Namibia has rejected the German offer of compensation for the mass murder of tens of thousands of indigenous Namibians more than a century ago. Namibian President Hage Geingob rejected Germany’s offer to compensate the southern African nation for its mass killings. Geingob said in a statement that Berlin’s offer of $11.7 million was “not acceptable.”
In the colonial era, between 1904 and 1908, the German Empire killed over 80,000 Herero and Nama people in response to their anti-colonial resistance, per the US Holocaust Museum. Namibians estimated that the number of people killed was over 100,000.
Namibia president Geingob said, “The current offer for reparations made by the German government remains an outstanding issue and is not acceptable to the Namibian government.” The Namibian government plans to negotiate a “revised offer.”
Geingob also took issue with Berlin’s use of the phrase “healing of wounds” in place of the term reparations.
Although Namibia and Germany have been negotiating the arrangement of an official apology and aid compensation from the European country since 2015, Germany refuses to pay reparations to Namibia directly. Germany said the money it had given to Namibia in development aid had replaced the need for official reparations. That is absolute nonsense since they still own many of the arable lands in Namibia taken from the natives, in my opinion. The two countries have engaged in eight rounds of negotiations since 2015.
The descendants of those that survived the genocide say they are entitled to receive at least $4 billion in compensation from Germany.
Germany ruled modern-day Namibia from 1884 to 1915. It was a German colony called German Southwest Africa at the time. German forces murdered at least 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama people following an anti-colonial uprising utilizing sexual violence, starvation, forced labour, malnutrition, and medical experiments.
The Germans carried out what’s been called the “first genocide of the 20th century” to access the natives’ land. Some 80 per cent of the Herero people and half of the Nama people were wiped out. Even to this day, much of the most valuable land in Namibia is owned by the descendants of German colonists.
