2016-07-22Staff Report 2 Dear Tate Katjikururume. Surely I cannot expect you to know me. Because in your eyes and that of many of my ancestors I am no entity other than I am one of your great-great descendants and admirers who have been trying to uphold your legacy but the goings have been tough. I am sure the likes of Kuaima Riruako and others who have joined your formidable circle of eminent and great leaders this country has produced, may have appraised and updated you of our likes who have been trying to uphold your legacy, especially the unfinished business with the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, pertaining in particular to Genocide and Reparations. It is exactly 46 years since you joined your ancestors. And it is also 110 years since the Genocide of your people by the government of Imperial Germany. You were involved in those battles – as a result you were wounded on the cheek. Hence your trademark scar as a result of your bravery as a great warrior and commander of the war of resistance of our ancestors against Imperial Germany. A few years subsequently, in yet another mark of your exemplary leadership, after the closure of the concentration camps, in which many of you were incarcerated and made to endure untold sufferings and humiliation, again at the hands of German brutal imperial forces, prodded and encouraged by the German imperial regime, you led your people out of those concentration camps. But not necessarily into freedom because they continued to suffer deprivation and indignation at the hands then of the South African Apartheid regime. Hence your famous prayer: “Give us the courage to struggle in that way for what is right. Help us who have been placed in Africa and have no dwelling place of our own. Give us back a dwelling place. 0 God. All power is yours in heaven and earth.” But you never relented and continued valiantly and patriotically on the mission for the liberation of your people by masterminding petitions, first to the League of Nations, and subsequently to the United Nations for the South African Apartheid regime to relinquish its occupation of your Mother- and Fatherland of the territory of South West Africa, modern day Namibia. Because of the strong foundations that you laid for the latter-day liberation struggle, Namibia eventually gained independence and sovereignty in 1990. But 110 years after your valiant resistance against German colonialism, the legacy of those sad and brutal times still remain grossly imprinted on the psyche of your descendants. Not only this but the physical scars of the times of endurance of those epochs remain sadly visible on most of your descendants who are still alien to their inheritance, the land of their ancestors. Making your prayer still relevant even today. Although they have since been able to replenish and restock, through difficult circumstances, the animals that you were robbed of by Imperial Germany, it has been an uphill struggle as lately the climate has not been most merciful to them. Not only this but your descendants while they have been among the leaders, if not the leaders of animal husbandry in the country, they have not been calling the shots in terms of determining the prices for their commodities, their animals. Instead unscrupulous speculators and auctioneers have been. But most importantly the business that you started with German imperialism, especially returning the land to its legitimate owners, is far from being concluded. As much your descendants still have unfinished business with successive governments of the Federal Republic of Germany regarding the sad legacy of that period, entailing the Genocide of your ancestors, confiscation of their cattle, alienation of their land and their banishment and displacement into foreign lands. As a result many of your descendants remain scattered in foreign lands and they are citizens without citizenry. And they are beginning to add their voice to the groundswell of voices for redemption from Germany. While your descendants have never abandoned the mission for which many of you suffered, and even sacrificed highly and dearly, with your lives, many formidable challenges remain. Unity and/or disunity among your people has been evasive. If not exploited to the detriment of the cause of your people, foremost by successive governments of the Federal Republic of Germany. The torch and baton that the likes of late Kuaima Riruako, and others took from you, to especially ensure that your blood, which had watered the freedom of this country, and your lives which you sacrificed for the noble cause, are not in vain, seem now to have become a bait of opportunism by all and sundry. Your own people are divided in two, despite all claiming dedication and legitimacy to the noble cause of Genocide and Reparations. Not to mention the posturing and pretence lately at being affected, thereby abrogating to selves the interests of the affected, and having such at heart while in reality out to feather own nests, if not altogether scupper the noble cause of Genocide and Reparations. Negotiations have apparently been going on between our Namibian government, and the government of the Federal Republic of Namibia. What informs these negotiations in terms of the legitimate mandate of the affected communities, in the true dedication of some of your own descendants who have been carrying on the torch of Genocide and Reparations, beginning with late Dr Riruako, only defies logic. More so given that some of your descendants remain alien and alienated to the negotiations of their own cause. Those apparently close to the negotiations, they cannot but be suspect in their input, let alone the extent they have been in the loop regarding the content of the Namibian submission, and how this legitimately represents the interests of the affected communities. We have been made to understand that the Namibian government has recently submitted “its” proposal to its German counterpart, the content thereof, which again, remains a mystery and a secret, even to those whose interests it is supposed to serve, not to mention the fact it has been devoid of their input. At what point they would be appraised of its input, and allowed to comment on it, and lest their interests are compromised, remains as much a mystery. In this Dear Tate Katjikururume your descendants cannot but ask for your ancestral and divine intervention, if only for those posturing to represent the interests of your people be awoken to the legitimacy and seriousness of this cause. Our chief inspirer, your greatest envoy of all times, Tate Sam Nujoma, the Founding Father of our Nation, is well alive and with us. Please do send him on another mission. This time of Genocide and Reparations. Let him talk to those you bequeathed the reins of leading your people, and the Namibian nation – Tate Hifikepunye Pohamba, and the son of the soil, Tate Hage Geingob. If not for your sake and your legacy for the sake of the people who were nearly annihilated, the Ovaherero and Nama. Good news is that they have found unity in purpose and in action, and the true dictum of your erstwhile commander and leader, Samuel Maharero, they shall die fighting against Germany? Sleep well Dear Tate Katjikururume, I am sure you are watching over your people, the Nama and Ovaherero. And our leader, especially our reigning leader, Hage Geingob. 2016-07-22Staff Report 2
