Germany Must Reckon with its Past in Namibia

Between 1884 and 1917, Germany, which colonized Namibian territory, perpetrated an atrocity that would come to be known as the first genocide of the twentieth century. German General Lothar von Trotha ruthlessly exterminated the Herero and Nama tribes, who had rebelled against the inhumane practices of German rule. Between 1904 and 1908, nearly one hundred thousand indigenous people were slaughtered, regardless of gender, age, or innocence.

Parts of the Herero and Nama peoples were also subjected to unimaginable medical experiments in concentration camps. Prisoners were worked to death without rest in forced labor, systematically starved, and slowly killed. By the end of the massacre, 80% of the Herero people and 50% of the Nama tribe had been wiped out. This was, in the fullest sense of the word, a genocide.

They Were Reduced to Skulls

Even the bodies of the murdered innocent indigenous people were not left in peace. The skulls and bones of the corpses were collected and shipped to Germany via the port of Cape Town, South Africa, for the purpose of so-called "ethno-scientific studies." The grim task of cleaning and preparing these skulls, which were to be sold to scientists, museums, and universities, fell to Herero women, whom the German authorities treated as prostitutes. The surviving Namibian natives were forced to endure further agony by cleaning the skulls and bones of their own lost relatives.

Anatomist Eugen Fischer, who later worked for the Nazis, traveled to German South-West Africa in 1908 to conduct research. There, he collected more skulls and brought them back to Germany. His goal was to prove the racial superiority of Europeans over Africans. Eugen Fischer would later become the mentor of Josef Mengele, who conducted inhuman genetic experiments on children in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Germany Avoided Confronting the Genocide

Although the United Nations declared the events in Namibia a genocide in 1985, Germany, like other European colonial powers, refused to acknowledge this massacre for many years, barely even addressing it.

The traces of this brutality, which had been attempted to be erased, were uncovered in a 2008 documentary by German journalist Markus Frenzel, which sparked widespread public outcry in Germany. By 2010, efforts by the Namibian ambassador to contact the anthropology departments of German universities brought the issues of repatriating the skulls to Namibia and providing material and moral reparations for the genocide to the fore.

Namibia sent delegates to Germany for talks. Twenty skulls were handed over to the delegation, but the German administration not only failed to receive them with appropriate protocol, but articles were also published in the German press stating that Germany did not accept the events as genocide.

The German government long resisted recognizing the genocide it had perpetrated in Namibia and evaded paying its dues. Even when the German government began negotiations with Namibia for a potential apology in 2015, the talks were frequently stalled over disputes regarding reparations.

On May 28, 2021, after five years of negotiations, the German government officially announced that it recognized the atrocities in Namibia as a genocide.

The German administration agreed to provide €1.1 billion in aid to the affected communities as "a gesture of recognition of the immeasurable suffering." However, this was not termed "genocide reparations" but rather "development aid."

Consequently, this sum, which arrived after an exceedingly long time and was not even framed as reparations, was deemed insufficient by the Namibian people.

Laidlaw Peringanda, chairman of the Namibian Genocide Association, insisted that Germany must buy back land from the descendants of German settlers and return it to the Herero and Nama people. The negotiations were criticized because they were conducted solely between the German and Namibian governments, excluding representatives of the Herero and Nama peoples, and because they used terms like "reconciliation" and "reconstruction" instead of "genocide reparations."

It Wanted to Send its own Refugees to Africa

Far from paying reparations for its past in Africa, the German government is still preoccupied with using African countries for its own benefit. A clear example of this is its desire from last year to send migrants who had applied for asylum in Germany to Africa while their applications were being processed—a process that could take years.

Germany intended to negotiate with Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, Morocco, and other African countries, asking them to host these migrants throughout the lengthy legal procedures. However, the plan, which caused major controversy across the country, was not implemented.

Much like the UK's choice of Rwanda, another African nation, to handle its migrant issue, Germany's turn to African countries to offload refugees reveals the deeply distorted perspective European states still hold towards Africa.

Genocidal Germany Sides with Genocidal Israel

While the world witnesses one of the worst genocides in recent years, neither Muslim countries nor global powers have taken concrete steps regarding the genocide in Gaza. The most significant response to the genocide committed by Israel with American support came from the African continent, often disparaged by Western media with negative labels like "primitive," "backward," and "lawless." The Republic of South Africa brought Israel's genocide and war crimes before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Germany remained true to its genocidal past and, on January 12, announced it would intervene as a third party in the ICJ proceedings in support of Israel. The German government rejected South Africa's accusations against Israel "in determined and clear terms" and accused South Africa of "instrumentalizing the Genocide Convention in a manner that is procedurally unfounded and factually untenable."

The Namibian government, which declared its support for South Africa, reminded Germany of its own genocidal history and called on it to reconsider its decision to side with Israel in the Gaza genocide.

The positive progression of South Africa's genocide case against Israel in favor of the Palestinian people (although an immediate ceasefire has not been achieved and attacks continue, the Palestinian authority welcomed the initiation of the legal process) is actually instructive for Namibia as well. The outcome of this case will set a precedent for many countries across the African continent that have suffered genocide, notably Namibia, and will force colonial European states to legally confront the massacres they committed in the past.

Sources:
https://www.farsnews.ir/en/news/14020820000796/Repr-Germany-Wans-Send-Asylm-Seekers-Africa
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21h4xwg.14?seq=11

This article was originially published in Independent Türkçe, on February 1, 2024.