Germany admits to genocide in Namibia. Should reparations follow?

Growing up in Namibia, Paul Thomas knew that something terrible had happened to his family, though the exact details were fuzzy.

His parents mentioned in passing that their grandparents had once been forced to flee from their land. Older people in his community spoke of those who had died fighting German soldiers.

But it wasn’t until Mr. Thomas was a university student in Namibia, a former German colony, that he learned there was a specific term that historians and activists used for what had happened to his community. A genocide.

Earlier this year, Germany’s government offered an apology for the massacres its colonial forces carried out against Herero and Nama people – including Mr. Thomas’ ancestors – in what is now Namibia between 1904 and 1908. For the past three weeks, Namibia’s parliament has been debating whether or not to accept the offer, which came with more than $1.2 billion in aid money to be distributed across eight affected regions of the country over the next three decades. And Germany formally acknowledged that what had happened in Namibia was a genocide.

But in Namibia, many felt the offer was hollow. And what Namibia and Germany do in these negotiations is being watched globally by many former colonized countries and their colonial powers looking for a roadmap to come to terms with their own brutal histories of violence and repression. Namibia’s experience suggests there will be no easy answers. For many there, for instance, the current offer from Germany lets the country off the hook too easily, and doesn’t give descendants of those killed a proper opportunity to make their own needs heard.

For more than two months, from the end of September to early December, the country’s Parliament fiercely debated whether to accept the offer. Because it was supported by the ruling South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), many expected the motion to pass despite the heavy opposition.

But on Wednesday, the country’s minister of home affairs made a surprise announcement.

“The government is going to further engage Germany,” explained Frans Kapofi, who is also a SWAP member of Parliament. There would be no vote.

Although Mr. Kapofi cautioned that negotiation would always be a “give and take,” many saw this return to the negotiating table as a victory for those calling for more punitive measures against Germany.

“We are not hearing the word we want – a real apology would include the word reparation,” says Henny Hendly Seibeb, a member of Parliament for the Landless People’s Movement, a party that opposed the German offer. “They must be clear and direct, and say that what they are offering are reparations for a genocide committed.”

Negotiations between Germany and Namibia have been closely watched as a possible model for how former European colonial powers could atone for past atrocities. Although victims from other African countries, including Mau Mau fighters in Kenya tortured by the British in the 1950s, have successfully petitioned for compensation, no case has been as far reaching in its scope as that of Namibia.

Germany and Namibia have been debating this apology – what to call the killings, how to compensate affected communities, and what responsibility Germany holds – in some form since 1990, when Namibia won its independence from South Africa.

A colonial massacre

What has never been in doubt are the basic historical facts. In 1904, German commander Lothar von Trotha arrived in what was then German South West Africa with a mandate from Berlin: Crush the rebellions of local people and consolidate German rule. “Every Herero, with or without rifles, with or without cattle, will be shot,” he wrote in an order.

Historians believe that over the next four years, Germans massacred around 100,000 ethnic Herero, or 80% of their population. They also killed 10,000 Nama, half that group’s population. Those who weren’t murdered were sent to concentration camps; many were sterilized, subjected to medical experiments, and deliberately infected with diseases like tuberculosis and smallpox.

Today, the killings are widely considered the first genocide of the 20th century, and a precursor to Nazi Germany’s extermination of Europe’s Jews. To this day, German museums still hold hundreds of skulls of murder victims from the killing fields of southwest Africa. 

Tobias Schwarz/Reuters/File

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas speaks at a news conference in Berlin on May 28, 2021 after Germany recognized for the first time that it had committed genocide in Namibia during its colonial occupation and agreed to provide over €1 billion in development aid.

But despite the clarity of the historical record, the push to recognize the German mass murders as genocide remained a marginal cause for many years. After gaining its independence, Namibia was cash-strapped and reliant on foreign aid – of which Germany was a major source. And there were few Herero and Nama leaders in the ruling party, SWAPO, to push their agenda.

In recent years, however, Germans have begun advocating for their government to take responsibility for its colonial atrocities, including the Namibian genocide.  

After six years of back and forth, Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas announced in May that Germany admitted the killings amounted to a genocide and made the offer of €1.1 billion in aid and development.

“In light of Germany’s historical and moral responsibility we will ask Namibia and the descendants of the victims for forgiveness,” he said.

“This was seen as a very symbolic step in the right direction, especially outside of Germany,” says Henning Melber, a German Namibian political scientist who has written extensively about the genocide negotiations. Around Europe and North America, he says, the apology gave momentum to other campaigners seeking to hold colonial powers to account for acts of brutality.

Avoiding legal responsibility

But critics in Germany and Namibia described the apology as inadequate. By saying Germany’s responsibility was “historical and moral,” Mr. Melber says, Berlin sidestepped any question of legal responsibility. In his statement, Mr. Maas avoided any mention of reparations, which the German government fears could potentially open it up to legal action by the descendants of other victims of German violence, particularly during World War II.

Many in Namibia see that refusal of legal responsibility as racist.

“Look how they’ve dealt with the Jewish Holocaust versus what’s happened here,” says Mr. Thomas, who is secretary of an advocacy group called the Nama Genocide Technical Committee. “It tells you that some lives are more important than others.”

Many in both Namibia and Germany have also pointed out that the financial compensation offer is paltry. The sum is comparable to the aid money Germany has given to Namibia in the past 30 years, and amounts to about 7% of what Germany has spent on pandemic relief to small businesses.  

After Namibia’s negotiators agreed to the deal, it went to the country’s Parliament for approval in September. Because the ruling party holds a majority, the vote was widely seen as a rubber stamp for the government. But the ferocity of the opposition to the deal – both within and outside Parliament – appeared to rattle the SWAPO majority.

Mr. Kapofi, the home affairs minister, announced just before Parliament closed for the year on Dec. 2 that there would be no vote. Instead, government would return to negotiations with Germany.

“They saw that overwhelmingly the people have rejected” this offer, Mr. Seibeb says. “It was not enough.”