From ceremony to custody: plural authority and multilevel governance in the Witbooi restitution between Germany and Namibia

On 28 February 2019, Baden-Württemberg returned two heirlooms associated with anticolonial leader Hendrik Witbooi – a Nama-language (Khoekhoegowab) New Testament, known as the ‘Witbooi Bible’, and a whip – at a high-profile ceremony in Gibeon, southern Namibia. Officially framed as a gesture of reconciliation and historical redress, the return also cast restitution as a governance problem: who may receive, interpret, and steward heritage where state authority and traditional leadership intersect. Drawing on fieldwork, documentary materials, and recent scholarship, this article reconstructs the objects’ symbolic significance and historical context and analyses how their return shaped competing claims to authority across German and Namibian institutions. It argues that state-led restitution can operate simultaneously as a gesture of moral repair and as a site of contested political negotiation. The article concludes that post-ceremony afterlives may raise longer-term questions of custody and sustained public engagement, reframing restitution as a process of governance over time rather than a single diplomatic moment.