One cannot but wonder what will happen on D-Day – which is today – and what will come after.
A few months ago Ovaherero Paramount Chief Adv. Vekuii Rukoro gave the government of the Federal Republic of Germany until October 2 to respond to the demands of his community, which corresponds with the demands of other affected communities, especially a section of the Nama, if not the majority, as the festival in Bethanie last weekend testified.
This is true, especially if the call of speaker after speaker for unity is anything to go by. Anyone who was at that festival could not have been mistaken that the communities affected by the various wars under German colonialism – whether dating back to the 1890s, to 1904 or 1908 – against their forebears, have been craving for only one thing.
They expect the German government to acknowledge the atrocities its predecessor government led by Kaiser Wilhelm II visited upon our forebears, and collaterally upon the descendants.
Although the world may be oblivious to these scars, which may be invisible, there can be no denying that many of the descendants of the victims of those wars have been deeply traumatised.
How else can one interpret and understand the apparent deep religiosity of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and also the Nama, manifested at every turn through singing, regardless of the occasion.
Name any imaginable occasion, whether it be a traditional wedding, which is supposed to be dominated by traditional dances, you would find them singing religious hymns.
Religious worship and singing has come to be part and parcel of these communities’ culture. More often than not their own pre-colonial cultures are not only relegated to the backburner, but hardly feature anywhere.
Today many of these communities have been torn asunder by internal strife, bickering and internecine conflict – a factor that has become a matter of grave concern to the government, because of the splintering and mushrooming of traditional communities.
Very few, let alone successive Namibian governments, have ever bothered to pause and reflect on what the cause(s) thereof may be. Lately such internecine rivalry has been reduced to a scramble by traditional leaders for access to government resources.
Not necessarily to acquire them in the interest of their communities, but for own self-aggrandisement – notwithstanding how insufficient and/or negligible such resources may be.
But back to the deadline: one could not avoid, escape or miss the aura of unity – or at least the need for unity – during the Bethanie Festival.
One thing must be clear, far from being a pure cultural festival, this was a cultural festival of a different kind. The people who gathered for the festival were united by one common concern, based on the memory of the near-annihilation of their forebears, the loss of their properties, both movable and immovable, their resultant banishment to foreign lands and their loss of culture.
The hard fact is that – as much as some of the descendants of these forebears may be in their countries of birth in the diaspora, as equal citizens – one cannot lose sight of the fact that they may equally feel Stateless.
And this is essentially what brought the affected people together in Bethanie in the presumed cultural festival, which was in essence no more than a reaffirmation of politico-cultural belonging.
There is no way that the just-ended cultural festival can and should be mistaken for the annual cultural festival of the !Aman people.
This was a cultural festival of a different kind, a festival of a people whose forebears were nearly annihilated, plundered of their belongings, dehumanised and deculturalised, leaving their descendants as destitute citizens of the world, even though they belong to one or the other nation-state.
And this is exactly what the deadline issued by Rukoro spoke to, speaks to and shall continue to speak to, especially in view of the continued intransigence of the government of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Recent vibes from certain influential sections of German society suggest that indeed Berlin is coming to its senses, despite the fact that the Berlin government refuses to recognise the legitimate voices of the descendants of the victims, and further to recognise the bona fides of their leaders (especially the traditional leaders).
The longer the descendants continue to be kept at the periphery of what is supposed to be their own and legitimate cause, the more likely their choices may be limited and muted.
So this time around – given the signs that the holy matrimony between the two respective governments is likely to continue infinitely – the affected people are saying the time has come for them to issue their own order.
What this order entails, one will only know after the events of this weekend when the people converge on Ozombuzovidimba to commemorate the 111th year since the Extermination Order at the very place in the Otjinene Constituency where Von Trotha’s order was issued and announced on October 2, 1904.