By Dr Freddy Omo Kustaa Whenever Black groups make demands for reparations, there is always a proliferation of false claims and attempts by various White theorists and their Black petty bourgeois supporters and sympathizers to belittle other people’s struggles and suffering and promote historical revisionism and distortions. A case in point are two statements that appeared in The Namibian last November written by Victor Kuligin on “Ovaherero Genocide and Stalin Purges” in response to Mr Hitjevi Veii’s open letter to him and a comment by a writer with a pseudonym of “Move On” about “Let Bygones be Bygones” (The Namibian, November 17, 2006). In this opinion piece, I would like to focus on some of the distortions and false claims about reparations that are addressed in the letters referred to above. These distortions are part and parcel of current attempts to distract the Herero people from their justified demand for reparations from the German government. Our people’s struggle for reparations from the German government has nothing to do with Stalin purges as stated by Kuligin. Our people’s demand for reparations from the German government is justified, and those of Eastern European origins such as Kuligin have no right to lecture us on reparations and dictate to us how we should respond to our suffering according to his wishes. We are familiar with Stalin’s purges, and the historical meaning of such purges doesn’t lead us to the same conclusion as Kuligin about so-called need for refusal to accept reparations from perpetrators of genocide. We retain the right to respond to German genocide based on our understanding of the annihilation that von Trotha and representatives of the German government carried out in our communities. I disagree with Kuligin’s suggestion that somehow Joseph Stalin was worse than Adolf Hitler. I don’t think that a serious person will make this irresponsible claim. It has already been stated by authors and researchers that, although Hitler and Stalin bitterly hated each other, the two leaders learned from each other. In particular, Stalin, like Hitler, used state power in the destruction of groups that he hated based on his Marxist-Leninist ideology and expansion of Soviet type Lebensraum. Hitler and Stalin had much in common, and were both totalitarian dictators and fascists. The two leaders were younger versions of Lothar von Trotha who used state terrorism to let rivers of blood flow during their campaigns to exterminate people they despised. Both Hitler and Stalin were attention and recognition-seeking minorities, the younger man an Austrian in a majority German context, and the older man a Georgian in a majority Russian context. Like Hitler who also exterminated Jews and Gypsies on the Eastern European front, including Ukraine, Stalin exterminated over 14 million Kulaks and peasants in Ukraine during two Holodomor (mass death by hunger) campaigns in the 1930s by creating an artificial famine in order to force Ukrainian peasants into communist collective farms. Of course, Hitler did not reinvent the wheel with regard to the extermination of Jews and Gypsies. His regime already had a foundation from which to operate because the von Trothas in Namibia provided a trial run for what happened later during World War II when they exterminated Namas and Hereros during their war of genocide, 1904-1907, and incarcerated the survivors in concentration camps at Shark Island, LÃÆ’Æ‘Æ‘ÃÆ”šÃ‚¼deritz and other places. The Soviet Gulag shared several features with many of the concentration camps in which the German government leaders incarcerated Hereros and Namas in Namibia during the 1904-1907 war and Jewish genocide survivors during World War II. It is important to note that Kuligin includes in his statement some of the views often expressed by some White leaders and their supporters in Namibia regarding the claim that “modern” Germans have nothing to do with atrocities committed a century ago. Then, he states his so-called thesis by claiming that, “You cannot force innocent people today to pay for the wrongs done by others generations ago, no matter when they were done, or what the skin colour of the people who did them.” Apparently Kuligin is unaware of or is deliberately ignoring the fact that Jewish Holocaust survivors continue to receive reparations from current generations of Germans when their people were exterminated by the Hitler regime over half a century ago. By the year 2020 the German government payoff to Holocaust survivors will reach about 50 billion U.S. dollars. Konrad Adenauer, former German Chancellor, and his fellow German leaders raised the issue of collective guilt when they resolved that reparations ought to be paid by generations of Germans because crimes against Jewish people were committed in their name by their state. Obviously to the Kuligins the collective guilt approach is a problem when Black groups like Hereros, not White groups, demand reparations from the German government. The very Kuligin who is trying to bestow ignorance on us regarding the issue of genocide and reparations is the same person who is ignorant about our people’s claim for reparations. We are demanding reparations from the German government for the genocide that their state carried out against our people, not innocent people as Kuligin claims. How can we waste our time and energy demanding reparations from innocent parties unless we are ignorant people? Where and when did representatives of our movement claim that our struggle for reparations is directed against innocent people and entities? The racism of the Kuligins is revealed by what they omit in their so-called debates on German genocide and reparations. For example, these theorists never consider the entire historical record on reparations especially with regard to recompense for Jewish people, Japanese Americans in the United States and Canada, and the Eskimos of the Arctic Circle in Canada. These groups obtained reparations from the states that committed genocide against them and confiscated their property. In each case, the reparations were paid years later by administrations of those states that succeeded the governments that actually committed genocide and expropriated the property of the groups in question. With regard to these groups, because they are not Black, theorists like Kuligin never argue that it was unfair for the Jewish people to receive and keep receiving reparations from German governments that succeeded the Nazi regime that carried out the genocide against them more than half a century ago. The same applies to the case of Japanese Americans who were falsely accused of having served as spies for the Japanese government during World War II. After many decades of struggle for reparations Japanese Americans finally received reparations from the US government during the Ronald Reagan administration. The Kuligins never argue that it was unfair for Japanese Americans to receive reparations from the Reagan administration in the 1980s when they were mistreated and robbed of their property in the 1940s during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. One of the most misused slogans in the dissemination of false information about reparations is the notion of “let bygones be bygones.” The Herero people who are demanding reparations from the German government are urged to adopt this slogan and “move on.” The problem is that this slogan is used mainly against Black, not White, groups demanding reparations. We know already that Jewish organizations around the world will not tolerate or allow any group of theorists to criticize their movement for reparations and belittle their suffering under the Hitler regime in large or small newspapers like The Namibian. This is why the Kuligins will never dare tell Jewish genocide survivors to stop receiving reparations funds, let bygones be bygones, and move on. The promoter of this slogan describes him/herself as an Afrikaner descendant, and sarcastically adopted the pseudonym of “Move On” (hereafter MO). In this regard, we can point out that we don’t negate and belittle the suffering of others including the suffering of the Afrikaners at the hands of bloody and imperialist British during and at the end of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. However, MO’s claim about the Catholic Church’s expulsion of his ancestors from Europe has nothing to do with the justified demand of our people for reparations. Likewise, MO’s “decision” not to make a claim against the Catholic Church is his/her prerogative, and has no bearing on our people’s demands for reparations from the German government. Overall, it is a waste of time to engage in “debate” with arrogant and paternalistic theorists like Kuligin whose purpose is to promote the colonial mentality of attributing ignorance to others and engage in useless debates filled with false claims and counter-claims, irrelevant issues, half-truths, omissions, distortions, and historical revisionism. Those who think that the demand for reparations is not a worthwhile cause are the ones who should move onto other issues that they find to be worthwhile, and let the Herero people exercise their democratic right to demand reparations for what was unfairly taken from them by agents of the German government. We reject the artificial conundrums that a number of theorists and commentators create around the issue of reparations. We oppose the ideology of anti-reparations theorists who suggest that other groups have reparations claims or similar claims against the German government and other groups, and, therefore, the Herero people are allegedly caught up in a disabling contradiction that should lead them to the abandonment of their reparations claim from the German government. We cannot abandon the struggle for reparations and move on as we are required to do by those who oppose our cause. As far as we are concerned, for the genocide that the German government carried out in our communities, there is no statute of limitations. In this nation we need to move away from the colonial mentality of attributing ignorance to other groups in so many subtle ways and belittle other people’s suffering and struggles under the pretext of promoting “healthy” and “democratic” debates. We need to promote a new political culture in which the exercise of democracy goes hand in hand with tolerance and understanding with regard to the suffering of others and their struggles. We still have many battles ahead of us, but the recent adoption of the bill on reparations in the Namibian Parliament should be applauded. The adoption of this bill gives us a platform and foundation on which to proceed with the demand for reparations from the German government. There is no need to be distracted from this task at hand by Kuligin and others with useless and irrelevant debates. – Dr Kustaa (B.A., M.A., Ed.S., Ph.D.) is a member of the Ovaherero/Ovambanderu Reparations Committee. Program Director/ Professor Augsburg College Center for Global Education Windhoek