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The Namibian Genocide: at last an international hearing

By Peter Curson - posted Friday, 31 March 2017


It has taken 113 years but at long last the descendants of the Herero and Nama people in Namibia are presenting their case to an international court. They are reliving what was without doubt one of the darkest chapters in Southern African colonial history when more than 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama were killed during a savage war between 1903 and 1908.

Interestingly, until only very recently, the Namibian Government largely avoided seeking recognition and financial compensation for what took place in what was then German South West Africa. Now this seems to have changed following the Herero and Nama representatives filing a class action in New York against Germany.

The Namibian Government appears to have engaged lawyers in London to pursue the matter as a violation of human rights seeking both an official apology and remuneration from Germany. Quite possibly this may ultimately reach the International Court of Justice at The Hague. But this remains to be seen.

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Germany did acknowledge in 2016 that a form of genocide had taken place in their former colony, but refused to consider reparations quoting the large amount of aid that Germany had provided to Namibia over the last 25 years.

The uprising by the Herero and Nama tribes against German colonial rule between 1903 and 1907 is largely forgotten today. But this was a war to end wars and the shattering aftermath resulted in concentration and death camps and the virtual decimation of two tribal races. Many argue that it was the first instance of a policy of genocide, and the use of body parts, to try and delineate the difference between civilised and primitive races.

In October 1903 a tribe in the north of the German colony rose in revolt against the German authorities. This uprising ushered in more than four years of outright war between the Herero and Nama people, and the German authorities, which would consume tens of thousands of lives, cost the German Government more than half a billion marks, and for some, change the very nature of what was to ultimately become Namibia.

The reasons for the tribal uprisings can be found in the attitude of German settlers and traders and the arrogance and brutality of the German soldiers and local administrators towards the indigenous population, and the overall feeling among the tribal people that their traditional land and tribal authority were being swept away.

At the beginning of 1904 the Herero rose in revolt. Never fully recovered from a devastating Rinderpost epidemic which saw a large proportion of their cattle destroyed, followed by a series of human epidemics plus the unscrupulous behaviour of local traders and settlers who pressured the Herero to cheaply sell their land, they rose in revolt.

Within a few days many local German farms and settlers were attacked and more than 120 Germans killed. The uprising seems to have taken the Germans by surprise and they struggled to contain it.

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Germany saw things differently and despatched thousands of troops under the command of General Von Trotha, a veteran of the Boxer rebellion. Von Trotha preserved a vision of a "race war", of "whites against blacks" and saw the outcome as total extermination. After a major engagement the Herero retreated to the plateau of Waterberg where thousands of men, women, children and cattle gathered.

Against this, Von Trotha launched a major assault with 4,000 German troops supported by 14 machine guns and 36 pieces of field artillery. The ensuing bombardment forced the Herero to retreat into the adjacent waterless sand veldt and then into the Omaheke desert.

It was to be a death march as the Germans poisoned all local waterholes and barricaded the border. Thousands perished and those that tried to surrender were either shot or forced back into the desert. Eventually survivors were loaded on to cattle cars and taken to concentration or work camps. What was to follow was to see the emergence of two new terms in the German language,Konzentrationslager (concentration camp) and Endlosung (Final Solution) which some 35 years later would take on a much more sinister meaning.

In the latter part of 1904 the Nama people who inhabited the southernmost part of the colony, also rose in revolt. Initially led by Hendrik Witbooi they attacked local farmers and settlers.

At first taken by surprise the Germans eventually despatched six companies of troops supported by machine guns and artillery. Ultimately Witbooi was forced to retreat into the Kalahari desert where he reflected on the lesson learnt, notably to match the German superiority in men and arms he needed to draw on his intimate knowledge of the local landscape, avoid pitch battles, and develop a guerrilla form of engagement.

Over the next couple of years this is exactly what the Nama managed to achieve first under Witbooi and following his death under Jakob Morengo. For more than two years Morengo with just a small band of followers, wisely exploiting his knowledge of the local environment, held down thousands of German troops until 1906 when he was wounded during an encounter and forced to flee into the Northern Cape.

Morengo's campaign against the Germans is interesting from a number of perspectives. Not only did he conduct an exemplary guerrilla war but he was also supported by a young Australia, Edward Presgrave, who supplied and fought alongside him in a number of engagements with the Germans until eventually killed by two Boers working for the German military authorities.

After 1905 the Germans established a network of internment camps throughout the colony ranging from large concentration camps in Windhoek and Swakopmund, through railway work camps and smaller work camps designed to provide a source of local labour.

The most infamous and largest camp was at Shark Island in Luderitz harbour. This Konzentrationslager was perhaps the world's first death camp and was referred to by the Germans as Todesinsel or Death Island.

Located on a barren outcrop of rock exposed to regular gale force winds form the Atlantic, as well as fogs and very cold nights, inmates were enclosed by barbed wire and sentry posts.

Between 1905 and 1907 the Herero and Nama prisoners were huddled together in hastily erected shacks made up of blankets and pieces of wood. Conditions were truly horrifying, and prisoners were subject to daily beatings, rape, malnutrition, influenza, pneumonia, scurvy, inadequate clothing, little food, and little or no medical care. Inmates died like flies.

For many of the Herero and Nama this was the first time in their lives they had encountered such climate conditions. Many have argued that Shark Island was the first Death Camp and the first where a policy of genocide and biological experimentation was employed. When in 1907, faced by the appalling mortality and some international criticism, the Germans decided to close the camp, barely 500 of the 2,000 or more Nama who had been imprisoned their had survived.

Between 1904 and 1907 more than 8,000 Herero and Nama had died on Shark Island. Scurvy was widespread among the prisoners and a German doctor undertook a series of medical experiments to try and prove a bacterial origin of the disease. He dissected the bodies of scurvy victims and carried out a range of studies on others.

The camps also held another terror for those imprisoned. Many of those who died had their heads removed from their bodies, cleaned by women prisoners and then preserved in formalin, placed in tins and sent to German science organisations for anatomical research.

Many German scientists were interested in being able to scientifically prove that significant anatomical differences existed between the so-called "natural races", those lacking in culture and history, and the advanced races of Western Europe. To meet this demand from 1905 Shark Island also provided an endless flow of body parts and skeletal remains for German scientific organisations.

Before the Herero and Nama rose in revolt there were roughly 80,000 Herero and 20,000 Nama in the colony. The census of 1911 revealed that barely 15,000 Herero and just under 10,000 Nama still survived. Possibly 70,000 Herero died in their war and in the camps in the following years while possibly 10,000 Nama perished the same way.

The Germans also suffered with infectious disease playing havoc with the German troops. Between 1903 and 1908 approximately 14,000 German troops suffered from a wide variety of communicable diseases. In addition 1,750 German troops were killed in battle, 970 wounded and an additional 1,500 invalided home. Overall it was the most devastating war that would strike Southern Africa in the 20th century.

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Peter Curson is the author of the author of Border Conflicts in a German African Colony: Jakob Morengo and the untold tragedy of Edward Presgrave. Arena Books, 2012.



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About the Author

Peter Curson is Emeritus Professor of Population and Health in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Macquarie University.

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