THE COST OF GENOCIDE
Germany’s offer to pay €1.1bn in development aid to Namibia in recognition of the genocide of 1904-1908 does not sit well with those most affected
Germany’s offer of €1.1bn in development aid to Namibia in recognition of the “immeasurable suffering” inflicted during the Namibian genocide more than a century ago has sparked anger among the groups most affected by that violent colonial campaign.
As many as 100,000 ethnic Herero,
10,000 Nama and an unknown number of San were killed in an unequal conflict between German forces and local groups from 1904 to 1908. Most died of thirst and starvation after being driven into Namibia’s arid eastern wastes, but many died of neglect, overwork and medical experimentation in starkly underserviced concentration camps.
The agreement between the governments of Germany and Namibia, announced on May 28, concludes almost six years of negotiations. But it was rejected as an insult by the Namibian Genocide Association and by the Herero and Nama, who have never recovered from their loss of life, land and livelihood.
Former Ovaherero traditional authority spokesperson Bob Kandetu tells the FM the Germans are “apologising to the wrong people” — that is, the Ovambo-dominated ruling party, Swapo, which likely stands to benefit most from the aid windfall.
Despite promises that the money, to be paid over 30 years, will be used to uplift communities devastated by the genocide, Kandetu says actual detailed commitments are absent. Other observers raise concerns that the money may not be well spent, given that President Hage Geingob’s government is cash-strapped.
In officially acknowledging that Lt-Gen Lothar von Trotha’s notorious “extermination order” led to genocide, Germany has become the first former colonial power to admit to the fact. But it has failed to convince the country’s central and southern heartland where, Kandetu says, it has provoked division and anger.
Herero paramount chief Vekuii Rukoro told the BBC that the “financial support” Germany will offer has “nothing to do with reparations;
to us it is support for infrastructure projects to their friends, to their client state, the Namibian government”.
He argues instead for “reparations proper”, paid directly to the affected communities.
But Germany has explicitly avoided the explosive notion of reparations, referring instead to “development aid”.
Also at issue is that the return of 46,000ha of indigenous land — stolen at the stroke of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s pen in 1905 — was not on the table, and that consultation with the victims’ descendants was assiduously avoided.
That’s ironic, considering it was a failed class action suit by Herero and Nama representatives against the German government and Deutsche Bank that pricked German political consciences back in 2001 and paved the way for negotiations.
At issue on the German side is the fear of establishing a legal precedent that would open a can of worms on colonial-era genocides for other former colonial powers — “a conversation that the Global North doesn’t want to have”, says Casper W Erichsen, Danish co-author of The Kaiser’s Holocaust.
Genocide was only codified in international law in 1948, Erichsen argues, because the Allied powers were horrified that the mass human rights violations they had routinely applied in their colonies had been inflicted by the Nazis on Europeans.
In contrast, their own colonial violence was “the Heart of Darkness stuff that happens far away on the ‘dark continent’, where
… it’s [perceived as] part of the Northern ‘civilising mission’ and if there is collateral damage, so be it”.
That damage, he says, is hard to quantify, but it includes a long shadow of multigenerational poverty and the political marginalisation of three ethnic groups who lost up to 80% of their populations.
And yet it took postwar Germany 70 years to finally admit to that genocide. Still, Erichsen notes, Germany has gone further than other former colonial powers to try to make amends.
“Look at the Mau Mau situation in Kenya, which went on up until the 1960s, and the UK had to be dragged to court before it paid reparations,” he says, referencing the 2013 agreement by Britain to pay €17m to more than 5,000 victims of colonial-era human rights violations.
Kandetu says the aid agreement, calculated as pretty much what Germany has already invested in Namibia over the past 30 years, amounts to “pennies” and flies in the face of a 2006 Namibian parliamentary motion, passed unanimously, that Germany should pay reparations.
He calls on Germany to refer to this motion, swallow its pride and open negotiations with the victims’ descendants.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Howard W French, writing in World Politics Review: “Resolving its terrible history in Namibia will require more of Germany, meaning dealing directly with the … people and compensating them for their loss of lives and land.”