'We came to restore dignity' - South Africa's Ramaphosa calls for 'reparations' as he leads ceremony to rebury Khoisan remains returned from Europe

"South African President Cyril Ramaphosa led a ceremony to rebury the remains of 63 Khoisan individuals in the Northern Cape town of Steinkopf on Monday. Fiootage shows the ceremony with Ramaphosa in attendance as residents carried wooden coffins draped in traditional funeral palls to bid farewell. "We've come to restore dignity, as well as the identity of those whose identity they were deprived of," said Ramaphosa in his speech, underlining that in this ceremony people are "healing the wounds of the past." Six of the remains were repatriated from the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, while others had been held in South Africa’s Iziko Museums. Authorities said some of the remains had been exhumed between 1868 and 1924 during the colonial era. "When these remains were taken away, they were not just being taken away, they were being stolen. They were being taken away without the consent of the families of all these people. Black, coloured, Indian, and white, we have sought to reduce, they sought to reduce our ancestors into objects," he noted. The Khoisan have endured some of the most troubling episodes of colonial exploitation, including the case of Sarah Baartman, who was taken to Europe in the early 19th century and exhibited as a 'freak show'. "That process was a process that was born of not only curiosity, it was born out of the dehumanisation of our people. We are not people who have gone to Europe to go and take the skulls and the bones of white people to bring them here to study," he stressed. Ramaphosa emphasised that the remains belonged in their homeland. "We don't only need an apology. We don't only need repatriation, we also need redress. And I therefore call upon us and the Ontario Museum and the people of Scotland and the government of Scotland to start working with us on what we call redress and reparations," he said. The reburial ceremony brought together residents, traditional leaders, and officials in an act of remembrance and commemoration."

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