DUBBED “Germany’s forgotten genocide”, and described by historians as the first genocide of the 20th Century, the systematic murder of more than 70,000 Africans is being marked with a national day of remembrance for the first time in Namibia.
Almost 40 years before their use in the Holocaust, concentration camps and pseudoscientific experiments were used by German officials to torture and kill people in what was then called South West Africa.
The victims, primarily from the Ovaherero and Nama communities, were targeted because they refused to let the colonisers take their land and cattle.
Genocide Remembrance Day in Namibia on Wednesday follows years of pressure on Germany to pay reparations.
This new, national holiday is “a symbol of unity and reflection” but the country will never forget its “emotional, psychological, economical and cultural scars”, said Namibia’s President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, joining community leaders in a candle-lighting ceremony in memory of genocide victims.
Members of the Ovaherero and Nama communities also performed a war cry – a rite that was historically performed by men before battle while women urged them to fight bravely.
Stern words accompanied Wednesday’s symbolism, with President Nandi-Ndaitwah urging a swift end to ongoing negotiations with Germany over Namibia’s demand for reparations.
“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” she said.
Her government said it chose the date of 28 May, because it was on that day in 1907 that German officials announced the closure of the concentration camps following international criticism.
Control over South West Africa – along with what is now Cameroon, Togo and other colonial territories – was stripped from Germany by competing powers after World War One.
For many years Germany did not publicly acknowledge the mass slaughter that took place between 1904 and 1908.
But four years ago it formally recognised that German colonisers had committed the genocide, and offered €1.1bn (£940m; $1.34bn) in development aid to be paid out over 30 years – with no mention of “reparations” or “compensation” in the legal wording.
Namibia declined that offer, calling it “a first step in the right direction” that nonetheless had failed to include the formal apology and “reparations” it was seeking.
Many Namibians were not impressed by what they saw.
