Stuffed man going to 'wrong' home

A brochure from 1888 showing "El Negro"

By BBC News Online's Rachel Rawlins

The corpse of an African man - stuffed, preserved and on show in Spain as a tourist attraction for more than a century - has finally been given a date to go "home" but is probably not going to the right place.

The remains of the man will arrive in Botswana on 4 October and will be buried the following day.

Banyoles loves you El Negro, don't go

T-shirt slogan

A controversy over the body erupted in 1992 when a local doctor, originally from Haiti, complained at the undignified treatment of the remains, and the row went as far as the United Nations.

The Organisation of African Unity mandated Botswana to receive and bury the body but a journalist and an academic who researched the man's origin determined he originally came from South Africa.

Chocolate replicas

The man, known as "El Negro" in Spanish, was displayed until 1998 in the Darder museum in Banyoles in the north of Spain.

When the controversy first surfaced in 1992, people in Banyoles were annoyed by the fuss.

"Bushmen" or Basarwa people are reclaiming land in South Africa

"El Negro is our property. It's our business and nobody else's," said councillor Carles Abella. The mayor at the time, Juan Solana, agreed.

"We have mummies and skulls and even human skins in the museum.

"What is the difference between those things and a stuffed African?"

Residents of Banyoles produced T-shirts with slogans like "Banyoles loves you El Negro, don't go!" and at Easter they produced celebratory chocolates in his likeness.

Botswana 'home'

As the years passed the man became know as "Il Bosquimano", the "Bushman", and it was assumed he originated from Botswana.

The government said it was willing to accept the body from the Spanish Government to bury, although it did not specify where.

In Botswana itself the matter was greeted with some confusion.

Some commentators hoped the controversy would not detract from concerns over the human rights status of Basarwa, or "Bushmen" people in present-day Botswana.

There has been widespread criticism of government policies towards the Basarwa.

An academic at the University of Botswana History Department, Professor Neil Parsons, and a Spanish journalist, Miquel Molina, researched the origins of the man and determined he did not come from Botswana.

Grave robbers

His body had been stolen by the Verraux brothers, two famous French taxidermists, the night after his burial some time in 1830.

The location of the theft was narrowed down to the area around an old abandoned village called Kgatlane on the Vaal near the Orange River in South Africa.

In a happy coincidence the descendants of these Kgatlane people are now being allowed to reclaim and return to their ancestral lands on the Vaal after their removal under apartheid to the "homeland" of Boputhatswana in 1978.

But it seems unlikely they will be able to bury the man who is perhaps their most famous son.

In burying the body the Botswana Government is carrying out the mandate of the OAU by reburying an African in African soil, and no-one has objected or offered to make other arrangements.

A simple monument to "El Negro" is going to be placed in Tsholofelo Park in the capital Gaborone.

And while one African son is finally buried in his home continent there remain the flayed skins of two other individuals who may also be of African origin among the collection of the Darder museum in Spain.