The 28th of May 2025 was officially commemorated on Namibian soil as Genocide Remembrance Day.

This is after 36 years as a free nation, and approximately one hundred and 121 years since a senseless act of war was declared and brutally carried out against the Ovaherero and Nama ethnic groups.
Albeit long overdue for some unexplained reasons, one should credit the movers and supporters of our seventh administration, who served in our National Assembly.
Their moving and supporting of this watershed motion were not only courageous but utterly brave. 

In this respect, Honourable Usutuaije Maamberua and others in that August house fully played their starring roles brilliantly.
I am saying this because this exercise was not merely a moving and passing of a motion but was inherently a deep-lying moral persuasion to honour and pay homage to the victims who lost life, limb, dignity, identity and property in this senseless war and the consequent concentration camps. 

The shocking horrors of this war and life in concentration camps, fortunately, were related to me by my late great-grandmother, who was born around that time of the war, thus becoming a second-generation descendant of this war.

The Polish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, who is widely credited with coining the term genocide, might have had another setting and context in mind (I think it was coined for the Nuremberg war crimes trial for the Holocaust of World War II), but it will never be out of context when applied to our own genocide. When coining this term, it seems he had telepathic vision with the extermination order of Lothar von Trotha 42 years earlier, because what the general ordered and the definition of Raphael Lemkin are lexically exactly the same. But why an extermination order war?
When the German colonial forces tried to subjugate the Ovaherero people, they painfully realised that they did not take into account the well-organised group they would encounter.

In fact, history documented quite liberally about the formidable tribe the Germans found in central South West Africa (Namibia). Their social organisation around culture and tradition was virtually unbreakable. To speedily convert them to Christianity was a daunting task. To negotiate for their abundant and fertile grazing land for their “Lebensraum” policy became a no-go area. 

To buy their livestock (especially cattle) was a taboo topic.

Germans, as they have become known throughout history, resorted to only one solution they knew very well.

Colonial Germans slowly but surely and very calculatedly involved themselves in unprecedented acts of banditry like never witnessed before. The German settlers took large tracts of land for themselves; their marauding soldiers raped our women at will; livestock were confiscated at will; and our Ovaherero spiritual beliefs became pagan and unacceptable.

Locals condemned them for their immoral and destructive acts – calls which largely fell on deaf ears. Germans had very little patience and understanding for what I consider fair and genuine appeals by what they considered as harmless and primitive natives.

To their estimate, no amount of resistance would be strong enough to deter them from carrying out commands from their superiors in faraway Germany. The German arrogance went as far as them believing they would not suffer any casualties in the event of any armed clashes with the natives.

In 1904, General Lotha von Trotha publicly issued a chilling extermination order to the Ovaherero people. Part of it read as follows:
“I, the great general of the German soldiers, sent this letter to the Hereros. The Hereros are German subjects no longer. They have killed, stolen and cut off ears and other parts of wounded soldiers and now they are too cowardly to want to fight any longer. I announce to the people that whoever hands me one of the Chief’s heads shall receive 1  000 marks and 5 000 marks for Samuel Maharero. The Herero nation must now leave the country; if it refuses, I shall compel it to do so with the “long tube” (cannon). Any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun or cattle, will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children. I shall give the order to drive them away and fire on them. Such are my words to the Herero people.”

 Despite all odds weighing heavily against them, the now-famous battle cry of “let us die fighting” echoed through every valley and mountain, and perhaps for the first time in their history, they decided to meet an enormous challenge head-on in order to defend their homes, cattle, family and dignity – whatever the cost might be. An anonymous German soldier remarked:

“It was in defence of their rights, of home and herd, that these originally harmless people displayed bravery that was nowhere recorded in German South West Africa history before.”

Of course, it is now common knowledge that the Germans responded in kind to this uprising. With superior weapons, they used their now infamous “hunt and persecute “ policy. Many locals were executed like common criminals.

Wandering bands of bloodthirsty German soldiers were unleashed on unexpected people, and silently (very silently), the first-ever Holocaust experienced by mankind was dramatically orchestrated by seemingly murderous German soldiers hell-bent on carrying out a unilateral death sentence order by a lunatic general called Lothar Von Trotha.

The permanent black spot that was left by German colonial forces and their evil intentions will never be erased. A call for an apology (formal), acceptance and restorative justice should thus be a serious premise of departure. This clarion call is already well known.

This extermination order cum war, for all intents and purposes, wiped out almost the entire Ovaherero and Nama people from the earth. Existing records state that of the eighty thousand (80 000) Ovaherero before the war, only fifteen thousand (15 000) remained after the war.

A whole generation of productive and meaningful Namibians were brutally murdered indiscriminately, pretty much the same as what is happening in Gaza right now. Scientists, engineers, teachers, nurses, doctors, etc. of a future Namibian state, which we so dearly lack, were killed as babies or young men and women in this senseless war and consequent concentration camps.

Formerly well-off Namibians were now relegated to groups of scavengers in search of food and decent living. This will remain a constant reminder of this situation created by an antagonistic and insensitive colonial power who, up until this day, can’t give a single rational reason to the recipients of this brutal act.

In the diaspora are remnants of these victims, some good professionals who can contribute meaningfully to development in Namibia. They are strewn all over the continent in Botswana, South Africa, Togo, etc. Unfortunately, they remain a constant reminder of what happened to their forefathers many years ago. Close to home, you can just visit Fahlgrass in the //Kharas Region and you will witness how an act of brutality can cause deep wounds like losing your language and identity. Nowadays they are referred to as Oorlams.

In commemoration and remembrance of Genocide Remembrance Day, it will be a huge insult to these great men and women, who originally started the war of resistance if the plight of the victims of this war is not taken care of properly. Ignoring this plight as Namibians, in my opinion, is to defeat the very aims they so gallantly fought for.