Last week, the German President apologized for colonial past in Tanzania just a few days after the grandson of Mangi Meli reiterated his demand for the return of his grandfather’s skull. The story was published in the BBC. To us, Africans, it is a painful read: how can someone decapitate your father, and then take away his skull is inconceivable. It has been over 120 years; and some ask us to forgive, forgive when words are not followed by actions?
Excerpts below are from the BBC.
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Isaria Anael Meli has been looking for his grandfather’s remains for more than six decades.
He believes the skull ended up in a Berlin museum after his grandfather, Mangi Meli, along with 18 other chiefs and advisers, was hanged by a German colonial force 123 years ago.
After all this time, a German minister has told the BBC the country is prepared to apologise for the executions in what is now northern Tanzania.
Other descendants have also been searching for the remains and recently, in an unprecedented use of DNA research, two of the skulls of those killed have been identified among a museum collection of thousands [Germany Matches DNA from African Skulls looted during Colonial Era].
It is rare to find an acacia tree on the lower slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. Its twisting branches reach above the steep road and stand out among the denser lush vegetation.
At one time, it shaded a market for the villagers of Tsudunyi, a part of what is now called Old Moshi, who lived off the fertile land and enjoyed the cooler temperatures that the higher altitude brought.
But this focal point for the community became the scene of a great tragedy. Despite the peace of the natural surroundings today, its impact has reverberated down the decades.
It was here on 2 March 1900 that, as the descendants tell it, one-by-one the 19 men were hanged. They had been hastily tried the day before, accused of plotting to attack the German colonial forces.
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Mangi Meli, the most prominent mangi, or chief, among those who were killed, had in 1892 successfully defeated the German forces. That success was later reversed and by the end of the 19th Century, the Europeans were keen to stamp their authority on this part of what was known as German East Africa.
They wanted to make an example of Mangi Meli and other local leaders who may have been planning an uprising.
The humiliation did not end there. While most of the torsos are believed to be buried in a mass grave somewhere near the tree, their heads were at some point removed, packed up and sent 6,600km (4,100 miles) to the German capital. In some cases the complete skeletons were shipped.
When speaking about what happened to his grandfather, Mr Meli does not sound angry, but there is a sadness in his voice and a sense of bewilderment that this was allowed to happen.
The lively 92-year-old was told about the killing of Mangi Meli by his grandmother, who he says was forced to watch the execution, and explains that the chief came to him at night telling him that he would return one day.
“Always, always, always he was coming to me in my dreams,” he says.
His floppy sun hat and twinkling eyes when he smiles disguise his tenacious personality.
Since at least the 1960s, Mr Meli had been writing to the German and Tanzanian authorities urging them to look for the remains of his grandfather.
He says officials tried to put him off by telling him that relevant records had been destroyed during World War Two. But Mr Meli was not deterred.
“Visitors are always crying: ‘Tell all the people of Germany to return the skull.’
“They kept it somewhere just because they thought the Mangi Meli family were small people – believing that they could do what they wanted. But remember that this skull is needed by the whole country – not me, myself, only.”
There is a sense of profound loss that goes beyond the idea that this was a historical injustice.
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African Heritage 