“Opinion – A sombre commemoration of Namibia’s darkest chapter

2025-06-03 BY CORRESPONDENT

The 28th of May 2025 was officially commemorated on Namibian soil as Genocide Remembrance Day.

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Albeit long overdue for some unexplained reasons, one should credit the movers and supporters of our seventh administration, who served in our National Assembly. […]

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The shocking horrors of this war and life in concentration camps, fortunately, were related to me by my late great-grandmother, who was born around that time of the war, thus becoming a second-generation descendant of this war.

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When the German colonial forces tried to subjugate the Ovaherero people, they painfully realised that they did not take into account the well-organised group they would encounter.

[…] Their social organisation around culture and tradition was virtually unbreakable. To speedily convert them to Christianity was a daunting task. To negotiate for their abundant and fertile grazing land for their “Lebensraum” policy became a no-go area.

To buy their livestock (especially cattle) was a taboo topic.

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Colonial Germans slowly but surely and very calculatedly involved themselves in unprecedented acts of banditry like never witnessed before. The German settlers took large tracts of land for themselves; their marauding soldiers raped our women at will; livestock were confiscated at will; and our Ovaherero spiritual beliefs became pagan and unacceptable.

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In 1904, General Lotha von Trotha publicly issued a chilling extermination order to the Ovaherero people. Part of it read as follows:

“I, the great general of the German soldiers, sent this letter to the Hereros. The Hereros are German subjects no longer. They have killed, stolen and cut off ears and other parts of wounded soldiers and now they are too cowardly to want to fight any longer. I announce to the people that whoever hands me one of the Chief’s heads shall receive 1 000 marks and 5 000 marks for Samuel Maharero. The Herero nation must now leave the country; if it refuses, I shall compel it to do so with the “long tube” (cannon). 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.”

Despite all odds weighing heavily against them, the now-famous battle cry of “let us die fighting” echoed through every valley and mountain, and perhaps for the first time in their history, they decided to meet an enormous challenge head-on in order to defend their homes, cattle, family and dignity – whatever the cost might be. An anonymous German soldier remarked:

“It was in defence of their rights, of home and herd, that these originally harmless people displayed bravery that was nowhere recorded in German South West Africa history before.”

Of course, it is now common knowledge that the Germans responded in kind to this uprising. With superior weapons, they used their now infamous “hunt and persecute “ policy. Many locals were executed like common criminals.

Wandering bands of bloodthirsty German soldiers were unleashed on unexpected people, and silently (very silently), the first-ever Holocaust experienced by mankind was dramatically orchestrated by seemingly murderous German soldiers hell-bent on carrying out a unilateral death sentence order by a lunatic general called Lothar Von Trotha.

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This extermination order cum war, for all intents and purposes, wiped out almost the entire Ovaherero and Nama people from the earth. Existing records state that of the eighty thousand (80 000) Ovaherero before the war, only fifteen thousand (15 000) remained after the war.

A whole generation of productive and meaningful Namibians were brutally murdered indiscriminately, pretty much the same as what is happening in Gaza right now. Scientists, engineers, teachers, nurses, doctors, etc. of a future Namibian state, which we so dearly lack, were killed as babies or young men and women in this senseless war and consequent concentration camps.

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In commemoration and remembrance of Genocide Remembrance Day, it will be a huge insult to these great men and women, who originally started the war of resistance if the plight of the victims of this war is not taken care of properly.

Ignoring this plight as Namibians, in my opinion, is to defeat the very aims they so gallantly fought for.”

• Full opinion piece “A sombre commemoration of Namibia’s darkest chapter” on the website of the New Era (last checked in June 2025)

• See also the article “1904 October 2 – Von Trotha issued the ‘Extermination Order'” in the ‘Namibia’s Past’ section of this website

• See also the article “1908 May 28 – Concentration camps officially dissolved” in the ‘Namibia’s Past’ section of this website

• See also the statement by President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah on the occasion of the Genocide Remembrance Day, Parliament Gardens, Windhoek, 28 May 2025, in the ‘Primary Sources’ section of this website

• See also the programme of the official event to mark Genocide Remembrance Day at Parliament Gardens, Windhoek, on 28 May 2025 in the ‘Events’ section of this website