Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
WILL the German government’s chicaneries, shenanigans, Machiavellianism ever end? One cannot but pose this question in view of the latest development surrounding the return of the remains of Namibian ancestors from Germany.
And the adjectives are by no means exhaustive. One can towards the conduct of the German government, the German Parliament and all other instances associated and connected to it add others like arrogance, intransigence, disrespect if not outright racism. It is no longer a matter of the grapevine but a known fact that some of the remains of Namibian ancestors currently in the possession of German instances, public and private, are due for repatriation next week. And for that matter not all of them but a mere 30 or so. This is while such remains have been estimated to be in their thousands. With the 20 returned in 2011, these would make the total of ones to be returned to date only 50. And for that matter, some still in the possession of some German private instances are not part of those scheduled to be handed over and repatriated next week. Once again in the latest handover and repatriation, it is understood only the Charite, the University in Berlin, and the Namibian National Heritage Council, shall be at the centre of the handover and repatriation with the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, the actual responsible authority in this matter having inherited the responsibility of its predecessor Imperial government of Germany, which visited untold and immeasurable harm, damage and deprivation upon the Namibian people, choosing deliberately to remain aloof and in the shadows of the Charite on this matter. Thereby continuing to evade full historic and moral responsibility for what its Imperial predecessor committed against the Namibian people, especially between 1904 and 1908.
But the most disheartening and respectful of the latest showmanship by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany of its continued intransigence against the affected Namibian communities and their leaders, is that the very affected communities and their leaders, this time around, are, in the least not part of the contingent to receive these remains and return them home, and worse neither do they seem at any stage of the process to have been informed, let alone about the imminent repatriation of the remains. On the contrary one hears that a number of NGOs have been recognised and well informed about the imminent repatriation. Worse and most despicable, is that there are Namibians living in Germany but even they seem to have learnt of the imminent return of their ancestors’ remains of from secondary sources. All these points to the continued intransigence of the German government in the vogue of its colonial mentality that it seems to have inherited from its colonial predecessor manifested in its attitude that it does not deal with traditional leaders. Surely this rings a bell if one goes back to the utterances of the then German Ambassador to Namibia, Egon Kochanke, at the official government’s reception of the first 20 remains in October 2011 at Heroes’ Acre. “My government does not maintain special relations with individual ethnic groups,” were the exact words of Kochanke on October 5, 2011 at Heroes Acre. It is no wonder that the German government is continuing with its habitual intransigence and arrogance, and disdain for our traditional leaders. One cannot help but conclude that Ambassador Kochanke, understandably now higher up in the hierarchy of the German Foreign Office in Berlin, must now be at the forefront of this campaign of disdain against our traditional leader thus buttressing his archaic and conservative if not neo- and anti-New Order views and tide against Africans in general, and against the Namibian traditional leaders in particular.
It was exactly the same views that those who butchered our ancestors harboured against our ancestors to the point of issuing of Extermination Orders against our ancestors their only sin being resisting the occupation and plunder of their Mother- and Fatherland. Years after, it was the same attitude and policy of superior race that Kochanke and company still seem to be espousing, if their attitude in the matter of the repatriation of the remains is anything to go by, which had years been hatched and incorporated in Imperial Germany’s colonial policy. This policy went on to inform Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies leading to the Jewish Holocaust as it came to be known the whole wide world, and which led to the gassing of millions of Jews in Gas Chambers. As they say a leopard can never change its spots. Dare one say more than that Germany, if it continues on this path that it seems to be continuing in dealing with its colonial legacy in Namibia, will never change perceptions about its pre-colonial and colonial, holocaust negative legacies to which it seems hell bent to be clinging.
But all these are just desperate attempts to conceal its heinous past written in the deaths of thousands Namibians and the plunder of their cattle and the appropriation of their land without any compensation, which to date remains in the hands of the descendants of the very colonial butchers. The return of the 20 remains in 2011 has opened Imperial Germany’s atrocities in the then Deutsch Sudwes Afrika to the whole wide world, that no amount of concealment at this stage would ever erase the memories of that historic repatriation of the 20 skulls in 2011. And as much there’s no way that the German government, by denying the descendants of the victims of its predecessor Imperial government, undo what was done to their ancestors and turn back the wheel on history. Because the history of Namibia, to which Germany claims historic and moral responsibility, is written in the blood and lives of the ancestors of the very traditional leaders whom she is shunning today and been dismiss as nothing but mere “ethnic individuals”. As far as the issue of Genocide and Reparation is concerned, and the repatriation of the remains, Namibian traditional leaders are not mere “ethic individuals” but an afflicted and aggrieved people. Germany, based on the self-admitted and proclaimed “moral and historic responsibility”, for sure has unfinished business with these traditional leaders, whether it wants it or not. It can only ignore them at its own peril. These descendants of its victim are not begging Germany for donations, and what-have-you, but simply demanding what wrongly was stolen from the at armoury point, rightly belongs to them, period!