Namibia honoured the victims of mass killings during German colonial rule with an inaugural memorial day on Wednesday, as politicians and affected communities voiced fresh calls for reparations from Berlin.
German soldiers killed some 65,000 OvaHerero and 10,000 Nama people in 1904-1908 in what historians and the United Nations have long called the first genocide of the 20th century.
In 2021 Germany officially described the massacre as a genocide for the first time, agreeing to fund development projects worth 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in the Southern African country, but stopping short of paying reparations.
Namibian officials and representatives of the OvaHerero and Nama people say that is not enough.
“We should find a degree of comfort in the fact that the German government has agreed that German troops committed a genocide,” Namibian President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah told a solemn memorial event in the parliament gardens.
“We may not agree on the final quantum, but that is part of the complex negotiations we have been engaged in with the German government since 2013,” she said.
A spokesperson for the German embassy in Windhoek in response to an email request for comment referred Reuters to a statement the German government published on the memorial day.
“The federal government acknowledges Germany’s moral and political responsibility (for the killings) and emphasises the importance of reconciliation,” the statement said.
Namibia’s government chose to mark Genocide Remembrance Day on May 28 because it was on that date that German colonial authorities ordered the closure of concentration camps.
Charles Kakomee Tjela, a descendant of genocide victims who attended the event in the parliament gardens, told Reuters the genocide should feature more prominently in school curricula.
Hoze Riruako, an OvaHerero chief, said the colonial-era atrocities were a prelude to the Holocaust but “people are not aware of what has happened here to the same level”.
Some representatives of the OvaHerero community boycotted memorial proceedings because they think the agreement for Germany to fund development projects over 30 years does not address their grievances.
Nandi-Ndaitwah said on Wednesday negotiations with Germany would continue and that any final agreement should be “satisfactory, particularly for the directly affected communities”.
McHenry Venaani, an opposition leader, agreed Germany’s initial offer was insufficient.
“We are demanding a fair deal,” Venaani said.
