Professor Kodzo Gavua, a pan-africanist, has urged Africans to stop being afraid of their spirituality and cultural heritage saying colonialism deliberately targeted these two fundamental aspects of African identity.
Speaking with the Ghana News Agency at the sidelines of a stakeholder engagement of the Legba-Dzoka Research Project, Prof Gavua also an Associate Professor of the Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Ghana said Africans had been conditioned to fear their own spiritual traditions, making them vulnerable as a people.
“Today many Africans are afraid when they talk about such connections because we have been conditioned that our African spirituality connotes danger, it’s bad, it’s fetish, it’s demonic, and that makes us to be afraid of ourselves,” he said.
The Legba-Dzoka Project, which began in 2022 with funding from the German Lost Art Foundation, brings together academics from Ghana, Togo, and Germany to examine collections made by German missionary Carl Spiess between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The missionary spent 20 years and was specifically asked by the curator of the Übersee-Museum in Bremen to collect spiritual items from communities including Peki and parts of present-day Togo
He said the project goes beyond provenance research to address psychological warfare that had made Africans lose touch with their past and believe all good things must come from Europe and beyond
He said the project takes its name from Legba and Dzoka, local terms for spiritual objects rather than colonial description like “idols” and “fetish”.Prof Gavua said Legba are material expressions carved from wood or molded clay that house spirits, while Dzoka are personal deities that form the foundation of traditional spiritual practices.
“When personal deities help families, they become family deities, and when they help entire communities, they become communal spiritual assets,” he said, emphasizing their protective and empowering nature contrary to negative colonial perceptions.
Dr.Jan Hüsgen, Head of Colonial Research at the German Lost Art Foundation, explained that the foundation expanded its mandate in 2019 to address cultural goods from colonial contexts as part of Germany’s effort to confront its colonial past.
He noted that post-colonial provenance research differed significantly from research into Nazi-looted art because it required integrating multiple knowledge systems and perspectives that colonial documentation often ignored or misrepresented.
“International partners are integrated as co-applicants from the application process, bringing different forms of knowledge and different views on similar historical events. We don’t have easy answers – there are several voices in this research that need to work together,”he said.
He emphasized that nearly 100 projects worth 9 million Euros had been funded since 2019, dealing with various forms of unlawful acquisition and plundering of objects during the colonial period.
Madam Ablah Dzifa Gomashie, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts reaffirmed her Ministry’s commitment to cultural heritage preservation and called for an end to the disruption of traditional African spirituality.
She noted the ministry had been leading efforts on cultural restitution and reparation, emphasizing the importance of research projects like Legba-Dzoka in restoring cultural understanding.
The Minister highlighted the Ministry’s research work, noting that they had documented traditional religions and spirituality across the country, discovering similarities between traditional practices and other forms of worship.
Madam Gomashie emphasized the need to respect traditional religion alongside other faiths, arguing that the disruption of African spiritual heritage was part of broader cultural displacement during colonialism.
“The disruption of the authentic experience for heritage, culture, is the reason why I’m happy to hear that this research is going on,” she added. .
The Minister called on Ghanaians to embrace their traditional heritage without fear, stating: “I will never allow anybody to develop status to cow me into refusing to live the kind of life that my ancestors lived.”
She expressed support for the reset happening through such research projects, saying it was necessary to “go back where we were” as “perhaps it is only in going back that we can move forward at a faster pace.”
GNA
