Surviving genocide: A voice from colonial Namibia at the turn of the last century

The first genocide of the 20th century took place in 1904-08 in Namibia under German colonial rule. The two articles below examine different aspects surrounding this terrible event: the first, written in 2020, looks at a book released then that recounts the traumatic yet insightful experience of one genocide survivor, while the authors of the second article contend that Germany’s recent official apology to Namibia for the genocide falls short of achieving genuine reconciliation between the two nations.

Heike Becker

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GERMANY committed genocide in Africa 40 years before the Holocaust of the European Jews. In 1904 and 1905 the Ovaherero and Nama people of central and southern Namibia rose up against colonial rule and dispossession in what was then called German South West Africa. The revolt was brutally crushed. By 1908, 80% of the Ovaherero and 50% of the Nama had died of starvation and thirst, overwork and exposure to harsh climates.

The army drove survivors into the waterless Omaheke desert. Thousands more died in concentration camps.

For many historians this first genocide committed by Germany provided the template for the horrors that were to come 40 years later during the Holocaust of the European Jews. The philosopher Hannah Arendt, herself a Holocaust refugee from Germany, explained in 1951 that European imperialism played a crucial role in the development of Nazi totalitarianism and associated genocides.

We know very little about the experience of those who lived through this first systematic mass extinction of the 20th century. Forty-seven testimonies were recorded and published in 1918 in a scathing official British report about German colonial rule in Namibia, known as the Blue Book. One eyewitness remarked: ‘Words cannot be found to relate what happened; it was too terrible.’

Following on an earlier Norwegian edition, a new book, Mama Penee: Transcending the Genocide, by Uazuvara Ewald Kapombo Katjivena, published by UNAM Press in Windhoek in February 2020, makes an extraordinary attempt to present the lived experience of the genocide.

Surviving a genocide

Katjivena, a former exiled Namibian liberation fighter until the country’s independence from South Africa in 1990, tells his grandmother’s story in a biography deeply infused with family and oral history. His grandmother, Jahohora, survived the genocide as an 11-year-old girl.

In the book’s opening scene, young Jahohora witnesses her parents’ murder at the hands of German colonial troops in 1904. Following this traumatic experience, she wanders into the veld. The young girl survives on her own, using skills that her mother had imparted to her, to scavenge from the environment. She traps rabbits and birds, eats berries and wild honey, and occasionally feasts on an ostrich egg.

The remaining connection with her parents is cruelly cut after she is caught and forced to work for a German farmer. During the ‘civilising’ washing and changing of her attire, her ceremonial Ovaherero headgear is cut into pieces and burnt by the farmer’s wife.

The headgear was her mother’s significant gift for the growing daughter just before the start of the hostilities in early 1904. Jahohora suffers deeply humiliating experiences.

Katjivena’s grandmother was a remarkable woman of deep thought, insight and immense resolve. Her parents and grandparents belonged to a section of the Ovaherero called the Ovatjurure. They played a significant role in their communities by helping to maintain peace among families in the nearby homesteads and in the neighbouring villages.

Their daughter passed on this remarkable tradition to the children and grandchildren she brought up during Namibia’s colonial era under Germany and South Africa.

Regaining agency

Katjivena intersperses Jahohora’s personal perspective with historical facts. We read a detailed, chilling account of General Lothar von Trotha’s extermination order of 2 October 1904. The oral history telling, however, also indicates instances of humanity during an entirely inhumane era.

Who were these white people, the survivor wondered. Why had some German soldiers saved her from certain death and given her a chance of life while their fellows had mercilessly killed her parents? As Jahohora meets other survivors and hears their stories, she begins to understand the genocide and especially the role of Von Trotha, who is locally known as omuzepe (the killer).

Katjivena’s story looks simple, yet it exudes deep meaning. It turns the gaze onto the oppressors. The resisting gaze of the colonised, the cultural theorist Elizabeth Baer writes, is an act of self-creation. It ‘begins to recognize and restore agency to the victims of imperialism’.

Transcending the genocide

The subtitle of Katjivena’s book is ‘Transcending the Genocide’. It adds a tremendous living voice to the symbolic commemorations of Germany’s African genocide that have taken place over the past few years.

Importantly, human remains of genocide victims were repatriated from Germany to Namibia in 2011, 2014 and 2018. These had been shipped to academic and medical institutions in Germany, and had remained there until recently.

In 2019 some significant items of cultural memory, which had been stolen during colonial conquest, were returned to Namibia from the Linden Museum in Stuttgart. These included the slain Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi’s Bible and his riding whip.

In Windhoek a Genocide Memorial, built in 2014, signifies a noteworthy shift in post-colonial Namibian memory politics. The statue’s North Korean aesthetics and symbolism remain controversial. That aside, the new monument shows that the genocide of the Ovaherero and Nama has belatedly entered the public history narrative of Namibian nationhood. This would have been impossible a few years earlier.

Reconciliation and reparations

On the political level, the German government finally acknowledged the colonial genocide in 2015. Ever since, Namibian and German envoys have been talking about an official apology by Germany.

Most controversial have been negotiations about reparations. Also controversial has been the role of the Ovaherero and Nama communities that were directly affected by the genocide. But in January 2020 Germany’s new ambassador to Namibia, Herbert Beck, hinted that important political developments might be about to happen.

It is not clear yet where the complicated process of post-colonial reconciliation is going. Yet, with stories such as Katjivena’s remarkable biography of his grandmother, the dead and the survivors of the colonial genocide are finally given a face. 

Heike Becker is Professor of Anthropology at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. This article was originally published on The Conversation (theconversation.com).

Sub-Article

Namibian genocide: Why Germany’s bid to make amends isn’t enough

Reinhart Kössler and Henning Melber

THE May 2021 ‘joint declaration’ of the Namibian and German governments on dealing with the 1904-08 genocide marks the first time a former colonial power has officially offered an apology to another country for state-sponsored mass crimes.

The agreement stipulates that Germany will pay €1.1 billion for development projects in Namibia over the next 30 years.

Some pundits consider the accord a potential template for efforts towards post-colonial reconciliation for other former colonies and colonial powers.

We recognise that this is the first time that a former colonial power has admitted an historical injustice on a state-to-state level. But the negotiated compromise displays glaring shortcomings in being overly cautious to avoid any legal implications for Germany that may create a precedent. It also shows that the limited participation of representatives from the Namibian communities most affected by the genocide is hampering true reconciliation.

In our view bilateral agreements between governments – like this one – fall short of a true decolonisation of relations between people.

The history

The agreement is the result of protracted negotiations between Germany and Namibia. It builds on former pronouncements, such as the 2004 speech by the German Minister for Economic Cooperation, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, at the centennial of the battle at the Waterberg, which marked the beginning of the genocide. She acknowledged that what had happened was ‘a war of extermination … today called genocide’ before asking: ‘forgive our trespasses and our guilt’.

More than a decade later, in mid-2015, the German Foreign Ministry conceded that the warfare in 1904-08 was tantamount to genocide. At the end of that year, bilateral negotiations between the two governments were initiated. But these kept on hitting stumbling blocks.

Wary of possible far-reaching legal obligations, Germany wanted to negotiate the format of its apology to Namibia. It was also reluctant to use the term ‘genocide’. It has always refused to accept the term ‘reparations’.

A few years earlier, in 2011, some initial progress had been made in addressing the colonial atrocities with the first return of human remains from Berlin to Namibia of the victims of the genocide. The skulls and other human body parts had been taken to colonial Germany for anthropological anatomical studies that later contributed towards Nazi ‘race science’.

Subsequently, many more opportunities for meaningful reconciliation were missed.

The fear of potential legal implications of any agreement, and the precedent that might create for Germany and other former colonial powers, looms large. They fear opening the door for reparations.

From a German perspective, this also includes pending claims by Greece, Italy and Poland for compensation for mass atrocities committed by German soldiers from World War II.

The recent compromise negotiated by Germany and Namibia avoids such a ‘trap’ for Germany and other former colonial powers.

Too little, too late

Germany’s commitment of €1.1 billion for development projects in Namibia is too cheap a price to pay for remorse. Compared with the lasting human costs and material damage created in Namibia, this amounts to tokenism. As Ovaherero paramount chief Vekuii Rukoro has said, it adds insult to injury.

The annual payment over the next 30 years amounts to about €37 million, just about N$618 million at current exchange rates. Namibia’s national budget for 2021/22 is N$67.9 billion.

For the Namibian government, such money is a tempting carrot. After all, the country’s economy is in a deep recession. COVID-19 has added to the fiscal crisis. Thus, such a financial injection would come in handy, especially at a time of eroding trust in government. The money is earmarked for land reform and development, rural infrastructure, energy and water supply as well as education.

Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is expected to visit Namibia to offer an apology in the National Assembly. But such an official policy-level engagement cannot replace a direct exchange with the descendants of the most affected communities, who have threatened to welcome the German president with a protest.

Recognition without compensation

After the negotiations were concluded, the German Foreign Ministry issued an official statement. It stressed that the recognition of genocide did not imply any ‘legal claims for compensation’. Instead, the ‘substantial programme … for reconstruction and development’ was declared as a ‘gesture of recognition’ for the wrongdoings by Germany.

One wonders if ‘gestures’ are indeed an adequate form of recognition. Given the dimensions of the crimes committed then, more empathy would be an important signal. Such formal language can be very humiliating and hurtful.

Reconciliation needs more than material compensation. The devastating demographic and socioeconomic consequences of genocide can never be compensated. Significantly improving the well-being of the descendants of the victims would be an important material aspect. This requires more than the payments offered.

Also crucial is an adequate expression of remorse in recognition of the historical injustice. The ‘joint declaration’ states that ‘The Namibian Government and people accept Germany’s apology and believe that it paves the way to a lasting mutual understanding and the consolidation of a special relationship between the two nations.’

Without consultation and legitimacy, the two governments here declare what the Namibian people are supposed to accept.

Notably, even the representatives of three Ovaherero Royal Houses participating in the final round of negotiations indicated on their return home that they would not endorse the suggested agreement.

What true reconciliation requires

Through a long and halting process, Germany has ultimately made significant progress in facing up to the atrocities of the Holocaust of European Jews during World War II. Its remembrance is now claimed as part of Germany’s DNA. The Holocaust memorial in central Berlin does that for Jewish victims.

And Germany has reached a measure of reconciliation with neighbouring France, and to a lesser extent with Poland for its crimes during the war.

Germany’s colonial atrocities should also enter public memory. Public commemoration of the victims of numerous crimes committed under German colonialism, such as those in Namibia, is long overdue.

If there is a lesson to be learnt from these actions, it is that bilateral agreements between governments cannot replace reconciliation between the people of the two countries concerned. The descendants of the victims of the Namibian genocide are traceable, but what about the perpetrators? As the Namibian activist and author Jephta U Nguherimo has stated, ‘President Steinmeier should deliver his apology to the Bundestag [German parliament] for the German people to understand and learn about their untold genocide.’

So far, this vital perspective is totally missing.

A compromise, but not yet a solution

The German-Namibian agreement is the limited result of a compromise reached through flawed government negotiations. Still, this is a widely acknowledged pioneering step.

From a German perspective, the admission of guilt with the consequences attached is one step towards breaking continued colonial amnesia. This could ultimately foster long-overdue awareness of Germany’s colonial past. It can promote unreserved recognition that Germans occupied foreign territories and subjugated people, creating lasting damage. But even this would contribute little towards healing festering wounds in Namibia.

Decolonisation and reconciliation must become a shared process between people. Governments can help to facilitate such a process. They can never supplant it.                         

Reinhart Kössler is Professor in Political Science at the University of Freiburg in Germany. Henning Melber is Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, South Africa. This article was originally published on The Conversation (theconversation.com).

*Third World Resurgence No. 348, 2021, pp 49-52