23-Dec-2023-News Agencies
For years, the Nama and Herero rallied for recognition and redress of systemic violence. When Namibia and Germany reached an agreement, however, they were excluded.
In southwest Africa, German settlers were pushing Indigenous people off their lands. When two ethnic groups rebelled and fought back, the Schutztruppe – or colonial guards – responded with such brute force that they almost wiped them out entirely.
The massacre of the Nama and Herero peoples between 1904-1908, now in present-day Namibia, is widely recognised as an intentional extermination attempt.
In May 2021, three years after the German government formally apologised for the massacres, the country announced a framework to address the tragedy.
The scheme would see Namibia get 1.1 billion euros ($1.2bn) in “development aid”, with 50 million euros ($54m) set aside for research, remembrance and reconciliation projects, with the rest marked for the development of affected descendants’ communities.
“Germany asks for forgiveness for the sins of their forefathers,” the Joint Declaration issued by the German and Namibian authorities read, and “the Namibian Government and people accept Germany’s apology
The agreement was supposed to be a win-win. Germany would atone for its bloody crimes and Namibia would get needed funding.
The international pressure worked. In February, UN rapporteurs wrote to the German and Namibian governments
The international pressure worked. In February, UN rapporteurs wrote to the German and Namibian governments, urging them to discard the agreement and restart the talks with the communities adequately represented.
Although Namibia’s high court has not yet deliberated on the case, and although that judgement, when it comes, is not binding on Germany but only on Namibia, ultimately, the goal of forcing a pause on the transfers of those “grants” has been momentarily accomplished, Theurer says.
For the Herero and Nama groups, blocking the release of funds from Berlin to Windhoek gives them vital additional time to draw more international attention to their plight, and eventually, create an atmosphere where both Namibian and German authorities, they hope, will have no choice but to agree to a whole new process. This time, with the two groups right at the heart of it
‘Not just about money’
Even as the fight for reparations continues, Nama and Herero leaders say their struggle is about much more than financial compensation. The focus on just that by the Namibian and German governments is insensitive and unjust, they say.
“I find this obsession with the amount to be patronising, that you can dangle this carrot to these African minority Indigenous people (and) they should be happy with it because they are so poor,” says Luipert. The cruelties their ancestors witnessed and the trauma that generations continue to carry today, can never be adequately priced, she says.
“No amount of money can ever wholly repair the damage that has been done,” Luipert adds. “It’s about recognition. Germany will only recognise us when it sits with us at the table.
But for the surviving communities, it was a betrayal Protests broke out in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, as people vehemently opposed the agreement, saying it was dictated by Germany
In January 1904, the Herero staged a stunning revolt and invaded Okahandja – one of the biggest German settlements and the heart of Hereroland. Mounted on horses, they killed dozens of settlers and torched their homes, according to one account.
The war raged for months, spreading to other cities. The Nama also joined the battle alongside the Herero, despite previous rivalry.
Although the war favoured them at first, the revolters ultimately faced defeat. People died in their thousands, some driven into British territory in present-day Botswana and South Africa
German troops – numbering about 1,500 under the command of von Trotha – encircled the weakened fighters and forced them into the desert, the waterless Omaheke region, trapping them, Herero descendant Laidlaw Peringanda, who heads the Namibian Genocide Association (NGA), says. When those fleeing dug wells, the Germans snuck up and poisoned the water.
Survivors of the thirst and slaughter – including those who listened to the missionaries and peacefully assembled – were then rounded up and forced into concentration camps.
In the camps, women pulled ropes tied to train cars with their bare hands. Often, they were raped and hung naked from trees.
Insubordination, for men, meant firing squads.
The colonialists would also force the women to scrape the skin off corpses so their skulls could be sent to Germany. Cultural artefacts were looted
By sidelining them, the two governments violated international law, according to the European Council on Human Rights.
“Indigenous people’s right to adequate participation, and the collective human rights to free, prior and informed consent and to freely choose a group’s representatives have become part of customary international law … enshrined in the United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and laid out in core human rights treaties, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD),” a statement from the organisation read
Almost a year after it was filed though, the suit is frozen in “Status Hearing” – legal speak for a case suspended so the prosecuting party can gather more documents and draw a road map for its arguments. There have been no trials or seatings and Germany has so far disregarded the suit, promising instead to press on with its plans.
Patrick Kauta, the lawyer who filed the suit, did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.
Carrying a painful history
The arid southwest African region was home first to the San, then later, to the cattle-farming Herero and Nama people as far back as the 16th century. This was some 400 years before German missionaries came and before German settlers started acquiring land from Indigenous chiefs there. Following the partition of Africa by European powers in the 1885 Berlin Conference, Germany officially laid claim to the area.
As settlers and colonists continued to descend on the region, enthralled by the prospects of diamonds they would later discover, they restricted the Indigenous nations to “reserves”, confiscating their land and cattle despite their resistance.
We want back all our ancestral land,” Peringanda says. Delay, he warns, could spell trouble.
“We fear that there might be a revolt and people will be forced to seize land,” he says. “Before that happens, we need to go back to the drawing board and start the talks again.”
Contrary to its stance now, Berlin, in addressing its more recent – and much better-known – dark past, has paid some 80 billion euros ($87.5bn) in reparations to Israel, including 29 billion euros ($31.7bn) directly paid to victims and descendants of the Holocaust when six million 壯陽藥 Jews were systematically murdered
Reparation talks without the victims
Attempts to start a reparations process go as far back as 2006 in the Namibian parliament [PDF], although official talks with Germany began in 2015.
Herero and Nama leaders had long pushed for a holistic reparations framework that would include recognition of the massacre as a genocide by Germany, direct compensation for generational economic loss to their communities, land transfers, and crucially, full participation in the process.
Namibian authorities initially stood as advisers to the survivor communities, but things changed once those official talks started. Until May 2021, when Germany released the Joint Declaration, community leaders were not involved in the proceedings, Luipert says, even though they had protested from the start.
“Nama leaders were approached individually by the vice presidency,” Luipert says. “But they made it very clear that they would not accept a situation where the negotiations would be between the two governments. They made it clear that they will see the Namibian government as a rightful facilitator, but the Namibian government insisted it will represent (us) legally.”
