“Racial Capitalism and Genocide in Namibia

[Opinion piece; ed.]

By Shaun Whittaker and Harry Boesak

5 July 2026

Genocide lies at the heart of colonialism and imperialism, from the destruction of indigenous peoples in the Americas to the Khoe in South Africa and the Herero and Nama in Namibia. The genocide committed in Namibia between 1904 and 1908 was […] the violent foundation of the country’s racial-capitalist order.

The genocide was not driven solely by racial hatred. It was a capitalist project designed to seize land, confiscate cattle, destroy indigenous economies and create a landless labour force for German settler capitalism. The systems that followed – land dispossession, migrant and contract labour, apartheid, Bantustans, commercial farming, mining and today’s extractive economy – were built on that foundation.

Racial capitalism placed race at the centre of economic hierarchy. Forced labour and concentration camps created Namibia’s first black proletariat, while settler wealth depended on dispossession and the exploitation of cheap black labour. South African apartheid […] inherited and expanded [this system; ed.]. Political independence in 1990 changed political leadership but left much of the underlying economic structure intact.

The consequences of genocide continue to shape Namibia today. […] Apologies, memorials and symbolic gestures are insufficient if the structures of inequality remain untouched.

From a left-wing perspective, meaningful reparations should include land redistribution, cattle restitution, wealth redistribution, greater public control over mineral resources, rural development, universal public services and the reform of extractive economic arrangements. […]

[…]

However, reparations alone cannot dismantle the structures that continue to produce inequality. Compensation may address historical injustice, but it can also be captured by elites, benefiting a few rather than the communities that suffered. […]

This is why class struggle and reparations must be understood as complementary. […]

A just future requires both racial justice and economic transformation. Reparations should therefore form part of a broader struggle to dismantle the enduring legacy of racial capitalism, ensuring that historical repair is matched by structural change.

– Shaun Whittaker and Harry Boesak are members of the Marxist Group of Namibia.”

• Full opinion piece “Racial Capitalism and Genocide in Namibia” by Shaun Whittaker and Harry Boesak on the website of the Namibian (last checked in July 2026).

• See the Joint Declaration of the Governments of Germany and Namibia in the ‘Primary Sources’ section of this website.