GERMANY AGREES TO PAY NAMIBIA FOR THE 1904-1908 GENOCIDE

After nine rounds of negotiations between the Namibian and German governments, they have successfully come to a conclusion on the compensation that would be paid to Namibia for the thousands of men, women and children shot, tortured and driven into the Kalahari desert to starve between 1904 and 1908 by German troops after the Herero and Nama tribes rebelled against their colonial masters.

Negotiations have been going on since 2015 in what Germany calls ‘ an attempt to heal the wounds of historic violence ‘ and have now agreed to pay a total of 1.1billion euros payable over a period of 30 years to existing aid programmes.

German Foreign Affairs Minister Heiko Maas
photo credit:G20 Argentina
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This was announced on Thursday and this monies will towards projects relating to land reform, rural infrastructure, water supply and professional training. Also, €50mln will go towards setting up a foundation for reconciliation between the two states, including cultural projects and youth exchange programmes.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas today, welcomed the agreement saying “It was, and continues to be, our aim to find a common path towards real reconciliation in the memory of the victims,” said the Social Democrat politician.

“This requires us to be unreserved and unflinching in naming the events of the German colonial period in what is now Namibia, and especially the atrocities of the period 1904 to 1908. We will from now on officially call these events what they are from a contemporary perspective: a genocide,” he said.

Dolupo Balaogun

Written by BoomRadioNG