Historical Repatriation: A Legacy Comes Home
Today, 19 August 2026, the Commonwealth Association of Museums (CAM) pauses to honour and remember our dear colleague and posthumous Cowrie Circle member, Dr Jeremy Silvester, on a day of profound historical significance for Namibia, South Africa and the international museum community.
Today in Cape Town, South Africa commemorated the repatriation of 84 Namibian Ancestral Remains beginning their final journey home after more than a century away from their land and their people. This was not simply the movement of Ancestral Remains from one country to another. It was an act of rehumanisation, restoration and justice.
For too long, Ancestors taken during colonialism were categorised, numbered, researched and held within museum collections. Today they were honoured differently: not as specimens, not as objects of scientific study, but as sacred human beings — as ancestors who belong to families, communities, histories and a homeland.
It is impossible for CAM to mark this moment without remembering Dr Jeremy Silvester.
Jeremy dedicated much of his life to Namibian heritage and to challenging the colonial legacies that continue to shape museums. As Director of the Museums Association of Namibia and a longstanding member and Board member of CAM, he helped create conversations and collaborations that placed restitution, repatriation and the ethical management of Ancestral Remains firmly on the agenda of museums in southern Africa and internationally. CAM previously remembered Jeremy as a visionary who worked tirelessly for the museum community and as an integral member of its Human Remains project team.
Between 2017 and 2018, Jeremy worked with CAM, ICOM, Iziko Museums of South Africa and colleagues across southern Africa on the Human Remains Management in Southern Africa project, helping develop approaches to the management and repatriation of Ancestral Remains in collaboration with museums, universities, governments and Indigenous communities. ICOM also remembered him for his deep commitment to the restitution of Namibian cultural heritage and Ancestral Remains.
In many ways, therefore, today carries Jeremy’s fingerprints.
His advocacy helped inspire a generation of museum professionals to understand that repatriation is about human rights. It is about dignity. It is about confronting histories of violence and dispossession, listening to descendant communities, and recognising that museums have a responsibility to help repair the harms of the past.
Jeremy’s presence was deeply missed today, but his work and convictions were present. The torch he carried has been taken up by many others who continue this difficult but necessary work.
As 84 ancestors, body casts and grave goods, begin their journey home to Namibia after more than 100 years, we remember a colleague, friend, teacher and advocate who believed profoundly in the importance of this work.
Jeremy, we hope we have made you proud.
May the ancestors journey home in dignity and peace. May their return bring healing to their descendants. And may we, as museums across the Commonwealth, continue to have the courage to return what was taken, restore what was diminished, and place humanity at the centre of everything we do.
With remembrance and respect,
Annelize Kotze
President of the Commonwealth Association of Museums
