Descendants urge UK museums to help find looted chimurenga skulls

Descendants of freedom fighters executed and beheaded by colonial British forces have asked the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Cambridge to help locate their ancestors' looted skulls. The descendants of the first chimurenga heroes, who led an uprising against British colonisers in the 1890s, long believed the institutions hold several of the skulls.

Eight descendants have formally asked the institutions to collaborate in locating six of their ancestors' remains and offered DNA samples to assist. The museum and university said in 2022 they had not identified any remains in their collections as belonging to the colonial resistance fighters, a finding that prompted dismay among descendants and Zimbabwean officials.

In letters sent this month the descendants said provenance questions could only be resolved by a taskforce of experts from Zimbabwe and the UK to examine contested remains and archives. 'This is not only about the past,' the letters state.

United Kingdom, London

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