It's a steal Game that lets players return relics

Creators say they're offering Africans a 'hopeful, utopian feeling' of retrieving objects looted by colonial armies

- By Rachel Savage JOHANNESBURG

A new South African video game lets players take back African artefacts held in western museums in a series of heists, amid a growing campaign to repatriate treasures looted by colonial armies.

Players of Relooted become South African sports scientist and parkour expert Nomali, as she leaps and dives through museums to retrieve 70 real objects. They include an Asante gold mask that was taken by the British army when it destroyed the Asante empire's capital, Kumasi, and is now in the Wallace Collection in London. Another object is the skull of the Tanzanian king Mangi Meli, which was taken to Germany after its colonial regime executed him in 1900.

Hundreds of thousands of culturally and spiritually significant items were looted from Africa during the 19th and 20th centuries, when European countries carved up the continent into colonies. A 2018 report commissioned by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, estimated that more than 90% of Africa's material cultural heritage was held outside the continent.