Reparations: Namibia, Germany at a crossroads of a universal debate

The development and foreign direct investment doctrine has for decades been used as the theoretical framework for addressing the Global North / Global South divide of inequity. This theoretical underpinning has proven to fail the former colonies and has rather perpetuated systemic poverty and debt on the African continent.

Development aid and foreign direct investment have in fact forced the African continent into deeper debt through loans, while grants themselves do not come without a price but rather create opportunities to strengthen international corporates, which drive the global financial systems in favour of the Global North.

International development aid agencies, actively funded by their Western governments, have become the cushion for a pretentious sanitising of colonial crimes through the gift of grant-making.

There is increasing recognition that the Global North owes the Global South much more than what is portrayed as a favour through development funding and foreign direct investment.

Increasingly, Africans and former colonies, including Global North civil society actors, are recognising the overwhelming impacts of the European colonisation project and how global systems determined by the West have entrenched an unequal socio-political, legal and economic system that has the primary task of keeping Africa poor.

There is recognition to redefine the relationship between those who provide development support and those who receive development support.

The ongoing debate in Namibia regarding the colonial crimes committed by Germany against the Nama and Ovaherero has clearly exposed the hypocrisy of the concept of development aid.

The call of the Nama and Ovaherero people has been very consistent throughout the genocide debate in Namibia. They have always said that they must drive the process and pave the way forward – not the former coloniser.

Selectively emphasising one aspect of law

They have also called on their own government to join hands with them in their legitimate claim for justice. Instead, both governments have used international protocol of bilateral negotiations to avoid any discussions of reparations – as if bilateral state-to-state international legal protocols supersede an equally agreed-upon international protocol of the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples to self-representation.

While Germany and Namibia parade one aspect of international law that provides for bilateral state-to-state negotiations, it conveniently chooses to sweep under the rug those instruments of international law that give the Nama and Ovaherero people the legal right to self-representation, free prior informed consent, and the right to reparations.

It is important to bear in mind that if the German and Namibian governments were honest about their legal obligation to respect the protocols of self-representation, this honesty would significantly alter the power dynamics between Germany and the Nama/Ovaherero people, as well as between Namibia and Germany overall.

Truth be told, the Namibian government would have to forego its legally false claim of having the sole right to act as a filter for expressing the felt realities of a section of its own citizens. It would also require the Namibian government to relinquish its historically false narrative of Swapo and, by implication, OPO, its predecessor, as being the alpha and omega of nationhood.

For political expediency and self-righteousness, both governments have therefore chosen to flaunt one aspect of the law and disregarded an equally critical provision of the same international law.

The question is, does the Namibian government have the political will and maturity to respect the legal rights of its own citizens, or is the Namibian government more concerned about maintaining an unequal power relationship with Germany for short-term political gain and expediency?

White-washing the past

The concept of reparations would require challenging economic devastation, de-industrialisation, structural global racism and the marginalisation of African voices and decision-making power.

What one has seen in the fundamental argument of Germany and generally European states is a whitewashing of colonial crimes through the almost meaningless rhetoric of apologies, underscored by development funding through loans and grants.

The criminality of the colonial project is sanitised with a gift of moral responsibility rather than a just and legal repair of all damages.

Even on the question of the repatriation of looted artefacts and ancestral remains wrongfully acquired within the colonial context, there has been a general refusal to accept reparations for these damages through various forms of compensation.

In Namibia in particular, Germany repatriated ancestral remains and some artefacts, such as the Hendrik Witbooi bible and whip. For Germany, it was just a matter of returning and claiming a profound example of 'coming to terms with the colonial past', without any word about reparations or compensation, apart from vague promises of a commitment to establish a museum.

For Germany, the returned items and ancestral remains are no longer its responsibility because it has whitewashed itself from a form of guilt or responsibility.

Repatriation in itself does not resolve the cultural and spiritual damage caused, and Germany has never accounted for these damages but rather prides itself on being an example of how to deal with their colonial legacy.

A legally just and politically binding commitment would include the right of Nama and Ovaherero people specifically, and Namibians in general, to self-repair, that is, to interpret and rewrite the colonial circumstances that allowed Germany to loot property, to understand our own story, and to determine our place in the world.

A just way of approaching the genocide would require a critical analysis of the economic and power relationship between Germany and Namibia generally, but more specifically Germany’s economic and power relationship with the people against whom it ordered and executed a genocide. By reducing Nama and Ovaherero leaders to consultants and advisors on a process steered primarily by Germany, it effectively denies these leaders any power and has rendered them voiceless. Making people against whom a crime was committed invisible objects can never constitute coming to terms with the colonial past, but rather reflects an entrenchment of the same principles that made them invisible in the first instance.

In the same vein, any discussion on decolonizing Europe and Africa must fundamentally include building a new global economic and political order that addresses global inequity and current structures that perpetuate colonial legacies.

If Europe is serious about 'coming to terms with the colonial past', they have an obligation to admit and acknowledge that they are surrounded by privileges and indeed benefit one way or another from the colonial legacies their nations have been built on for far too long.

The phrase 'it happened a long time ago' will never resolve the deep-seated and embittered relationships that haunt all our generations. Remaining silent about enduring poverty is no longer an option. Africans too have an obligation to challenge the persistence of Africa’s debt and poverty, armed conflict and mass destruction through climate change by challenging our own governments and the foreign policies that guide interactions with the Global North. It is our lives as ordinary people that are shaped by policies. We must interrogate those policies and confront our governments if we are serious about social change.

Restructure the future

To start addressing power imbalances, we must redefine the indicators we use to define success.

Hopefully, such critical self-reflection may lead to understanding our power and demand for participation in decision-making so that we can shift access and address power imbalances through action.

We must imagine that over time, our transformative action can lead to equitable structures that are pro-poor instead of being driven by foreign direct investment and negotiators of a development agenda in which we have no ultimate power.

In recognising and addressing the colonial past, we must develop business and economic models, as well as funding, advocacy and policy principles that challenge current inequitable international systems.

We must build cultures of communication, accountability, knowledge and learning, as well as partnerships that admit the multilayered responsibilities of each partner, underscored by an unconditional acknowledgement that the colonial project has harmed the Global South and that the Global North has a legal and ethical responsibility to help shape a world that will no longer tolerate the perpetuation of global inequity.

The Namibian government is at a critical crossroads in the global debate on reparations. Should it accept the deeply flawed and racist colonial proposal by Germany, it will set a precedent for other European governments to follow in Germany’s footsteps.

There is no doubt that the EU is closely following how Germany and Namibia handle the criminal acts of colonialism. Equally, there is no doubt that EU members are actively advising Germany on its foreign policy regarding colonial crimes.

In the meantime, the African Union (AU) has made clear resolutions regarding reparations for colonial crimes. Will Namibia adhere to the African Union's position on unconditional reparations, or will it yield to EU pressure? Similarly, is the AU prepared to challenge Namibia or will it merely pay lip service to its own continental resolutions?

All this remains to be seen in the next steps taken by the administration of President Nangolo Mbumba.

How the two governments wish to reconcile without involving the victims remains a mystery. Regrettably, it sounds like a dead end perpetuated by those who refuse to face reality while exerting a false sense of power.

*Sima Luipert is a fourth-generation descendant of the Nama and Ovaherero genocide.

She is a qualified development practitioner who critically questions development theory in its contemporary Eurocentric construct.

- Due to space constraints, this opinion piece has been shortened.