> NAMIBIA
>
> FORWARDED BY SISTER ZAWADI SAGNA
>
> EDITED AND POSTED BY RUNOKO RASHIDI
>
> BEFORE THE GENOCIDE
>
> Africa is almost certainly the birthplace of the human species. From it
> the
> earliest people ventured into Asia and then across the long-vanished land
> bridge to the Americas, or across the Pacific island chains to
> Australasia.
> They also spread to the lands north of the Mediterranean Sea. Many
> thousands
> of years later their European descendants gained glory and wealth by
> rediscovering the southern hemisphere, and plundering it. They - we - have
> often treated it, and its inhabitants, with brutality, indifference and
> contempt. White Europeans forced black Africans to become slaves. White
> Europeans deprived black people of their homes and communities and
> cultures.
> White Europeans sent their missionaries to change black people's religion
> to
> their own. And in the 19th century white Europeans began moving into
> Africa
> to occupy the land as well. The land was desirable for itself: it provided
> new territory, new possessions and new trade, both for individuals and
> their
> countries. The land had other values, too: it provided bases for further
> take-overs and further military threats; and, above all, it contained
> riches.
>
> Along the coastline of Namibia runs the Namib desert, a 1,200 mile long
> strip of unwelcoming sand dunes and barren rock. Behind it is the central
> mountain plateau, and east of that the Kalahari desert. Namibia's scarcest
> commodity is water: this is a country of little rainfall, and the rivers
> don't always run. But the very sand of the Skeleton Coast is the dust of
> gemstones; uranium, tin and tungsten can be mined in the central Namib,
> and
> copper in the north; and in the south there are diamonds. Namibia also has
> gold, silver, lithium, and natural gas. For most of the region's history,
> only metal was of interest to the native tribes. These tribes lived and
> traded together more or less peacefully, each with their own particular
> way
> of living, wherever the land was fertile enough. The San were nomads,
> hunters and gatherers. The Damara hunted and worked copper. The Ovambo
> grew
> crops in the north, where there was more rain, but also worked in metal.
> The
> Nama and the Herero were livestock farmers, and they were the two main
> tribes in the 1840s when the Germans (first missionaries, then settlers,
> then soldiers) began arriving in South West Africa.
>
> Before the Germans, only a few Europeans had visited it: explorers,
> traders
> and sailors. They opened up trade outlets for ivory and cattle; they also
> brought in firearms, with which they traded for Namib treasures. Later,
> big
> guns and European military systems were introduced. The tribes now settled
> their disputes with lethal violence: corruption of a peaceful culture was
> under way.
>
> In the 1880s Germany made South West Africa their own colony, and settlers
> moved in, followed by a military governor who knew little about running a
> colony and nothing at all about Africa. Major Theodor Leutwein began by
> playing off the Nama and Herero tribes against each other. More and more
> white settlers arrived, pushing tribesmen off their cattle-grazing lands
> with bribes and unreliable deals. The Namib's diamonds were discovered,
> attracting yet more incomers with a lust for wealth.
>
> Tribal cattle-farmers had other problems, too: a cattle-virus epidemic in
> the late 1890s killed much of their livestock. The colonists offered the
> Herero aid on credit. As a result the farmers amassed large debts, and
> when
> they couldn't pay them off the colonists simply seized what cattle were
> left. In January 1904, the Herero, desperate to regain their livelihoods,
> rebelled. Under their leader Samuel Maherero they began to attack the
> numerous German outposts. They killed German men, but spared women,
> children, missionaries, and the English or Boer farmers whose support they
> didn't want to lose.
>
> At the same time, the Nama chief, Hendrik Witbooi, wrote a letter to
> Theodor
> Leutwein, telling him what the native Africans thought of their invaders,
> who had taken their land, deprived them of their rights to pasture their
> animals on it, used up the scanty water supplies, and imposed alien laws
> and
> taxes. His hope was that Leutwein would recognise the injustice and do
> something about it.
>
> THE GENOCIDE
>
> The German Emperor replaced Major Leutwein with another commander, this
> time
> a man notorious for brutality who had already fiercely suppressed African
> resistance to German colonisation in East Africa. Lieutenant-General
> Lothar
> von Trotha said, 'I wipe out rebellious tribes with streams of blood and
> streams of money. Only following this cleansing can something new emerge'.
> Von Trotha brought with him to German South West Africa 10,000
> heavily-armed
> men and a plan for war.
>
> Under his command, the German troops slowly drove the Herero warriors to a
> position where they could be hemmed in by attack on three sides. The
> fourth
> side offered escape; but only into the killing wastes of the Kalahari
> desert. The German soldiers were paid well to pursue the Herero into this
> treacherous wilderness. They were also ordered to poison the few
> water-holes
> there. Others set up guard posts along a 150-mile border: any Herero
> trying
> to get back was killed.
>
> On October 2, 1904, von Trotha issued his order to exterminate the Herero
> from the region. 'All the Herero must leave the land. If they refuse, then
> I
> will force them to do it with the big guns. Any Herero found within German
> borders, with or without a gun, will be shot. No prisoners will be taken.
> This is my decision for the Herero people'.
>
> After the Herero uprising had been systematically put down, by shooting or
> enforced slow death in the desert from starvation, thirst and disease (the
> fate of many women and children), those who still lived were rounded up,
> banned from owning land or cattle, and sent into labour camps to be the
> slaves of German settlers. Many more Herero died in the camps, of
> overwork,
> starvation and disease.
>
> By 1907, in the face of criticism both at home and abroad, von Trotha's
> orders had been cancelled and he himself recalled, but it was too late for
> the crushed Herero. Before the uprising, the tribe numbered 80,000; after
> it, only 15,000 remained.
>
> During the period of colonisation and oppression, many women were used as
> sex slaves. (This had not been von Trotha's intention. 'To receive women
> and
> children, most of them ill, is a serious danger to the German troops. And
> to
> feed them is an impossibility. I find it appropriate that the nation
> perishes instead of infecting our soldiers.') In the Herero work camps
> there
> were numerous children born to these abused women, and a man called Eugen
> Fischer, who was interested in genetics, came to the camps to study them;
> he
> carried out medical experiments on them as well. He decided that each
> mixed-race child was physically and mentally inferior to its German father
> (a conclusion for which there was and is no respectable scientific
> foundation whatever) and wrote a book promoting his ideas: 'The Principles
> of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene'. Adolf Hitler read it while he was in
> prison in 1923, and cited it in his own infamous pursuit of 'racial
> purity'.
>
> The Nama suffered at the hands of the colonists too. After the defeat of
> the
> Herero the Nama also rebelled, but von Trotha and his troops quickly
> routed
> them. On April 22 1905 Lothar von Trotha sent his clear message to the
> Nama:
> they should surrender. 'The Nama who chooses not to surrender and lets
> himself be seen in the German area will be shot, until all are
> exterminated.
> Those who, at the start of the rebellion, committed murder against whites
> or
> have commanded that whites be murdered have, by law, forfeited their
> lives.
> As for the few not defeated, it will fare with them as it fared with the
> Herero, who in their blindness also believed that they could make
> successful
> war against the powerful German Emperor and the great German people. I ask
> you, where are the Herero today?' During the Nama uprising, half the tribe
> (over 10,000) were killed; the 9,000 or so left were confined in
> concentration camps.
>
> AFTER THE GENOCIDE
>
> After the First World War, South West Africa was placed under the
> administration of South Africa. South Africa imposed its own system of
> apartheid (now banned in Namibia by law). In the late 1940s a guerrilla
> movement called SWAPO (South West African People's Organisation) was
> founded
> to fight for independence. In 1968 the United Nations recognised the name
> Namibia, and the country's right to independence, but it was another 20
> years before South Africa agreed to withdraw and full independence was
> gained. By then the country was ravaged by war.
>
> Today most of Namibia's 1.7m people are poor, living in crowded tribal
> areas
> while powerful and wealthy ranchers still own millions of acres seized by
> their predecessors over 100 years ago.
>
> Some of the descendants of the surviving Herero live in neighbouring
> Botswana, but others remained in their homeland and now make up 8% of
> Namibia's population. Many of them are in the political opposition party.
> Most Herero men work as cattle-handlers on commercial farms. Although as
> opposition members they don't get government support, the Herero on their
> own initiative recently asked Germany to give them compensation for the
> atrocities the tribe suffered, which the president of Germany recently
> acknowledged were 'a burden on the conscience of every German'. In fact
> Namibia gets more aid from Germany than any other country; but most of the
> money goes to non-Herero majority interests: it's the governing Ovambo
> (not
> reached by early colonists, and modern Namibia's main tribe) who led the
> struggle for liberation and, in 1990, independence.
>
> The 25,000 or so present-day rich German settlers are among those who deny
> that there was a genocide, fearing that reparation might mean losing their
> valuable land.
>
> WITNESS
>
> from Nama chief Hendrik Witbooi's letter to Major Leutwein, describing the
> typical colonist:
>
> - 'He makes no requests according to truth and justice, and asks no
> permission of a chief. He introduces laws into the land, laws which are
> entirely impossible, untenable, unbelievable, unbearable, unmerciful and
> unfeeling. He punishes our people in Windhoek and has already beaten
> people
> to death for debt. It is not just and right to beat people to death for
> that. He stretches people on their backs and flogs them in a shameful and
> cruel manner, be they male or female. He thinks we are stupid and
> unintelligent people, but we have never yet punished people in the cruel
> and
> improper way that he does. No-one can survive such a punishment.'
>
> - 'Herero women adapted their high-waisted dresses, and hats that jut out
> like cattle-horns, from the wives of Victorian missionaries. On holidays
> they wear versions of the dress in red and black, the colours of Herero
> nationalism - and of the 19th-century German Empire. The men wear the
> German
> volunteers' uniform. German diplomats are always invited to Herero
> celebrations. "We're treated like VIPs and often asked to give the keynote
> speech," said one diplomat, who confessed that he is baffled by the
> practice. The peculiar attraction between the Herero and Germans here
> resembles the one in the Natal region of South Africa between the Zulus
> and
> British, two other peoples who fought a brutal colonial war. "It's the
> respect of a soldier for a soldier," explains Kuaima Riruako, paramount
> chief of the Herero. "We never gave up our army, even during the German
> period." But the links are much closer. Because many Herero women were
> forced into sexual slavery, many Herero today have German ancestors, and
> German is widely spoken here.'
>
> GENERAL VON TROTHA'S DECLARATION
>
> On 2 October 1904 the German commander, General von Trotha issued the
> following proclamation: "I, the great general of the German troops, send
> this letter to the Herero people... All Hereros must leave this land...
> Any
> Herero found within the German borders with or without a gun, with or
> without cattle, will be shot. I shall no longer receive any women or
> children; I will drive them back to their people. I will shoot them. This
> is
> my decision for the Herero people."
>
> The general was true to his word.
>
> The Herero were machine gunned and their wells were poisoned. Finally they
> were driven into the desert to die.
>
> This was how colonisation began in what is today Namibia.
>
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