Sam Kauapirura, one of Namibia’s renowned political analysts and descendant of victims of the 1904-08 genocide, has said the country’s failure to integrate studies on genocide into the national academic curriculum is not only a regrettable oversight but a structural failure with real consequences. 

Speaking ahead of the annual national Genocide Remembrance Day, Kauapirura stated that 36 years after independence, it is embarrassing to note that the genocide committed by ruthless German colonial forces against Namibians over 100 years ago remains poorly integrated into the school curriculum. 

“This is not a minor oversight but a structural failure with real consequences for national identity, unity and the ability of Namibian citizens to meaningfully engage with the reparations debate. 

The National Assembly has resolved that the education ministry should incorporate genocide studies into the school curriculum, but implementation has been slow and inconsistent. Where the genocide is taught, it tends to be brief and filtered through a lens that prioritises diplomatic sensitivity over historical honesty,” bemoaned Kauapirura. He continued: “The depth, the concentration camps, the extermination orders, the medical experiments and the legal machinery of dispossession are largely absent from standard classroom instruction. There are still streets in Namibia named after perpetrators of the genocide. 

Von Trotha street in Otjiwarongo is a frequently cited example. The continued presence of such names reflects a broader failure to integrate the history into collective national consciousness, a task that begins, but does not end, in classrooms.”

Dark chapter 

Colonial Germany occupied present-day Namibia in 1884. 

By 1904, after two decades of systematic land confiscation, cattle theft, forced labour and racial subjugation, the Ovaherero launched an armed uprising on 12 January 1904, targeting German settlers and military installations around Okahandja. 

More than 123 German settlers were killed, farms were destroyed, and military posts were overwhelmed. 

The Ovaherero specifically spared women, children, missionaries and non-German whites. The German response was one of deliberate extermination. 

General Lothar von Trotha was sent from Germany with a mandate not to pacify, but to annihilate. 

On 2 October 1904, he issued an extermination order, stating that every Ovaherero found within German territory [present-day Namibia], armed or unarmed, with or without cattle, would be shot. 

Women, children and the wounded were driven into the Kalahari Desert, where waterholes were poisoned and sealed. 

Tens of thousands died of thirst and starvation. 

Over 80 000 Ovaherero perished, roughly 80% of their entire pre-war population. 

The Nama people, who rose separately against the Germans in late 1904 under Hendrik Witbooi, lost approximately 50% of their population, which was around 10 000 people. 

Those who survived the desert were herded into concentration camps at Swakopmund and Shark Island in Lüderitz, where mortality rates ranged from 47% to 80%. 

In the concentration camps, women were subjected to systematic rape, and skulls of the dead were shipped to German universities for pseudoscientific racial experiments. 

The genocide ended formally on 31 March 1907, but its consequences never did.

Better awareness 

Kauapirura highlighted that other existing gaps are an absence of dedicated teachers who are trained in genocide pedagogy, as many teachers are currently not able to teach what they were not trained or taught. 

Secondly, he pointed that oral histories and testimonies of community elders are not systematically collected and incorporated into educational materials. 

“Third, the cross-border dimension is essentially absent in our schools. Namibian schoolchildren learn little about why substantial Ovaherero communities exist in Botswana, or why Nama descendants live in the Northern Cape of South Africa. What is needed is a national consultative educational summit involving Namibian scholars, traditional leaders, historians, artists and genocide descendants to design a curriculum that is honest, contextually rich and built on the principle that this history belongs to all Namibians. A proposed Genocide Memorial Museum could serve as a national educational anchor,” he said.

A day for all

Applauding government for recognising and setting aside 28 May as the official Genocide Remembrance Day for all Namibians, Kauapirura underscored that the day belongs to all Namibians and serves as a platform for the nation reflect on one of its darkest chapters. 

“This is not someone else’s history. Whether you are Ovaherero, Nama, Ovambo, Damara, German-Namibian or of any other background, the genocide happened on this soil. It shaped the country you live in today. The land distribution you see around you, the political marginalisation of certain communities and the unfinished conversations about justice, all of it connects to 1904-1908,” he said. 

He added: “You cannot understand modern Namibia without understanding this. Make it your business to understand it. Look at who resisted and how. Young Ovaherero and Nama people, especially our ancestors, fought one of the most powerful military forces on earth with extraordinary courage. Some made it across the Kalahari to Botswana. Some kept fighting guerrilla campaigns for years. Hendrik Witbooi was in his seventies when he took up arms and died fighting. These are not stories of victimhood. They are stories of humanity refusing to be erased. Carry that with you”.

The relentless fight for restorative justice and full atonement by the German government should continue on all fronts and at all available avenues.

 It should be the responsibility of all Namibians and at the centre of government policies and activities. 

“Remembrance without demand is incomplete. Honour the dead by advocating for the living. The descendants of this genocide in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa are still waiting for land restitution, for meaningful reparations, and for human remains held in German museums to come home. Remembrance Day should make you angry enough to ask ‘why’, and be determined enough to be part of changing it…”

“The past is not behind us. It is beneath us – in the ground, in the law, in the economy, and in the demographic shape of this country. Remembrance Day is an invitation to see the ground clearly and then decide what you are going to do about it,” Kauapirura stated.

– ohembapu@nepc.com.na