GERMANY ISSUES APOLOGY FOR COLONIAL-ERA ABUSES

A day after the UK’s unelected head of state, King Charles, refused to apologise for Britain’s atrocities during his long-awaited trip to Kenya, Germany did the opposite in Tanzania. During a visit, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier extended apologies for colonial-era atrocities and to the descendants of local war hero Songea Mbano. He was hanged and beheaded, alongside his fighters, for staging the Maji-Maji rebellion against German forces in the early 1900s.

Germany’s colonisation of Tanganyika, the name of present-day Tanzania, was marked by the same level of depraved violence characteristic of European colonisation throughout Africa. During the Maji-Maji rebellion, for instance, Germany killed as many as 300,000 Africans, nearly a third of Tanganyika’s population. The German colonial government also forced indigenous people to work on plantations and in mines, often under dangerous conditions. Germany carried out mass executions of suspected rebels and dissidents and burned villages and crops.

However, Tanzanians speaking out on social media want more than an apology. They want cash to the families of those who suffered.

To compensate for the early 20th-century genocide in Namibia, where more than 100,000 Herero people and 10,000 Namaqua people were massacred, Germany promised to pay around $1.3 billion. But it will be spread across different projects over 30 years. The genocide of Jews during World War II, in comparison, has been compensated to the tune of more than $86 billion. Despite the genocide in Namibia occurring decades before the Jewish genocide, Namibia reparations were announced in 2021, while Jewish reparations were given nearly immediately after the war.

But is it a case with Tanzania and Namibia of better late than never? Let us know in the comments.