Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
Her Excellency Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s speech at the High-Level Conference on Transatlantic Slavery and Restorative Justice in Ghana is most revealing – especially her referencing of it as “remarks.”
Yet in the local media, this induced screaming headlines. “Genocide: NNN demands justice, not revenge,” led one local English daily. “NNN Takes Namibia Reparations Fight To Global Stage,” another headline begged for the coveted attention of readers, including the descendants.
But do these headlines strike any reassuring chord with them? Not at all, if the sentiments of some of them towards her Ghana escapade are anything to go by.
It is inconceivable that Her Excellency would travel all the way to Accra, Ghana – about 3,600 kilometres by air and close to 6,000 kilometres by road – only to go and make remarks.
A remark is defined as “a brief statement, comment or observation that expresses an opinion or points out a fact.” This is what she seemed to have made.
Worse, at what was deemed a high-level conference – one that offered Her Excellency one of the rarest and few golden opportunities in advocacy of the demand of her would-be descendants for restorative justice.
Granted, the conference may not necessarily have been about genocide. Still, it was about an initiative – in this instance, the UN resolution on Transatlantic Slavery and Restorative Justice – a crime against humanity emanating from colonialism.
Just as much as the genocide in then South West Africa emanated from German imperialism.
The two are integrally intertwined, and there is no way Her Excellency could have adopted a shy, meek, and subservient approach as it seems – albeit to some it may seem diplomatic – instead of squarely, boldly, and properly launching this genocide on the African and international agenda.
Because for NNN and her government, there could never have been a better platform for putting this genocide, and the consequent and corollary reparations thereof, on the African and international agenda than this High-Level Conference.
The titling of her contribution as “remarks” notwithstanding, it is imperative to zero in on her actual contribution and the substance thereof.
The President seemed to assume that the audience knew what the genocide in then South West Africa against the indigenes entailed, thus not delving into it and its gravity – as much as she did with respect to transatlantic slavery.
Oblivious perhaps that regarding transatlantic slavery, she may very well have been speaking to the converted, already well-grounded in the subject matter – far more than they may and would have been regarding the genocide in her country.
Preferring, instead, to be flippant about genocide – opting, cautiously, conveniently but deliberately, if not Machiavellian, to zero in on what her government has been doing in keeping alive the legacy, if one can call it a legacy, of previous administrations.
Pretending that people are (and have been) accompanying the government in its negotiations with the German government. What people, and who are these people? One cannot but wonder.
Ghana, simply put, was a lost opportunity to properly galvanise African and international solidarity behind the descendants – instead of the government.
NNN’s portrayal of the ongoing negotiations as realistic as it may be cannot but be seen in its proper context, defined and characterised by the titling of her contribution to the Ghana conference – more than anything denoting the actual trivialisation and indifference of the government to the cause.
In which it has not only made itself and assumed the role of the quintessential descendant but has relegated the descendants themselves to mere spectators, if not obedient and docile followers of its devious derailment of the cause for reparations – with those presumably accompanying it at its beck and call.
If indeed the Namibian government is and has been engaged in real and meaningful negotiations with Germany as Her Excellency was purporting, then surely Namibia must have the blueprint Africa can and could follow – that NNN must and could have presented to the conference.
Given the fact, as she has been on record, that the matter is about to be concluded before the end of the year. But this, she did not. Why not? She knows Namibia’s would-be blueprint, the Joint Declaration, is not the paper written on.
There and then, the High-Level Conference would have shredded it and thrown it into the dustbin – making Namibia not only a laughing stock in the campaign for restorative justice but exposing the Joint Declaration for the neo-colonial design that it is.
So where are we now and likely to be? Nowhere. It is now incumbent on us as the bona fide descendants, and our communities, to reclaim this cause – promptly, unequivocally, and unapologetically.
Taking this matter to Ghana, to President Mahama, thereby dethroning and deposing the Namibian government’s arrogation of the cause as its sole and authentic domain and a state-to-state affair, as it has been arrogantly maintaining.
Without hesitation and delay, descendants must demystify the Namibian government’s imagined engagement with Germany. Simply put, there is no engagement – only Namibia dancing to the diplomatic and neo-colonial political hegemonic song of Germany.
Because every step of the way all along, Namibian administrations, with few exceptions, have demonstrated this cause to be more of a nuisance to it and its partner, Germany.
Hence its apparent treatment not as a central matter but a by-the-way priority – no business unusual but reduced to mere caveat remarks at such an esteemed international conference, ostensibly where Her Excellency’s delegation simply stopped over en route to the real business in Tanzania.
