’s the tragedy of Africa.”

Some people are very unhappy about Alexi’s export business.

“We are talking here about an identity. We are talking about a people. We are talking about a culture. We are talking about diversity in unity. So all this art are the expression of the people’s identity. It represents both symbolic and religious meanings to them,” says George Abungu, director general of the National Museums of Kenya.

“And of course it’s the foundation of these kinds of nations. And I think by removing them, you are actually stripping the people of their nationhood, of their identity, and so leaving them to have no culture to even refer to,” he warns.

Art is also a major tourist attraction. Given a chance, Abungu believes it could be a serious money earner for Africa.

“This is probably some of the greatest resources that we have in Africa. And we have not been given the opportunity to maximise on that by retaining it here and letting them see it the way they’re seeing them in the European museums and American museums,” he says.

But Western collectors argue that African governments are failing to protect their heritage.

“The major threat now is losing these things. So wherever they’re preserved it’s better than losing them for posterity,” says Alan Donovan, founder of the art gallery African Heritage and owner of one of the largest private collections in Kenya.

“I’m not saying that this should allow theft to happen. I’m saying that the first and essential threat is that these things will disappear,” he says.

Until Africa can afford to protect its cultural heritage, the exodus will continue — piece by piece.

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