The story of the Namibian genocide: Germany Re …

In a corner of the Atlantic coast in southern Africa, the cold waters touch the white sands and sharp rocks, and sometimes they stare and see a barely inhabitable desert. The place is cursed for the sailors, who for something call it the Skeleton Coast, because of so many shipwrecks that it still shows the coasts. It is also not easy for walkers, because over there on a hill you can see three wild places in different directions: the Kalahari Desert in the east, the Karoo in the south, and the Namib, to the north. The Europeans arrived late and badly at so much sand and hard thistle, as if driven more by anguish than by interest. The Portuguese, settled in the north of Angola, traded with the locals, nothing more. The Boers used the land for pilgrimage with their cattle, trading or fighting for the right of aguada. It was the Germans who ended up colonizing the place, naming it German South West Africa and committing the first genocide of the 20th century..

The heirs of this barbarism committed between 1904 and 1908, the Federal Republic and the Republic of Namibia have announced a settlement after more than a century. The Germans admit that it was not a colonial war but a genocide, and pay 1.1 billion euros to the descendants of their victims, the Herero and Nama ethnic groups, which the Namibian government has committed to investing in the development of the economy of these groups. But the payment is for thirty years and it is clear that no “legal claims for compensation” are allowed in the future. And the ethnic leaders are protesting against something very basic, which no one consulted or listened to during the negotiation.

Ethnic cleansing

The Germans arrived in Namibia in 1884 and found a legally “empty” territory with a minimal population. They took as their capital a Boer village, Windhoek (the “windy corner”) and began to see what they could benefit from. They found one of the well-kept secrets of late colonialism in Africa, that the colonies would give prestige and look good on the cards, but they were very rarely profitable. This part of the continent was particularly difficult, worse than Togo and Cameroon, and the opposite pole of Tanganyika much more vital, on the Indian friendly.

Bringing in settlers was difficult and the German population did not exceed a few thousand, with a high percentage of public and military employees, and farmers forced to change their whole mentality and technique, from the small green lots of Europe to the plains of Patagonia. The hunger for land was fierce, and the history of the colony keeps the settlers constant complaints about the forelock of the natives, who did not want to give up everything.

The situation exploded in 1904, when the Herero – pronounced “jerrero” – shot at a suspected settler. The Herero were another surprise to the Germans, natives who had admired the Boers, the people on horseback, and had turned into riders with aludo hats, riding boots and slung Mausers. The herders themselves have built ox carts and have become accustomed to the Afrikaner “trek”, accompanied by their wives dressed in calico. The paranoia that such a tribe aroused among the few Germans was remarkable.

The 1904 incident was the excuse for a “war” of extermination, a definitive solution to the indigenous problem which also annihilated the Nama, inhabitants of the interior to the east. There was fighting, in which 100 Europeans were killed, but the four years of war were essentially a series of atrocities, shootings, hunger marches and modern artillery trials against villages. . General Lothar von Trotha encountered a problem that his successors barely thirty years later would face in Poland and Russia: there were too many natives and bullets could not hit.

The Germans began to round up civilians in the driest, most barren places they could find. Those who survived the marches were kept until they died of thirst and hunger, or preferred a bullet. The most remarkable and perverse of these early death camps was on Shark Island, just across from the quaint town of Luderitz, south of the capital. The island is a huge expanse of sand connected to the coast by a low peninsula that disappears with the tide. The Germans drove thousands of old people, women and children to the island, mounted a machine gun on the peninsula and left them to die. There was no escape, because on the coast there were armed soldiers and in the sea a colony of fierce sharks.

No one kept very accurate accounts of the massacre, but at least 60,000 Herero were murdered and at least 10,000 Nama. The Herero made up 40% of the country’s population, today they scratch seven. General Von Trotha was decorated and congratulated by the governor of the colony, Heinrich Goering, a mustache man who was missing one of his son who was in the metropolis at the start of his military career. The boy was Hermann, who would be the head of the Luftwaffe and vice-führer of Adolf Hitler. Von Trotha’s repressive “technology” has made school.

Lüderitz is now a ghost town accessible by jeep for a day trip. The place is charming, with its wooden Victorian houses appearing and disappearing under a fanciful dune. By walking for a while you will reach Shark Island, where the skulls and bleached ribs of thousands of dead continue to appear. A large number of the skulls were taken away by a local doctor, Eugene Fischer, who was in the business of measuring bones to show the biological superiority of the white race.

Recognition

With this story in mind, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the least on Friday: “From today’s perspective, today we will qualify these events for what they are: genocide.” With the courtesy they have for Africa, Namibian government spokesman Alfredo Hengari hailed that “the acceptance by Germany that genocide has been committed is a first step in the right direction. This is the basis for the second step, which is to apologize and plan for redress. “

The government also announced a series of meetings with the leaders of the ethnic groups involved, who arrived late and poorly. Mukinde Kakiua, representative of the Herero, simply said that “we do not accept a closed agreement between these two governments”.

The Germans had a hard time getting there. Considered exemplary when it comes to taking charge of Nazi atrocities, the colonial past was until recently a closed book. For example, the Republic has refused to pay anything resembling compensation to Namibia, claiming that since gaining independence from South Africa in 1990, it has provided funds for its development. Another huge difference is the complete lack of details, because unlike the historical process in Europe, Germany in this case does not give a name or surname. In the negotiation, for example, neither von Trotha nor the first Goering is mentioned.