The Museum of Stolen History: Part VI
Things can be taken. Their stories must still be told.
Curated by Shola Lawal | Art direction by Wynona Mutisi
The Museum of Stolen History is a new series by The Continent that tells the stories of some of Africa's most significant artefacts.
Can one be accused of stealing an object if it was received as a “gift”?
Weighing in at 3,106 carats (that’s 621 grams), the mighty Cullinan Diamond is the largest rough diamond ever found in Africa – or anywhere else. It was discovered in 1905 in the small mining town of Cullinan in colonial-era South Africa. Now it lives on as several pieces, most of which are embedded in Britain’s Crown Jewels.
Following its discovery by the Premier Mining Company, the stone was put up for sale in Cape Town for several months.
No buyer could be found. It was decided the gem would be sent to London for sale. To transport it, the company faked a ceremonial entourage that travelled with a steamboat complete with a security detail. The real diamond was not on board: it arrived quietly in London via post. Unfortunately, it couldn’t sell there either.
In 1907, the Afrikaner government of the then-Transvaal Province, led by Louis Botha, decided to buy and gift the diamond to Britain’s King Edward VII. They paid 150,000 pounds for the privilege, about $24-million today.
Botha had reason to splash out: the Second Boer War with the British (1899-1902) had just ended, leaving the Transvaal and the similarly Boer-led Orange Free State occupied and devastated. British soldiers had employed guerilla tactics, killing civilians indiscriminately, destroying farms and other food sources, and interning women and children in concentration camps.
Although the war was often seen as a “White Man’s war”, historians note that Black Africans, who had themselves been enslaved by the Boers, were either conscripted or volunteered to fight for one side or the other, often as scouts. At least 25,000 Afrikaners and 12,000 Black Africans died in the war.
Eventually, the Transvaal agreed to become a British colony in the Treaty of Vereeniging (1902), officially ending the war, and laying the foundations for the union that would become today’s Republic of South Africa. As Transvaal’s leader, Botha needed the Crown’s good favour – and funds – to rebuild the Colony and return it to self-rule.
The Amsterdam-based jeweller Joseph Asscher was commissioned to cleave the stone. It is rumoured that he fainted upon successfully splitting the diamond, due to days-long anxious pre-examination of how best to cut it without damage, using the limited technologies of the time. In the end, nine big stones emerged from the diamond, and about 90 fragments. The biggest, the Great Star of Africa or Cullinan I, was embedded in the King’s Sceptre with Cross. The second-biggest, the Second Star, was embedded in the Imperial State Crown.
Cullinans III through IX are part of brooches or other jewellery used by members of the royal family.
Amid a continent-wide push for stolen art to be repatriated by former colonial powers, South Africans too are demanding that the diamonds be returned to the country. Those demands heated up during King Charles’ coronation in May 2023. But it’s complicated, says Wits University’s Roger Southall: the Cullinan was given by the government of the day, not looted in the traditional sense.
Lawyer Mothusi Kamanga, who campaigns on social media for the diamonds to be returned, disagrees. The gem was sent to the UK as a gift by settler colonialists who had illegally occupied South Africa, Kamanga told The Continent. Those colonists did not receive consent from Black Africans, the true owners, therefore they could not have gifted it to the king, he said.
