PREFACE
This poem pays tribute to our enduring and eternal love and the spirit of our brave, fallen fore-bearers – our great-grandparents – who suffered the first genocide of the 20th century.
The poem commemorates the official closure of the notorious concentration camps on 28 May 1908 in the German South West Africa (now Namibia), 118 years ago.
That day is gazetted by the Namibian government as Genocide Remembrance Day.
O, Motherland, O Genocide,
O, Fatherland, O Genocide
Land of our flesh – blood, bones
Land of our suffering, tears, sweat
Land of thirst and hunger
O, Genocide
Fascist Imperial Germany’s Schutztruppe
Colonizers, murders, rapists, torturers
O, Genocide, displacement, dispossession
The canons and guns blazing
Ammunition decimating innocent lives
Old, young
Fathers, mothers, babies
No mercy, no shame
O, Genocide
An undying narrative
No means for solace, no expiation
To soothe the sad souls
But never to forget
O, Genocide, O, Namibia
Salvoes of cannons and rifles
Louder and louder than thunder
Leaving in their thundering corpses
Strewn with bullets everywhere
Who cares after all?
Eyes deprived and dried of tears
There is no time for tears
But scrambling for refuge and dear life
Every inch of the each village war-ravaged
Mothers with flapping breasts
Screaming out for their little innocent ones
In a trembling squeak of hiding mouse
Oh Genocide
Over 100 000 innocent lives made to perish
Throats slit, perforated by gunshots
Condemned to the belly of our mother earth
Wiped ou!
O, Genocide
But forever we shall be remember them
For they are our martyrs!
Our heroes!
O, Genocide, O, Namibia
I couldn’t see my future anymore
Because I didn’t have any hope left
Yet couldn’t stop thinking
About Genocide Remembrance Day
I went through emotions, the feelings
I keep rising up
I keep thinking about the lost human lives
But after over hundred years of genocide
It is now our turn to dress our wounds
eternally wiping our tears
No more death and no more pains
No more armed sentinels
No more barbed wires and
No more concentration camps.
O, Genocide, O, Namibia
O genocide that caused eternal pains
How callous you are!
By the order of the heartless beast
Lothar von Trotha
Killing with the aim to delete the bloodlines of our ancestors
But by dawn like proverbial Lazarus
We rose from the prisons and deaths of concentration camps
And sprout anew
Anew in the new Namibia
O, Genocide,
Alas, the struggle for restorative justice
Restorative justice promised but half-heartedly
Our people still awaiting that moment
When our shadows shall grow tall
No more genocide, no more crying
no more skeletons, no more slave labor,
no more torture, no more slavery, no more pains, no more sorrow
Hijoo! Ozombande!
Composed by:
Maj. Gen. (RTD) J. B Tjivikua, a criminal intelligence analyst and a descendant of victims of 1904-1908 genocide.