collection 2020
Guilt, Glory and Genocide
Why a Long-Awaited Apology is a Tell-Tale Sign of Dangerous Developments in Germany
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By Lisa Ossenbrink and Natalie Beck
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Hereros executed by Germans. Source: Union of South Africa Report
Another time, about 25 prisoners were confined in a small space, and the soldiers cut dry branches and piled dry logs all around them; men, women, children and little girls were there. Once enough had been thickly piled up all around them, the soldiers also threw branches on the top of them. The prisoners were all alive and unwounded, but half-starved. Lamp oil was sprinkled on the heap and it was set on fire. The prisoners were burnt to a cinder. One soldier said,
"We should burn all these dogs and baboons in this fashion."
It was wintertime and very cold. Two very old women had made a small fire and were warming themselves. They had dropped back from the main body of their group owing to exhaustion. One of the soldiers dismounted, walked up to the old women and shot them both as they lay there.
There was no more fighting. They were merely fugitives in the bush. All the water-holes on the desert border were poisoned before they returned. The result was that fugitives who came to drink the water either died of poisoning or, if they did not taste the water, they died of thirst.
On one occasion, a soldier found a little baby boy about nine months old lying in the bush. The child was crying. He brought it into the camp. The soldiers formed a ring and started throwing the child to one another and catching it as if it were a ball. The child was terrified and hurt and was crying very much. After a time they got tired of this and one of the soldiers fixed his bayonet on his rifle and said he would catch the baby. The child was tossed into the air towards him and as it fell he caught it and transfixed the body with the bayonet. The child died in a few minutes and the incident was greeted with roars of laughter by the soldiers, who seemed to think it was a great joke.
Guilt versus Glory
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“There is a strong denial especially from the German community here in Namibia when it comes to the genocide.” Laidlaw Peringanda, Chairman of the Namibian Genocide foundation in Swakopmund explains the repercussions of not having received an official recognition, “But we know that it is true. My great-grandmother was one of those who was in the Swakopmund concentration camp and they told us about what happened there.”
Peringanda represents the descendents of the genocide survivors. Yet, his organization is not granted a seat at the table in the reconciliation negotiations with Germany. The descendants' demands have morphed into a matter of government-level diplomacy, although it is the descendents of the victims that carry the burden.
“The aftermath of the genocide still affects the decendants in mental health. They have inherited the war trauma. It’s a permanent pain that was inflicted upon the Namas and Hereros”, Peringanda says.
Peringanda protesting against the Reiterdenkmal in Swakopmund.
Source: Private
This was the reality that nearly 65.000 of the 80.000 Herero and at least 10.000 of the 20.000 Nama faced in the years 1904 to 1908 after the German Reich sent 15.000 troops to defeat a rebellion in their colony Deutsch-Südwestafrika. German general Lothar von Trothar gave the order to exterminate their entire tribes after the uprising had been vanquished.
“Any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun or cattle, will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children. I shall give the order to drive them away and fire on them. Such are my words to the Herero people.”
This systematic eradication has been deemed “the first genocide of the 20th century”. And yet, Germany has not uttered an official apology until this day.
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Why is it so hard to say sorry?
Germany’s political reaction to the genocide has been surprisingly scant. In 2015, the German government commissioned a committee for the negotiations with the independent state of Namibia. This was the result out of heightened tension from both international community and civil society after parliament had passed a resolution on the Armenian genocide of 1915-1917, that called for Turkey’s acknowledgement of the crime as a prerequisite for an open and modern democracy. This sparked criticism of German hypocrisy.
In 2018, for the first time in history, the government mentioned the reappraisal of the country's colonial history in its coalition treaty.
Years have gone by, and, although there have been speculations about negotiations coming to an end no official apology has been heard.
"I think it's definitely about time and long overdue", the Namibia-born politician Ottmar von Holtz stresses. The member of the Green party has long been involved in the political debate in parliament.
Keeping the extreme brutality of the genocide of the Herero and Nama in mind, it is baffling why Germany continues to duck out of this responsibility. Jürgen Zimmerer, one of Germany’s leading experts on colonial matters assesses that the road to an apology has reached a “dead end”.
Why is it so hard for Germany to say sorry to the Herero and Nama?
The explanations commonly given for this crux are firstly that Germany has been leading negotiations with the Namibian government instead of the descendants of the Herero and Nama themselves.
Secondly, financial reparations are subject to discussion. The questions of how much should be paid to whom and the fears of setting a precedence have been complicating the matter.
Lastly, a lack of awareness and education on Germany’s colonial history is often cited as a reason for the reluctance to appoint sufficient attention and ambition to the matter.
What these explanations have so far neglected, are the domestic political implications an official apology by the German government could have. Just as in many other parts of Europe extreme right-wing populism has been on the rise in Germany. One thing the populists of Europe have in common, besides the racist politicisation of debates around immigration, is a rosy nostalgia for the past.
And Germany’s history of genocide with the prevalence of the Holocaust doesn’t make owning up to the crime of all crimes any easier, either. The AfD, a party that has referred to Hitler as no more than a “speck of bird feces” in German history to stir their nationalist rhetoric, should be expected to weaponize the question of colonial guilt for their political gains.
Does the new far-right make an apology to the Herero and Nama even more complicated?
The accounts are based on eye witness statements made under oath and recorded in the “Report on the Natives of South West Africa and their Treatment by Germany” published by the Union of South Africa in August 1918.
Tensions in his home country are high. He has received death threats for campaigning for the removal of colonial era statues still erect in public spaces in Namibia, such as the Reiterdenkmal in Windhoek, who’s inscription reads:
“Remembering and honouring the brave German warriors that died for emperor and empire to save and protect this land during the Herero and Hottentot uprisings between 1903 and 1907, and during the Kalahari Expedition in 1908.”
However, it is not only in Namibia where a white minority is attempting to glorify the colonial past. Petr Bystron, the AfD’s representative for the Foreign Affairs Ministry, had made headlines in 2018 when he visited the Suidlanders, a paramilitary organisation open only to Whites in South Africa, who are longing for the old days of Apartheid while simultaneously preparing for a race war in the country.
Recently, this colonial denial has made its way into German Parliamentary debate through the likes of Bystron and his party.
Especially after 2018, when the chancellor's commissioner for Africa Günter Nooke commented that colonialism helped free African states out of archaical structures, the playing field was levelled for the AfD to practise their own colonial revisionism.
In December 2019, Bystron and the AfD spokesperson for development issues Markus Frohnmaier invited the highly contested professor Bruce Gilley for a lecture with the title “Why the Germans do not have to apologise and definitely not pay for their colonialism!”
Gilley is renowned for publishing a highly controversial paper stipulating that the West should re-colonise African states for which he has lost credibility among scientists. In an interview with die Welt Zimmerer commented that the German government is partially to blame for this because they hadn’t acknowledged the genocide of the Herero and Nama earlier.
During the same month, the AfD handed in a petition to parliament to reevaluate the “positives of colonialism”. The party is campaigning for the “profitable achievements” to be included into how German colonial history is taught at schools and universities. They further said that the calls for reparations by the Namibians were based on shaky evidence and should be denied. What happened could not be classified as a genocide. So far, the motion has neither been rejected nor accepted.
The debate about whether the genocide can even be categorised as such has had a longer standing than the AfD itself. However, it has been focused on the legal terminology. The genocide term was only introduced by the UN convention in 1951 and can leagaly not be applied anachronically.
Still, the AfD’s suggestions to focus on the “positives” of colonialism seem to have further widened the disparities in the response to Germany’s colonial history.
Avoiding the figurehead of the new far-right
But can a party with only 89 of 709 parliamentary seats really have deciding influence on such a highly anticipated reconciliation?
Certainly, we would be overstating the populists’ influence on this decades-old question of reconciliation, if we said they were able to directly and permanently prevent an apology. However, by widening the spectrum of what is open for discussion, they can have an impact on what the ruling parties advocate for, or rather what they avoid advocating for. And this means further prolonging a principled decision.
Or at least, that is the outcome we should expect according to a theory developed by Bale and fellow researchers. The study concludes that centre-left parties have three strategic options when facing the challenge of a populist radical right party, with defusing being one of them.
Next to adopting or holding their position on the topic, a far safer strategic option is to defuse the topic by decreasing its salience or its relevance to the electoral competition.
According to the researchers, such defusing occurs mainly on so-called nativist issues. These are debates surrounding immigration and integration, the core issues of contestation by the radical right. In order to defuse the topic to not be disadvantaged by it, the centre-left party will reset the political agenda and focus on something else, hoping that other parties in the system will, eventually, do the same.
Due to colonialism’s apparent causal link to the motivations for flight as well as it’s enduring effects on how developing nations and immigrants are framed, postcolonialism is one of these nativist issues, at the centre of far-right contestation.
The researcher found out further that, if engaged in a coalition with the centre-right, the social democrats will most likely mirror their response.
The German government is made up of a majority centre-right coalition of the Christian Democratic Union CDU/CSU and the Social Democrats SPD. As the centre-right Union has vowed to distance itself from the AfD and not under any circumstances align itself with the party, the only plausible reaction by the grand coalition towards nativist issues - according to the theory - is to unanimously defuse.
According to the Berlin policy and communications advisor Johannes Hillje this reaction towards the rise of the AfD is clearly visible when comparing the grand coalition treaties. In a guest article for the Zeit he demonstrates that when it comes to integration, SPD and CDU/CSU have adapted to the language of right-wing populists. “Germany is an open, cosmopolitan and tolerant country” in 2013 was replaced by “Germany is committed to its existing legal and humanitarian obligations", only five years later. The coalition agreement from 2013 openly declared: "We see immigration as an opportunity". In 2018, Hillje writes, the government diverts from these commitments by focusing on “us".
So what does this mean for the issue of reconciling Germany’s colonial past?
The more the new far-right discovers the topic as an element of its nativist figurehead, the more the German government will probably try to keep it off the agenda.
Derailed glorification or shrewd strategy
The strategy of defusing such a symbolic act as the apology to a former colony seems especially plausible if we do not assume that the AfD is anything else than a bunch of confused lunatics obsessed with glorifying Germany’s past, but understand that their historical revisionism is driven by a strategic goal.
Couperus and Pier, scholars in Groningen, published an article on the abuse of history by right-wing populists to make their political goals attainable. The case study looks at the rhetoric employed by far-right parties in the Netherlands.
They write: “The past has become a new battlefield in which the populists challenge the hitherto accepted explanations of shameful periods of history and shamelessly attempt to downplay them or brighten them up”.
The most straightforward way in which right-wing populists use and manipulate history is simply by reinterpreting certain controversial historical events. In relation to a colonial past, they found such historical revisionism to make use of the discursive strategies of apologism - good things came out of colonialism - and nostalgia - being proud of colonial achievements.
With this populists want to embolden the far-right fringe of the electorate and win over those voters still sitting on the fence. Plus, and perhaps even more ambitiously, populists want to get their positive reevaluation into the cultural mainstream.
The Dutch case
In the Netherlands, anti-racism campaigners have for years been protesting against the annual Sinterklaas parade and its blackface character ‘Zwarte Piet’. His traditional costume is rooted in the Dutch history of colonial slave trade.
Meanwhile, the populist far-right Freedom party (PVV) of Geert Wilders alongside the new extreme right shooting star Thierry Baudet and his forum for democracy party (FVD), have done the most, to politicize the highly emotional debate to their benefit.
“Wilders and Baudet have been exalting our colonial past in their different types of campaigning”, says artist and activist Quinsy Gario, “Baudet has even said that we should be proud of our colonial project and start something like that anew.” The outrage is clearly etched in his face.
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Protestors in Amsterdam calling for an end to the Black Pete tradition. Source: Constablequackers, WikimediaCommons
In 2011 Gario was one of the first to openly protest for the abolition of the racist tradition and was promptly arrested for it. Since then, more and more protesters have been taking it to the streets. Administrators of major cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam as well as a national public broadcaster have reacted by ditching the blackface in favour of faces smeared with chimney soot.
But according to Gario, these reactions only present the attempt to defuse the issue, rather than seriously tackle it.
“They want to deny the history of the figure as a cultural commemoration of a violent past by claiming he is black with soot - which he clearly is not. It’s become a case of: how can we make black people and anti-racist campaigners stop complaining?”
Gario says that the Netherlands need to fundamentally rethink the ways in which they have obscured their colonial history - a stance that he has been publicly termed a terrorist for.
The populist far-right’s opinion on Black Pete is firm and clear: He is not going anywhere.
The UN has repeatedly called on the Dutch government to rid pre-Christmas festivities of any racist elements. Kick Out Zwarte Piet campaigners have repeatedly urged the Dutch prime minister Rutte to openly condemn the figure. So far the government has declined to take a stance.
And with the likes of Wilders and Baudet exalting the colonial past in their campaigning, it seems, taking a political stance is becoming more and more an act of walking on eggshells.
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A policy of procrastination
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The colonial histories of Germany and the Netherlands are not quite the same, yet the ongoing debates are to some extent comparable.
On the part of the German government little has been done to bring the apology for the genocide to the political forefront.
Parties such as the Left and the Greens have petitioned for parliament to acknowledge the term with all of its consequences, but so far, to no avail.
"We work very well with the Green Party and above all with the Left Party, which strongly represents us in the Bundestag."
Israel Kaunatjike, a Berlin-based Herero activist lays out to us. He adds that the interests of the Herero and Nama people are not represented all too well by the governing SPD and CDU/CSU.
Although the governments coalition treaty of 2018 devotes an entire section to the reappraisal its colonial history, the genocide of the Herero and Nama does not find a single mentioning in the document. The focus is much rather diverted to the repatriation of artefacts kept in German museums and projects for cultural cooperation with the former colonies.
This diversion of the issue away from the bigger picture of national guilt to the benign field of museum shelves becomes apparent when looking at who is set out to manage this reappraisal of our colonial history. Unlike France, where the relationship between the country and its former colonies has been made a top tier responsibility and is dealt with by Macron personally, Germany has consigned the task to the second row, by putting the Minister of State for Culture at the Federal Foreign Office, and the Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media in charge.
A similar level of commitment is reflected in the amount of money spent on the endeavour. As of November 2019, the government-funded "German Centre for Cultural Heritage Losses" spent only about 700,000 Euros on investigating "colonial contexts". Zimmerer comments that decolonisation efforts are laid off with “pocket money”.
This sort of defusing of the colonial guilt question shows resemblance with the Dutch case, the red herring here not being chimney soot but ancient art.
Unsurprisingly, this idle approach is also brought to bear on the rare occasions that the colonial guilt question makes it to parliamentary debate. Debates on the genocide of the Herero and Nama are hardly given their fifteen minutes of fame.
"We just don't have debates about it, and that's the disadvantage. That is the reason why I am reluctant to table a motion on behalf of our fraction; there is no point in discussing such a motion at 1 a.m., which is of interest to no one” Ottmar von Holtz explains the difficulty of bringing more attention to the ongoing debate, “Last year, the Left Party tabled a motion to this effect and the debate was to be held at half past twelve at night. That just shows the importance it is given.”
An apology, that has been avoided, brought up again, discussed and sidestepped for more than five years now shows how difficult it has become for Germany to say sorry.
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How much longer will they wait?
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The study by Bale and his colleagues suggests that the strategy of defusing comes with an expiry date. The more politically salient a topic is, the more difficult defusing it becomes.
“The question is are governments ignoring issues to their benefit or to their peril”, as Dutch activist Quinsy Gario puts it, “and I think the latter is what is starting to happen now.”
Activist Israel Kaunatjike is also convinced that his supporters are gaining more influence than his opponents. “We are not afraid of the AfD. We have good connections, we have great lawyers, we have huge amounts of support, even in Germany, which has grown over the years. And we will do this.”
Ottmar von Holz agrees that Germany’s time is up. "This debate must actually come to an end next year, or at least in this legislative period. Anything else would be a disgrace."
“The majority of Germans would support us when we finally apologise.”, he is certain.
Kaunatjike adds that even if it looks like time isn’t ticking away in Germany, it certainly is in Namibia. "Young people in Namibia are getting impatient. Germany can talk around it all they want but they won't wait another hundred years" he illustrates, "They have to act at some point whether they want to or not.”
About the Authors
Lisa Ossenbrink,
Germany/ Great Britain
Lisa is a half-German, half-British journalist and interested in all things politics and international relations. Prior stations: studying moral philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, France and interning at Deutsche Welle in Windhoek, Namibia assisting in media training and working in radio.
Natalie Beck, Germany/ Kenya
Natalie is a German-Kenyan Multimedia Producer and Journalist. She has a passion for documentary film and is highly curious about new forms of interactive and immersive storytelling. Having grown up on two continents, choosing the specialisation Journalism and Media across Cultures almost came naturally.
