ABSTRACT
African museums were established during the colonial era, where they served narrow interests and audiences. This chapter demonstrates how a small museum in Eastern Zimbabwe has been on the forefront of spearheading decolonial projects that are undergirded by community collaborations, inclusivity, critical dialogue and multivocality methodologies which are challenging ills and bad legacies of the colonisation. Broadly, the African museum of the future is one that should embrace the potency of objects as living beings which indigenous communities can touch, smell and taste. The chapter discusses a new exhibition at Mutare Museum which was co-curated with the community by reconfiguring Shona traditional drums in the old Beit Gallery. Selected museum projects in South Africa such as the District Six project in Cape Town, and numerous other museum development projects after 1994, have shown the world how museums can engage with wider, previously marginalised communities, contribute to restitution, social transformation, community self-representation and rehumanisation of African societies and cultures.
