I don’t consider myself a thief but an activist. I believe these objects should be given back to the African people they were taken from
I am a pan-African activist, campaigning for reparations for the crimes against African people committed during colonialism. Recently, I have taken matters into my own hands: I go to museums that exhibit African artefacts; I tell the truth about how these items were looted and stolen from Africa – and then I take them.
I have been deeply political for as long as I can remember. I was born in 1978 in Kinshasa, the capital of what was then Zaire and is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. My father was a revolutionary, and led the 1968 coup d’état that overthrew the Congolese government. When I was a child, my mother would tell me stories of Patrice Lumumba, the father of Congolese independence.