# Germany admits its role in the genocide in Namibia and paying the country back



## lavaflow99 (May 28, 2021)

The German government didn't want to do direct reparations to the descendants  but this is better than nothing I guess.

And hopefully more European/Asian countries will come clean too and put more money into the African countries they ravished.



			https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/28/germany-namibia-genocide/?wpmk=1&wpisrc=al_world__alert-world&utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert&pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJjb29raWVuYW1lIjoid3BfY3J0aWQiLCJpc3MiOiJDYXJ0YSIsImNvb2tpZXZhbHVlIjoiNTk3N2MwYjU5YmJjMGY2ODI2YzYyMzdjIiwidGFnIjoid3BfbmV3c19hbGVydF9yZXZlcmUiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy53YXNoaW5ndG9ucG9zdC5jb20vd29ybGQvMjAyMS8wNS8yOC9nZXJtYW55LW5hbWliaWEtZ2Vub2NpZGUvP3dwbWs9MSZ3cGlzcmM9YWxfd29ybGRfX2FsZXJ0LXdvcmxkJnV0bV9zb3VyY2U9YWxlcnQmdXRtX21lZGl1bT1lbWFpbCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249d3BfbmV3c19hbGVydF9yZXZlcmUmbG9jYXRpb249YWxlcnQifQ.DJvhG5BU2z8X2Zx3qF9gyYKm7BGI0E6P1Nvw9PGkbLc
		




Spoiler: Article



Germany acknowledges colonial genocide in Namibia and promises development projects​This undated photo taken during Germany's 1904-1908 suppression of the Herero and Nama tribes in what is now Namibia shows a soldier, right, supervising prisoners. (National Archives of Namibia/AFP/Getty Images)
By 
Luisa Beck
, 
Max Bearak
 and 
Shinovene Immanuel

May 28, 2021 at 5:47 a.m. EDT
BERLIN — Germany’s government acknowledged Friday that it committed genocide during its colonial occupation of what is now Namibia and promised more than $1 billion in development projects in communities descended from victims.

The announcement from Germany’s Foreign Ministry comes after more than five years of negotiations between Berlin and Windhoek, the Namibian capital, where the news was received cautiously as a “first step in the right direction,” according to the president’s spokesman. Germany refused direct reparations that victims’ descendants had lobbied for and said development projects would be carried out over the next 30 years.
The acknowledgment came more than 100 years after the genocide — a stark contrast with the public recognition and deeply imbued sense of national shame around the Holocaust that has become part of Germany’s modern identity.


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Between 1904 and 1908, German colonial forces in what was then known as South-West Africa brutally quashed a rebellion spearheaded by the Herero and Nama tribes against the seizing of land and livestock by colonists, killing at least 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama. Many were driven into the Kalahari Desert, where the colonial administration had built labor and concentration camps, and died there of starvation and exhaustion. Researchers estimate that as many as 80 percent of the Herero and half of the Nama people were killed.
“It was, and continues to be, our aim to find a common path towards real reconciliation in the memory of the victims,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement. “This requires us to be unreserved and unflinching in naming the events of the German colonial period in what is now Namibia, and especially the atrocities of the period 1904 to 1908. We will from now on officially call these events what they are from a contemporary perspective: a genocide.”
Germany, a model for coming to terms with its past, still struggles with its colonial period
Alfredo Hengari, spokesman for Namibian President Hage Geingob, said the announcement out of Berlin was the result of a ninth round of negotiations that began in 2015 over how Germany would move forward in making amends to victims’ descendants and repairing relations between the two countries. The process has drawn widespread criticism among victims’ descendants, who say they have been left out.



“President Geingob will convene in the coming weeks a stakeholder feedback session with affected communities” to figure out exactly how the agreement should be implemented, Hengari said.
As news of an agreement trickled out over the past two weeks, Herero and Nama leaders issued a joint statement rejecting the deal and condemning its lack of direct reparations.
“The so-called ‘compensation’ to finance ‘social projects’ is nothing but a coverup for continued German funding of Namibian Government projects,” said the statement from the Ovaherero Traditional Authority and the Nama Traditional Leaders Association. “Germany must pay reparations for the genocide.”

The German Foreign Ministry’s statement said the roughly $1.3 billion in development aid would serve as a “gesture of recognition for immeasurable suffering.”


Germany has repeatedly ruled out paying reparations for the colonial-era genocide in what is now Namibia. “We’re talking about an event that happened 100 years ago,” Ruprecht Polenz, the German special envoy for the genocide talks with the Namibian government, told the German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk in 2018. “And for this reason we can’t consider personal reparations and we see the question over which we’re negotiating as a political and moral, not a legal, one.”
Zed Ngavirue, who negotiated the agreement on behalf of Namibia, told a newspaper, the Namibian, this week that his government was “well aware of the fact that the German government would not be able to restore and restitute our losses.”

On Friday, a small number of protesters gathered in Windhoek alongside tribal leaders to reiterate their opposition to the agreement.


During its colonial period, Germany also occupied parts or the entirety of Tanzania, Cameroon and Togo, among others. In what is now Tanzania, German troops killed at least 100,000 in another quashing of a rebellion that took place during the same years as the Herero-Nama genocide. Known as the Maji Maji war, it was sparked by a German attempt to force the native population into plantation labor and is still remembered in part for the ruinous famine that swept the region in its aftermath.
Some human remains of Herero and Nama people were shipped to Germany as colonial-era researchers tried to create a pseudoscientific basis for racial hierarchies. Their findings were later used by the Nazis to justify mass murder during World War II.

Germany was stripped of its colonies by other European powers at the end of World War I.


Germany’s announcement comes one day after French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged his government’s shared responsibility in allowing a genocide in Rwanda to take place 1994. Analysts noted that both France and Germany have recently sought to expand their trade with African nations and that a push for reconciliation over past atrocities coincided with economic interests.
_Bearak reported from Nairobi. Immanuel reported from Windhoek._


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## Kanky (May 29, 2021)

Good! They should keep pushing for direct payments but I am happy to see that the Germans are making progress towards doing the right thing. Maybe these trash people in America can be inspired by this example of basic decency.


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## yamilee21 (May 30, 2021)

“Development projects” rarely seem to benefit the actual people they are supposedly meant for... funny how some people’s descendants are deemed worthy of reparations, while there are so many excuses to prevent others from receiving what they are rightfully owed. On the other hand, maybe this will spur the other colonizers to make some effort as well.


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## nysister (Jun 12, 2021)

I really hope that it can benefit descendants.

Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, Portugal, Spain, the UK, and Belgium. They ALL owe black people.


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## larry3344 (Jun 13, 2021)

Kanky said:


> Good! They should keep pushing for direct payments but I am happy to see that the Germans are making progress towards doing the right thing. Maybe these trash people in America can be inspired by this example of basic decency.


The Germans have a lot of stake in Namibia, quiet as it’s kept there are German families in Namibia that have lived well in Namibia and continue until today.
That being said, even if some may think it’s not enough, it’s more than any former euro colonizer  has done for any African country as far as I know.
It’s now up to the Namibian people to work for their own political and economic freedom for self-sufficiency. It’s obviously a strategic move of diplomacy on Germany’s part.
The timing of this announcement is certainly not coincidental!


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