The closing event of the second edition of the Flemish History Olympiad will take place in Antwerp on Friday, May 3. This year, a thousand students, teachers and other guests are expected.
School classes can participate in the Olympiad by developing a project. I didn’t become a historian, but I remember history being one of my favorite subjects. Thanks to my Belgian-Congolese family story, my interest in the world wars, colonialism and decolonization grew in my twenties.
Ever since I developed a passion for writing, I have been looking for historical stories that I never heard at school. It explains my interest in the Olympiad, an initiative of lawyer and educational expert Naïma Lafrarchi of the history department at Ghent University. The theme of the first edition was ‘forgotten histories’.
At the invitation of a teacher, I gave a lesson about the colonial past at the Studio in Ostend last year. What would the coastal municipality be without Congo, the private colony of King Leopold II? My lesson was part of the student project ‘The kilometer of Leopold II’, a listening walk over the many colonial traces in the public space.
At the closing event of the Olympiad, eight hundred people traveled to Ghent for the awards ceremony. The jury chose three winners, including the Antwerp school Kunstkaai. With their artistic project ‘We have not forgotten them’, these students reflected on the world exhibition that took place from May to November 1894 in the Zuidwijk. They remembered the 144 Congolese women, men and children who were taken from the colony to be exhibited as animals on the square in front of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (KMSKA). They commemorated the seven Congolese between the ages of 17 and 35 who died and may lie in a mass grave at the Schoonselhof cemetery.
At the end of 2022, teacher Judith Elseviers and I discussed this tragic history again on the occasion of the festive reopening of the museum. We asked the city council to place a memorial plaque on the museum square. The non-profit organization Hand in Hand against Racism launched a petition.
Our opinion piece The morning of 2022 was supported by a diverse group of (well-known) people who may or may not have a connection with Antwerp, such as influencer Bitshilualua Kabeya, human rights defender Fleur Pierets and writers Jeroen Olyslaegers and Ish Ait Hamou. In response, the city council and the museum committed to organizing a commemoration in 2024. What is the status of that?
This week is a good time to put the collective demand back on the table. Exactly 130 years ago, the Antwerp World Exhibition started. It is important that Antwerp, like Dutch cities, pays attention to its role in colonial history and its contemporary consequences. My plea for a memorial plaque is a form of resistance against the discriminatory memorial policy of the city council.
The fight against discrimination is of course more urgent in areas such as education, the labor market and housing. But this does not prevent work being done on a more inclusive commemoration policy. The city is taking steps when it comes to recognizing the violence against Jewish victims during the Second World War. At the beginning of May we commemorate the liberation and as far as I am concerned, one of the many Christian holidays can be exchanged to make May 8 a holiday again.
The permanent exhibition City at war in the Museum aan de Stroom (MAS) is a necessary initiative to remind us of that gruesome war past. It is perhaps too woke to also ask Mayor Bart De Wever (N-VA) for support for a permanent exhibition about Antwerp’s colonial past. But the least he can do is take off his hat of right-wing party chairman and, as a historian and citizen, place a memorial plaque for Congolese, as a symbol of the many human lives that are dehumanized for colonial ambitions, past and present.
If De Wever is still not convinced 130 years after the world expo, he can invite me before the municipal elections so that I can explain to him why African victims of racist violence also deserve a commemoration in his multicultural port and diamond city. Black lives matter too.
