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Of Colonial Reparations and Germany

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By Eunice Masunungure

THE German offer of  US11,7 million as reparations for the genocide perpetrated by its settlers in Namibia between 1904 and 1908 goes to show the value our erstwhile imperialists place on African lives.

No figure is adequate to compensate for the loss of life, but what the Germans have offered can best be described as an insult.

The move by the European country emphasises the  importance of criminalisation of colonisation.

It shows the unpreparedness of the colonial powers to compensate for the suffering endured during their reign and beyond.

In his state of the nation address in June 2020, Namibian President Hage Geingob said that Namibia rejected US11,7 million offer by German as reparations for the genocide perpetrated by German settlers.

First they offered €10 million…honestly it is an insult. We said that’s an insult,” the Namibian President was quoted as saying in media reports:

“The current offer for reparations made by the German government remains an outstanding issue and is not acceptable to the Namibian government,” said  President Geingob in a statement.

Whether the Government of Namibia will negotiate for a revised offer or not, it is the shameless German offer that grates the spirit of every self-respecting African.

Reparations involve financial compensation in a bid to make whole the relations between two groups, one of whom has been victimised.

The colonisers not only dominated the indigenes, but also exploited minerals and other natural resources killing and maiming innocent civilians in the process.

Africa has not been compensated for loses both material and human incurred during colonialism. 

Instead, they are the ones asked to pay for demanding back their resources such as land. 

For instance, the British gave Kenyan land to third parties and it is now owned by multinational tea companies.

Addressing colonial crimes through reparations is critical. 

It is time that Africa speak with one voice on the issue of reparations.

We must build on the the first pan-African conference on reparations for the enslavement, the colonisation and the African neo-colonisation held in Abuja (Nigeria) in 1993.

It was sponsored by the Committee of Eminent personalities and by the Reparations Commission of the then Organisation of African Unity now African Union. 

This “Abuja Proclamation (called) upon the international community to recognise that there is a unique and unprecedented moral debt owed to the African peoples which has yet to be paid- the debt of compensation to the Africans as the most humiliated, exploited people of the last four centuries of modern history (It argued for) the Organisation of African Unity to call for full monetary payment of repayments through capital transfer and debt cancellation. (It also) 

convinced that the claim for reparations is well grounded in International Law, (urged) on the organisation of African Unity to establish a legal Committee on the issue of Reparations. (It served) notice on all states in Europe and the Americas which had participated in the enslavement and colonisation of African peoples, and which may still be engaged in racism and neo-colonialism, to desist from any further damage and start building bridges of conciliation, co-operation, and through reparation…”

The facts highlighted in this document would have taken African nations far had the contents been recognised by the concerned parties.

However, the coloniser still wants to dictate to its victims.

According to former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, at the 64th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Africa deserves reparations, which amounts to US77,7 trillion for the resources and wealth stolen in the past.  

What makes the issue of German reparations to Namibia a cause for concern is that it is a clear attempt by a perpetrator  to shirk responsibility for the crimes and wrongs it committed.

Records reveal that the 2004 apology of the Germans to Namibia recognised only moral wrongs, not legal obligations.

The two countries began negotiating an agreement in 2015 that would see Germany give an official apology and development aid as compensation for the killing of tens of thousands of indigenous Herero and Nama people by German occupiers in 1904-1908.

The Germans killed more than 65 000 of the 80 000 Hereros and at least 10 000 of the 20 000 Nama nearly wiping out whole communities.

Namibia, which gained independence in 1990 from a 75-year rule of Boers, was previously a Germany colony from 1884 to 1915.

According to Rachel Anderson,  in Redressing Colonial Genocide: The Hereros’ Cause of Action Against Germany:

German colonial administration’s war of annihilation against the Hereros violated customary international law. 

Poisoning wells, killing women and children and killing and wounding prisoners of war were illegal under the laws of war. 

The war also violated applicable treaty prohibiting the annihilation of African peoples, including clauses in the Berlin West African Convention and the 1890 Antislavery Convention that obligated colonial powers to protect indigenous Africans.”

The German merchant Adolf Lideritz purchased the harbor of Angra Pequena and its surrounding lands, located on the southern Coast of present-day Namibia, in 1883 and began calling for German protection.

The following year, Germany declared Lideritz’s land a protectorate. 

The Herero nation, seeking military support in conflicts with the Nama, another indigenous nation in the region, entered into a treaty of friendship and protection  with the German government in 1885.

In 1904 Germany began a war of annihilation against the Hereros in retaliation for the Hereros’ resistance against the German colonial administration’s oppressive treatment.

From the beginning of the war, German supported the total annihilation of the Hereros. 

They slaughtered, tortured to death, trapped and burned them.

Some were driven into Kalahari Desert and died of hunger and thirst.

Instigation of genocide is found in Extermination Order of Von Trotha, which was proposed and passed.

On October 2, 1904, von Trotha issued an annihilation order stipulating: The Herero people will have to leave the country. Otherwise, I shall force them to do so by means of guns …. (E)very Herero, whether found armed or unarmed.. . will be shot. I shall not accept any more women and children. 

I shall drive them back to their people-otherwise I shall order shots to be fired at them.

These are my words to the Herero people.”  

Even after the Emperor rescinded the Extermination Order (December 8 1904), the German colonial administration continued to decimate the Hereros by forcing Herero prisoners of war into slave-labour and concentration camps. 

The Germans killed all Hereros who tried to escape the inhuman conditions in the camps.

According to Michael Hanchard’s Herero and Nama Rebellions 1904-1907: A Prelude to the Modern Holocaust, “Herero prisoners of war were the subjects of experiments.” 

In Windhoek, the capital of the territory, a separate camp was created in which Herero women were kept specifically for the sexual gratification of German troops. 

It is such cruelty that demands reparation through proper apology and atonement.

Rachel Anderson (2005) in  Redressing Colonial Genocide: The Hereros’ Cause of Action Against Germany argues that “For several years, the Hereros attempted to extract an apology from the federal republic of Germany. 

Some of the reasons given by the German Government for their resistance to a formal apology included 1). too much time has passed, 2). international law did not protect civilian populations at the time of war, and 3). German foreign aid to  Namibia obviates the need for other forms of compensation.

However, in 2004, the Hereros finally received a formal apology for the mass killings perpetrated by the German colonial administration. 

In most cases, including that of the Hereros, apologies and development aid cannot fully compensate wrongs committed by colonial powers against indigenous peoples. 

As of early 2005, the  Hereros had not received financial reparations for the 1904-1907 genocide.”

This dark episode cannot be buried and forgotten.

Documents from the 1884 Berlin Conference, the 1890 Anti-Slavery Conference in Brussels, and the 1899 Hague Conference on the Laws of War support the Hereros’ claim for reparations against the German government and associated German enterprises. 

To live up to ‘historical responsibility’, the German government ought to notify their Namibian counterparts of their readiness to enter into ‘open dialogue … involving the concerned ethnic groups’, and to enlist German companies who profited from forced labour and expropriations in Namibia to contribute towards indemnification, argues Anderson.

With Africans owed  trillions of US dollars  in compensation the continent does not owe outsiders anything.

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