Zimbabwe's iconic stone birds were taken by colonialists. Finally, they're all back home

Zimbabwe's flag, banknotes and coat of arms all feature a stately looking eagle, sitting majestically on a plinth.

Known as the Zimbabwe Bird, it has long been a symbol of national identity, but behind it lies a complex tale of displacement, colonial plunder and restitution.

The bird is one of several ancient, treasured sculptures that were taken from Zimbabwe by colonialists and spent decades outside the country's borders.

It was only this week that - after 137 years away - the final displaced bird arrived home, a moment Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa described as "the return of a national icon".

The grey, soapstone carving was repatriated from neighbouring South Africa - it wound up there having been ripped from its column, then sold to British imperialist Cecil Rhodes.

On Tuesday, South Africa repatriated the bird, along with eight sets of human remains, previously exhumed in Zimbabwe by colonial researchers and donated to a South African museum.

The body parts were taken during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries for "a misguided colonial pseudoscience" South African Minister of Culture Gayton McKenzie said at a ceremony held to hand over the remains and the bird.

"These are not abstractions, but people... removed from their graves, their communities, and their homeland under the logic that their bodies were data," he said.

Their return is significant for Zimbabwe, which has also been seeking the return of the skulls of late-19th Century anti-colonial heroes, believed to be in the UK.

This week's homecoming comes at a time when former colonial powers are yielding to campaigns to send looted African remains and artefacts back to their home countries.

The vast majority of returns have come from European countries like France, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK.

What made this repatriation rare was that it was an African country doing the returning.

In his speech on Tuesday, McKenzie described the birds as "unique" and "revered".

"Nothing like them has been discovered anywhere else in the world," he said.

The sculptures were taken from the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, a medieval stone city, from which Zimbabwe gets its name. In fact, Zimbabwe means "house of stone" - and today the country is globally renowned in art circles for its modern stone carvings.

The Great Zimbabwe site was built between the 11th and 15th Centuries and the striking bird sculptures - of which eight are known - were planted on walls and monoliths.

An air of intrigue surrounds the eagles - scholars cannot agree on who exactly sculpted them, though some scholars believe they were made by ancestors of the Shona people, who make up the majority of the country's current population.

"They are the most significant archaeological treasures ever discovered in the country," Plan Shenjere-Nyabezi, an archaeology professor at the University of Zimbabwe, tells the BBC.

"The Zimbabwe Birds stand as powerful and cherished symbols of our national heritage."

The sculptures vary in shape and sizes - they range from 25cm (9.8in) to 50cm in height, towering above one metre when measured with their columns.

Some experts believe the statues depict the bateleur eagle, known as "chapungu" in Shona. Others believe the bird is a "hungwe", the African fish eagle.

The statues have great spiritual meaning for some in Zimbabwe, Edward Matenga, one of Zimbabwe's foremost scholars of the sculptures, tells the BBC.

He says the endangered bateleur eagle is historically "sacred" to both the Shona and the minority Venda people.

The eight birds watched over Great Zimbabwe for hundreds of years. However, in the 19th Century a growing number of European hunters, traders and missionaries began exploring the region prior to colonisation.

A hunter named Willi Posselt happened upon the birds in 1889 and decided to take the "best specimen" - the very sculpture returned to Zimbabwe on Tuesday.

According to his own account, local people, armed with guns and spears, initially protested against the bird's removal. But Posselt was able to leave with the bird, ripping it from its column after handing over blankets and "other articles" in exchange.

"I stored the remaining [birds] in a secure place, it being my intention to return and secure them from the natives," he wrote.

Posselt sold the bird to Cecil Rhodes, a powerful imperialist who headed the British South Africa Company and spearheaded the colonisation of modern-day Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Rhodes used the bird as décor for his grand Cape Town estate and two years later, the British South Africa Company commissioned archaeologist Theodore Bent to return to Great Zimbabwe.

Bent found the sculptures that Posselt had stored away and transported four of the prized birds to a museum in South Africa.

A fragment of one other bird ended up further afield - its pedestal was taken by a German missionary and sold to Berlin's Ethnological Museum in 1907.

But after Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, its authorities launched a campaign to recoup the missing birds, with only two remaining in the country.

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's independence leader and long-time president, described their loss as a "ruthless cultural plunder".

In a peculiar trade, South Africa's apartheid government agreed in 1981 to release the four birds it held in a museum in exchange for a huge collection of bees, wasps and ants. The trove, belonging to Zimbabwe's Natural History Museum, comprised around 1,000 kinds of insects.

Then, in 2003, another win. Germany returned the soapstone pedestal that, in Mugabe's words, had "spent almost 100 years in exile".

Getting the last bird back was more of a challenge. When Rhodes died in 1902, his Cape Town home and all its contents were vested to South Africa's governor-general - a role which was later transformed into the national president.

In 1910, a law named the Rhodes Will Act stated that these possessions should not be sold, let or transferred.

"Every time Zimbabwe asked, the 1910 Act was cited," McKenzie explained in his speech.

South Africa finally got round this legal quandary by signing a deal to loan the bird to Zimbabwe for two years.

McKenzie insists that the bird will never return to South Africa, saying the authorities are undertaking a review of the 1910 Act in order to allow for "permanent repatriation".

After years of negotiation, Zimbabwe's authorities appear to have faith in South Africa's pledge. For them, their lost bird has flown home for good.

Prof Shenjere-Nyabezi echoes this optimism, stating: "I would say the arrival of this last piece signifies a spiritual homecoming.

"The bird is Zimbabwe's heritage... one should not have to travel to other countries to enjoy their own heritage."

Matenga describes the repatriation as a "win-win situation" for both Zimbabwe and South Africa.

"It is a cathartic process for South Africa," he says, "that they are giving away what is important for another country."

The bird is finally returning to its home at Great Zimbabwe, joining its seven siblings in an on-site museum, for protective purposes.

When receiving the sculpture, Mnangagwa noted that the bird had arrived home just in time for the anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence, on Saturday.

"Let the people of Zimbabwe come and witness," he said, wearing a woollen scarf bearing the colours of Zimbabwe's flag.

"Let the children of this great nation see with their own eyes the symbol of their identity and let the world know Zimbabwe is a nation that respects its past."

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