THE AUDACITY OF GERMAN SETTLERS IN NAMIBIA

This viral clip features a German settler expressing astonishment at indigenous Namibians demanding settlers return occupied lands, demonstrating that the fight against colonialism continues more than a century later.

On 28 May, Namibia held its first G*nocide Remembrance Day to commemorate when German forces k*lled as many as 100,000 people of Herero and Nama ethnic origins between 1904 and 1908. This g*nocide is considered the first of the 20th century.

Similar to South Africa’s white-settler minority, who comprise less than 8 per cent of the population but own over 70 per cent of private farmland, Namibia’s 6 per cent of settler-colonialists own over 70 per cent of farmland, according to Namibia’s 2018 land statistics, and dominate businesses, according to former President Hage Geingob (1941-2024). 

Through brutality and cruelty, German settlers dispossessed indigenous Africans of their ancestral lands from 1884 to 1915. When Namibians resisted colonial rule, the Germans responded by meting out violence. German settlers k*lled the Herero and Nama in concentration camps and through military actions, with survivors forced to labour and subjected to diseases, abuse, exhaustion, s*xual exploitation, and medical experimentation. These camps are considered Germany's first concentration camps. Experts estimate German colonial forces wiped out up to 80 per cent of the Herero and 50 per cent of the Nama populations. The German military executed those who refused to surrender their land, imprisoned those who protested and drove the Herero into the Omaheke Desert, where many died of dehydration, starvation and food poisoning.

It was not until 2021 that Germany officially acknowledged its ugly history in Namibia, promising $1.2 billion in funding over 30 years, a mere $40 million a year on average, but only on the condition that Germany approve the expenditures. However, Germany has not returned looted land to its rightful owners to address the stark inequities between white settlers and Black people. 

Video credit: @vicenews