Belgium in uproar over Africa party

'Explain to me how this kind of event still exists in 2019,' activist group writes.

A screenshot of a gallery with photos of the event on the organizers' Facebook page

Belgium’s Africa Museum and organizers who threw an Africa-themed party on its grounds are scrambling to defend themselves after a photograph of a man in blackface and of party-goers in colonial-themed costumes caused widespread condemnation.

“Explain to me how this kind of event still exists in 2019 at the Africa Museum? Is the administration or its communications team on Xanax?” Cafe Congo, an activist group focused on Belgo-Congolese relations, posted on Facebook.

One of the organizers on Thursday hit back at the criticism, saying people should stop “talking about the past.” The Royal Museum for Central Africa apologized for allowing the party, which was independently organized, to take place in the public park in front of its buildings, saying it took “responsibility for this lapse in judgment.”

A Facebook page for the event had promised an “Afrohouse” party featuring “electronic music with African influences” and described the dress code as “la sape [to dress with class], colorful, wakanda [a fictional country located in sub-Saharan Africa that’s home to the superhero Black Panther], future African.” It said part of the entrance fee would go to BOS+, a Flemish non-profit organization dedicated to forest conservation.

Photographs published by the organizers showed partygoers dressed in colorful outfits and face paint. Some wore traditional African dress; a number wore animal-print clothing. An image of a white man in blackface, originally posted by the group that organized the event, Thé Dansant, was removed from social media, but not before several users took screenshots.

Organizers said the bad judgment of “one or two people” shouldn’t sully the image of the event or of the museum.

The Africa Museum, built by King Leopold II using money made in the exploitative rubber plantations of the Congo Free State, recently underwent a large-scale renovation process to modernize its exhibits and tackle its colonial history. It had preemptively distanced itself from the event in a Facebook post on Friday, saying it was “not responsible for [the event’s] communication, of any of the people present, nor of the way people of African origin are represented by the organization and/or the participants.”

In a statement responding to the public backlash, the museum on Wednesday acknowledged it should have “imposed requirements and/or clear conditions” on the organizers. “We assume our responsibility and are working on an ethical plan of action for events so that this will not happen again.”

But the organizers said the bad judgment of “one or two people” shouldn’t sully the image of the event or of the museum.

“You cannot control everyone’s way of dressing,” said Afe Dominic, who helped organize the event and also performed as part of a djembé drumming group.

“Yes, the guy dressed as a colonial and [the guy in] blackface was offensive,” said Dominic, who is from Nigeria. “But you can’t condemn everyone for it.”

Critics of the event, he said, were “talking about something that happened 100 years ago. They don’t want to move forward, they want to live in the past. They should just move back home.”

The event, he said, was attended by more than 2,000 people “of all colors” who were “well educated about the history of the museum.” Although the location has symbolic weight, it does not belong to any one group of people, he said, and is a public space where everyone should “feel welcome.”

“No one had any intention of insulting anyone,” said Mike Van den Bosch, who attended the party in a safari costume he rented for €25. His outfit, which drew criticism on Facebook, had “nothing to do with colonialism,” he said.

“It was a beautiful event, with a positive connection between people,” he added. “The Africans who were there were proud of their culture.”

But whether or not guests had a good time, the theme of the event and its location — in a park that once hosted a human zoo and belonged to the estate of King Leopold II — were “insensitive” and “ignorant,” said Kiza Magendane, a Congolese-Dutch writer and political scientist based in Antwerp.

By pointing to the presence of black guests and performers, Magendane said, the organizers are using “black people as an alibi.”

“It shows a lack of empathy and compassion,” he said. “They don’t care about the pain felt by some members of the Afro-Belgian community.”

“These things keep happening,” said Emma Lee Amponsah, a Ph.D. student and founder of the platform Black Speaks Back. “I’m not super shocked, it’s just super tiring.”

The museum knew about the event well ahead of time, she said, but didn’t prevent or control it. “That’s what frustrates a lot of people. It’s a typical Belgian thing — to get out of the way of that confrontation,” she said.

Critics of the event “do want this to be a thing of the past, they do want to get over this, but to do that we have to change the present,” she added. “What [the organizers of the party] want to do is keep this same stereotype and this view they have of Africa. And they feel entitled to it.”

Thé Dansant also threw an Africa-themed party six years ago, Amponsah said, where they called on people to “wear your own African mask, get rasta extensions in Matongé [a predominantly African neighborhood in Brussels], paint yourself brown or black.”

“It’s important to understand this is not an Africa-themed event — this is a colonization-themed event,” said Dominique Day, vice chair of the U.N. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, who visited Belgium on a fact-finding mission in February.

“This party involves you getting excited about immersing yourself in cultural stereotypes … It’s a glorification of ways African bodies, resources, land, the lives of Africans were both stolen and exploited for individual gain and national gain.”

The controversial event, she said, was “quite consistent” with the U.N. group’s finding published earlier this year. “There’s this structural and endemic pattern of racism and cultural stereotype that exists very much unacknowledged not just within institutions but within society as a whole,” she said.

The event was “not a small harm and not a small symbol,” said Day. “I don’t think it’s overblown when someone’s idea of how to celebrate is grounded in the nostalgia for a period of tremendous exploitation and suffering.”

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