Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
Judging by the ominous silence of a section of the Namibian German-speaking community, one would have thought that all these years, more than 10 years now since the historic centenary commemoration of the genocide, there was no German community in Namibia, until the chickens are eventually seeming to be coming home to roost over the removal of the Reiterdenkmal statue.
All this while some Namibian communities all these years have been loud about their own plight, pleading with the government of the Federal Republic of Germany to own up to its avowed historic responsibilities for the crimes Imperial Germany committed against Namibians, especially during 1896 when Ovambanderu Paramount Chief, Kahimemua Nguvauva, and Nikodemus Kavikunua, were executed by Imperial Gernany’s military henchmen, and in the years 1904-1904 which saw the ultimate issuing of the Extermination Orders against the Ovaherero and the Nama.
All these years our German-speaking Namibian citizens have been auspiciously, suspiciously and conspicuously absent in their silence, only now to signal their intention to challenge the government of the Republic of Namibia for removing the rider from where it was erected without any consultations.
Incidentally, the very same place where the rider was, and is now removed, is where the Ovaherero and Nama were incarcerated in Imperial Germany’s notorious concentration camps.
Not only this but thousands and thousands of them succumbed to the harsh and unbearable conditions in these concentration camps in Windhoek, on Shark Island and in Swakopmund.
Hence the commemoration this weekend in Swakopmund to pay tribute to those heroes and heroines who succumbed in these camps. Since 2007 these communities have been undertaking pilgrims to Swakopmund, one of the remaining bastions of German history in Namibia if only by the architectural edifices of the town, sadly because of the concentration camp.
But our German-speaking Namibian citizens have been at best irate if not agitated, distant and aloof onlookers of this pilgrimage, which has been partly intended to revisit our common history and heritage and to share not to a lesser or greater degree, with German Namibians or Namibian Germans if you like.
What goes around comes around, and today German Namibians are not only voicing their consternation about their version of history, which is presumably being trampled upon, but as they are now vowing, ready to reclaim their history by any means necessary, including challenging the Namibian government, and thus by extension fellow Namibians, especially the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama.
Because if there is one thing that must be clear to these fellow citizens, it is that their own history as represented by the very statue of the rider that they are seeking to reclaim and restore, has been written in the blood, toil, sweat and labour of fellow citizens like the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama.
Not only this but the very seat of the rider has been built on the remains of many ancestors of these cultural groups. By design or ignorance, our Namibian German citizens seem to have been oblivious to this fact, and conveniently arrogant to it, safe in the comfort and with the connivance of its supreme protector and guardian, the government of the Federal Republic of Namibia.
As much as fellow Namibian German citizens are assured and guaranteed of the protection of the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, and it is not farfetched to assume that it would be bankrolling whatever its cousins may need to launch a legal, political or whatever affront they may contemplate against our government, such an affront is axiomatically also an affront to the descendants of the victims of Imperial Germany’s escapades, which culminated in the near annihilation of Namibians.
Thus it goes without saying that these Namibians cannot be expected to keep idling while they are indirectly threatened by fellow citizens.
This is despite all these years that theirs have been like a voice in the wilderness with fellow Namibian German citizens paying heed to their cry, nor the government of Germany, which arrogantly and intransigently has been equally ignoring their lamentations, if not ridiculing and scoffing at such.
So far the lamentations of the Namibian people, and rightly so in the name of reconciliation and forgiveness, have been directed at the government of the Federal Republic of Germany. Conscious of the fact Namibian German citizens cannot be held accountable for sins of their forefathers and mothers.
But are proponents of the restoration and reclamation of the rider not unduly trying to open a Pandora’s box? Are they by their act of bidding to reverse the historical tidal wave, not setting a bad precedent which may be detrimental to the peaceful existence of the various cultural groups. Let it be known that the indigenous cultural groups, imbued with a sense of accountability and the imperativeness of peaceful co-existence, have not and shall not forget the sad and unpalatable past, especially the untold miseries visited upon their ancestors. This is as much as they are and have been prepared to forgive. But there may be a limit to such forgiving, especially in the face of fellows who do not seem to be prepared to reconcile!