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{
    "id": 1527554,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1527554/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 310,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. M. Kajwang’",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "take substitutes for antiquities and protected objects that were made by our forefathers. I hope that even as we prosecute this matter, we shall breathe some life into that project. The reason I got interested in this is the following: One of the antiquities was a traditional Luo headgear that was taken away around 1910 or 1911 by one of the colonisers. He took it into his private collection. Upon his death, it was donated it to the national museum. It is sitting there. Everyone knows who took it there and where that person found it. Now they are offering my community an alternative of a 3D printed headgear. That is completely unacceptable. I hope that by strengthening the functions of the NMK, and ensuring that we have proper regulations around it, they will have the legal basis to fight those ridiculous arrangements that are driven by guilt and that are trying to run away from the real story. It is not just Kenya that has suffered, but Nigeria has lost what they call Benin bronzes. Those are serious valuable cultural and historical artefacts. In fact, many of those collections are sitting in British and New York museums. Some of them are at the Smithsonian Institution. If you go to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, you will find an elaborate collection of Benin bronzes from Nigeria being displayed. Those items need to be brought back to Africa. We need them back to our museums. We can only make a strong case when we have a proper legal framework, when we have museums that work, and when we have museums that are not dogged by the ridiculous corruption scandals that we have had from our national museums. It was a moment of extreme embarrassment when this nation was subjected to certain scandals that are currently in the courts of law. There were issues to do with payroll fraud. A museum is supposed to undertake certain core business, which is looking for artefacts, anthropological conversations, and tracing antiquities. Instead of focusing on that core business, the managers who have been entrusted to do so get into fiddling with payrolls and ghost workers running into millions of shillings. Even donors or research institutions that would wish to work with the national museums cannot trust a museum that deals with ghosts. I do not think that ghosts are part of our antiquities and protected objects or ghost workers for that case. We need to make sure that we professionalise that institution. We need to stop this issue of making political appointments to the NMK. Let us look at competence. Let us look at people with a proven track record in that particular space and not people who will manufacture certain scams just to line their pockets. In terms of archaeological sites, when we were in school, we were told about Olorgesailie, Kariandusi, Lomekwi and Gedi. We need to protect these sites. Two weeks ago, I was in the village. Somewhere in my village, for a long time, there used to be a stone-walled settlement that dates thousands of years back. Perhaps it was done by the Maasai, but it is still questionable because the Maasai are not known to have done stone-walled settlements. Thousands of years back, even the Luo had not settled in that particular area. We think that it was a Bantu settlement or civilization. That land had not been gazetted nor secured. It was private land and its owner sold it to The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}