Germany Recognizes Colonial Genocide in Namibia, to Pay $1.3 Billion

The sum, which, according to a spokesman for Namibia’s president, could be paid out over 30 years, far exceeds compensations paid by other countries for colonial atrocities, although Germany says that the payments don’t constitute reparations.

“Our aim was and is to find a common path toward true reconciliation in memory of the victims,” Mr. Maas said. “One part of that is that we name what happened during the German colonization of what today is Namibia, and especially the atrocities in the period between 1904 and 1908, unsparingly and without extenuation. We will now officially call these events what they are from today’s perspective: genocide.”

That recognition and the connected financial offer follow more than five years of at times contentious negotiations between the Namibian and German governments over how to reckon with the deaths of at least 60,000 Herero and Nama at the hands of German colonial troops more than a century ago. Some were shot by soldiers, others driven into the desert without water or food, while thousands perished in concentration camps, where inmates were starved, beaten and worked to death.

Alfredo Hengari, the spokesman for Namibian President Hage Geingob, said the two sides had reached an agreement in principle, which now needs to be presented to representatives of the Herero and Nama communities and debated in parliament. “It’s an important step in the right direction for a certain normalization in Namibian and German relations,” he said.

A previous offer from Germany was rejected a year ago, in part, Mr. Hengari said, because the financial offer tied to it was substantially lower than now.

Within the Herero and Nama communities, which hold little power in Namibian politics, the talks with Germany have been divisive. Prominent community members insist that they were left out of the negotiations and say they are doubtful that any of the money will actually benefit descendants of the genocide, many of whom continue to live in poverty and on the margins of Namibian society.

“They never sat down with us. We never had a chance to speak to the Germans,” said Tim Frederick, whose great-great-uncle, a legendary Nama fighter named Cornelius Fredericks, died in a concentration camp in the colonial port of Lüderitz in 1907. Cornelius Frederick’s head was sliced off and, along with hundreds of others, shipped to Germany for research meant to attest to white superiority.

Tim Frederick’s father in 2017 told The Wall Street Journal that German negotiators should visit his home in a small southern Namibian desert town so they could hear about the genocide from members of his family and the community. He died a year later, without ever getting the chance to receive the German negotiators or hearing an apology.

Mr. Frederick said his community doesn’t feel represented by Namibia’s government and worries that any funding from Germany will end up in northern Namibia, a region dominated by other communities.

Esther Muinjangue, a member of the Herero Genocide Foundation, said one problem of the agreement was that any development projects in Namibia won’t benefit Hereros and Namas whose ancestors fled the genocide to Botswana and South Africa. “The process was not genuine,” she said.

Ms. Muinjangue grew up with stories of how her paternal great-grandfather was the result of the rape of his mother by a German soldier. “One part of that family tree is missing,” she said.

German and Namibian negotiators have said that both Nama and Herero communities were included in the talks, but that such negotiations are by design led by governments. Mr. Hengari, the president’s spokesman, said the development projects would exclusively focus on regions where Herero and Nama are settled.

The aid projects tied to Germany’s recognition of the genocide will focus on land reform, agriculture, rural infrastructure and water supply and job formation, which are central issues for regions in which today’s Herero and Nama live, Germany’s foreign ministry said. It said the amount paid would be in addition to existing development aid to Namibia.

Many former colonial powers have been reluctant to formally apologize for atrocities committed under their rule, more often limiting themselves to expressions of regret. Compensation payments have been even rarer and usually involved much smaller amounts.

In 2013, the U.K. settled a lawsuit by survivors of its bloody suppression of the 1950s Mau Mau uprising that preceded Kenya’s independence from the British Empire by agreeing to pay 19.9 million pounds, equivalent to $28.2 million, in compensation to more than 5,000 survivors. Then-Foreign Secretary William Hague expressed regret for abuses by British soldiers, including torture, but said the government at the time wasn’t responsible for the actions of the colonial administration.

In the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests last year, Belgium’s king expressed regret for the millions of deaths and mutilations Congolese people suffered during his country’s colonial rule, but stopped short of a formal apology. In an open letter sent to the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo on the 60th anniversary of its independence, King Philippe of Belgium expressed regrets for the “acts of violence and cruelty” committed in the late 1880s, when the country was personally owned by his ancestor, King Leopold II. 

Write to Gabriele Steinhauser at [email protected]