By Usutuaije Maamberua Or shall we say “The Economics of Reparation”? No, not at this juncture, for the formulae suitable for the calculation of Ovaherero losses will be developed in future articles. The President of NUDO party is also hereby acknowledged for tabling a long overdue motion on reparations in the National Assembly. History of Reparations According to David Mosci who traces the history of reparations as indicated in the following passages, the payment of reparations for genocide or other injustices is a relatively new phenomenon, which began with Germany’s 1951 pledge to aid Israel and to compensate individual victims of the Holocaust. Mosci further states that, “before World War II, nations saw what they did to other people during war-times as a natural by-product of war. The vanquished simply had to accept what had happened to them.” Furthermore, Mosci maintains that, while the use of reparations may be a relatively new remedy, the ideas behind them have a long – if circuitous – intellectual pedigree stretching back for millennia. For instance, the ancient Greeks and Romans explored the notion that the weak-oppressed deserve sympathy and possibly assistance. Moreover, Mosci opines, Judeo-Christian doctrine also grappled with what individuals and society owe to the downtrodden and oppressed. For instance, in the New Testament Jesus Christ singled out the persecuted as being particularly deserving of compassion and assistance. Modern Reparations Until 50 years ago, debates over reparations for victims of persecution were largely theoretical. But in the wake of World War II, reparations increasingly have been seen as a viable means of addressing past injustices – not just to Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust, but to Japanese-Americans, Native Americans and even Australian Aborigines. Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust have had considerable success in obtaining restitution from governments and corporations linked to Hitler’s “final solution”. Seeking reparations is not about money, but about winning justice for the victims. On September 27, 1951 West German Chancellor Konrand Adenauer appeared before the country’s legislature, or Bundestag, and urged his fellow Germans to make some restitution for the “unspeakable crimes” Germany had committed against the Jewish people before and during World War II. His proposal – to provide assistance to the newly founded state of Israel as well as restitution to individual Holocaust survivors – was supported by both his own Christian Democratic party and the opposition Social Democrats. Norman Finkelstein when writing on the lessons of holocaust compensation said that, in the early 1950s Germany entered into negotiations with Jewish institutions and signed a series of indemnification agreements. With little if any external pressure, it had paid out to date some N$60-80 billion. The German government sought to compensate Jewish victims of Nazi persecution with three different agreements signed in 1952: One, individual claimants received payments according to the terms of the Law on Indemnification (BundesentschÃÆ’Æ‘Æ‘ÃÆ”šÃ‚¤digungsgesetz). Two, a separate agreement with Israel subsidised the absorption and rehabilitation of several hundred thousand Jewish refugees. Three, German government also negotiated at the same time a financial settlement with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, an umbrella of all major Jewish organisations including the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Bnai Brith, and the Joint Distribution Committee. Similarly Manfred Gerstenfeld informs us that on March 21, 2000, the Dutch Government published a concluding document in reaction to the reports of various commissions of inquiry into the post-war restitution issue. The publication Jewish Political Studies Review 12: 1-2 (Spring 2000) was also sent to parliament where it was approved on April 18. It dealt not only with the looted Holocaust assets of Jews and the small Gypsy community of The Netherlands, but also with postwar restitution in Indonesia, formerly the colony known as the Dutch East Indies. Justification for Ovaherero Reparations German colonisation of Namibia was characterised by a systematic expropriation of land occupied or owned by the Ovaherero. The formal Order of Expropriation was signed by Wilhelm II on December 1905 and it covered the entire moveable and fixed property of the Ovaherero. (V. Kavari) The impact of the Genocide of the Ovaherero people found expression in the loss of property and the subsequent pauperisation of the victims. It also resulted in the depopulation of the Ovaherero numerically and a process of a near complete internal displacement, as well externally resulting in Ovaherero Diaspora communities. Furthermore, the use of the victims for scientific research, both directly and indirectly, by use of body parts provided by the killing. There are many reasons why the Ovaherero assets issues and related matters will not disappear from the agenda. As much as one would want to wish the reparation issue away, the fact remains that it is a question anchored in concrete objective material conditions of the Ovaherero experience. Leslie Sebba has expounded on a new integrative approach called VICTIMOLOGY. This approach provides a perspective for examining both the practical and the ideological issues involved, as it raises the question as to how far comparison may be made between genocide and more “conventional” victimisation processes. This is an informative approach and I take liberty to opine that it has the potential to go a long way in helping those who are reluctant to engage the Ovaherero Genocide issue and all related aspects, understand the trauma the Ovaherero were and are still subjected to. Considering the resources that are expended on wildlife preservation globally and even locally, it is appalling to imagine that at one point, a decision was taken by the German national legislature to exterminate a people from the face of the earth! German Government ‘Eligibility’ In the context of the Ovaherero Reparation Claim debate the question of where responsibility, accountability and answerability should be posted beckons. According to Max, the late S Milosevic can longer be tried for genocide but his country can. In this case Bosnia argues that Serbia-Montenegro – the successor state to the defunct Yugoslavia – is responsible for the genocide of Bosnian Muslims. Similarly Ovaherero argue that the current state of Germany the successor state to Kaizer Wilhelm II Germany is responsible for the genocide and war crimes against the Ovaherero. Indeed German Minister for External Economic and Development Co-operation at Ohamakari admitted that the crimes against the Ovaherero are in today’s terms genocide and von Trotha would be tried and sentenced had he lived until today. But as said the German state is alive! The Unfinished Business Many issues are still open. Money obtained will have to be distributed. A referendum among survivors and their descendants on how to divide the funds should be thought of. It is meant to clarify whether the money should be distributed to individuals, Ovaherero development institutions, or a fund for other humanitarian needs. The current cruise-crossing of the country asking communities who were affected by the German war to identify development projects ostensibly to be funded by the so-called Special Initiative Fund is an approximation of what one Jewish leader is said to have once commented: “Every so often, governments pay small Jewish communities some money and cuddle them a bit, and then they forgo their rights.” And aptly and fittingly the late Johnnie Cochran advised: “It’s time to address these issues we’ve so long denied – the lingering effects of slavery!” “When you argue that a victim shouldn’t pursue restitution, you are essentially rewarding the oppressors,” Steinberg says. Methods of Reparations Cynics and detractors of the Ovaherero reparation claim frequently are making flipping utterances about the impracticality of a reparation payment with regard to both “eligibility” and “implementability”. However, economic models lead us to contemplate a reparations programme taking a number of forms, none mutually exclusive. – One approach would be lump sum payments to individual Ovaherero. A second approach would be establishment of a trust fund to which eligible Ovaherero could apply for grants for various asset-building projects, including home ownership, additional education, or start-up funds for self-employment. – A third notion would be the provision of vouchers that could be used for asset-building purpose, including the purchase of financial assets. – A fourth approach would be reparations in kind (e.g. guaranteed schooling beyond the high-school level, lifelong insurances, etc.) – A fifth approach would be use of reparations to build entirely new institutions to promote collective well-being in the Ovaherero and indeed in all the communities affected by the war albeit with varying degrees. In like manner, the much taunted presumed near insurmountable complications of the quantification of what would approximate a reasonable and fair compensation package, is all but a figment of the imagination of the detractors of the Ovaherero Reparation Claim. Economic analysis can be mobilised to establish the magnitude of the reparations payment. For example, – contributors to Richard America’s Wealth of Races used a variety of procedures to calculate the debt owed to blacks for slavery. – Roger Ransom and Richard Sutch computed the difference between the market value of slaves net of food, shelter, and other consumption over the last 50 years of slavery, which held them to an estimate of N$3.4 billion by 1860. – Larry Neal used similar measure of unpaid wages to slaves between 1620 and 1840 compounded at three percent to 1983 dollars to reach a figure of N$1.4 trillion. – James Marketti’s estimate of Africans’ income forgone via slavery came to a present value estimate by 1983 of N$3-N$5 trillion. – Richard Vedder et al. sought to estimate the accumulated gains in wealth to white Southerners from ownership of enslaved blacks to arrive at a bill of N$3.2 million as of 1859. In Current dollars these procedures generally lend themselves to present-value estimates in the range of N$5-N$10 trillion for the debt for slavery. In a non-USA precedent the 1952 German wiedergutmachung established group-based indemnification for Jewish people worldwide in the aftermath of Nazi persecution. Thus, German reparations payments went to institutional entities (Israel and the Claims Conference), to survivors of the Holocaust who would reasonably establish specific harms or losses (e.g. property lost through confiscation), and to relatives of those killed in the concentration camps. Similar principles governed the much later payment of N$25 million by the Austrian Government in 1990 to Jewish claimants. The sums paid out by the postwar German Government significantly affected Jewish life, as the Israeli historian Tom Segev reports: “The reparations money funded about a third of a total investment in Israel’s electrical system, which tripled in capacity, and nearly half the total investment in the railways, buying German diesel engines, cars, tracks, and signaling equipment. Equipment for developing the water supply, for oil drilling, and for operating the copper mines…was bought in Germany, as well as heavy equipment for agriculture and construction – tractors, combines, and trucks.” All these are clear indications that Ovaherero do not have to re-invent the wheel because abundant models and cases exist that can enable us to arrive at reasonable, fair and just compensations for genocidal war crimes committed against us. Thus, it is clear that economic and operational research models can provide useful insights in determining: i) ligibility for reparations, ii) types of reparations programmes, iii) the long-term effects of reparations and iv) the magnitude of reparations. Accordingly, it is mind-boggling for Germany to unilaterally propose an amount of 20 million Euros as enough to compensate the victims of German colonial policies and practices in Namibia. Ostensibly this is sufficient to silence the Ovaherero demand for reparations! Conclusion This paper has attempted to demonstrate that the concept of reparations is not new. It has also shown that Germany on September 27, 1951 at the highest political level, namely, the Bundestag through an Act of Parliament (BundesentschÃÆ’Æ‘Æ‘ÃÆ”šÃ‚¤digungsgesetz) decided to compensate (wiedergutmachung) the Jews for all sorts of atrocities committed against them. To-date more than $60 billion has been paid. For all practical intents and purposes it can justifiably be said that the Ovaherero genocide is conceptually and in terms of impact a precursor to and similar to the Jewish genocide, and therefore their reparation claim is fully justified. It has been established that formulae that can be adapted to suit the Ovaherero reparation claims are available. Therefore, both sides should come to the negotiating table soonest to address the more than hundred years of agony being suffered by Ovaherero. – Usutuaije Maamberua has special interests in Operational Research methods as relating to development problems. He is a senior lecturer at the University of Namibia.