Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
Government of the people, for the people and by the people.
This is a slogan that in revolutionary parlance was and had often been deployed by liberation movements all over the globe.
Including in Namibia by the Swapo Party of Namibia. One cannot wonder if today, after 36 years of political independence, Swapo still adheres to this slogan? Or was it just what it was. Not relevant and deployable to and in the post-liberation era?
Today one rarely hears Swapo, let alone any of its remnants firebrand revolutionaries, if there are any left, ever using this slogan.
Nonetheless it is still incumbent upon would-be revolutionary torch bearers to make the slogan practical. Now that Swapo has taken over from colonialism, it must and should be consequential to the slogan.
Now must be the time for its administration, Swapo now being the government and no longer a liberation party, to be consequential in demonstrating the realisms of the slogan. Not all people but a few selected and anointed are made to feel they are people of Swapo and its government.
The descendants of the survivors of Ovaherero and Nama genocide are the least of these people. Being the very people against whom the Swapo government has turned, if ever it was and has not been against them.
That indeed the government is against the descendants of the survivors of genocide is practically demonstrated, lately, by the court case in the Windhoek High Court.
Whereby the very descendants are and have been challenging the Swapo Party and its government’s derailment of their just and noble cause for restorative and restitutional justice.
For the crime of genocide committed by Imperial Germany against their forebears. A cause which the Namibian government has been pretending to be championing. But on the contrary has been proving itself otherwise
Its prime objective seemingly hijacking it. As demonstrated by the Joint Declaration (JD), that the Namibian government, including the latest 8th administration of Her Excellency, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, have embraced without any circumspection.
While it is clear the JD is about the bilateral relations, specifically aid between Namibia and Germany. Bilateral relations dictated for that matter by Germany. Never is and ever to be in the interest of Namibia as a country, let alone of the descendants of the survivors of genocide.
Despite both the Namibian government and its German counterpart endeavouring by any means necessary to make the descendants and the world believe otherwise.
Let it be put to the Namibian government.
There’s no way that every bona fide descendant believes that the case in question is and cannot be in their best interests. Because of all people, the Namibian government has demonstrated that it cannot be the one to be working in the interests of the descendants.
It makes no logical sense how the government can claim and pretend to be working in the interests of the descendants while refusing to be accountable to them on this matter? Instead of being accountable to itself, and worse to the German government as it has been transpiring to be.
It is nothing else but the lack of accountability by the Namibian government to the descendants, as the sovereigns in the demand for reparations from Germany, has driven the descendants to the point of taking this matter to the courts.
A lack of accountability coupled with sheer arrogance and disdain for the descendants, and indeed gross insensitivity to their sentiments.
Since the dreaded Joint Declaration (JD) in 2021, the descendants have been categorical and unambivalent in their rejection of the JD. Voices of rejection that the Namibian government has been blatantly arrogantly and self-righteously ignoring
Simply because the descendants, in the eyes of the Swapo government, are, have been and cannot be the people for whom the government is of, for and by.
When the descendants sought accountability from the government of Germany, as a successor to the genocide perpetrator government of Imperial Germany, as they are currently doing partly through the Namibian courts, by letting Germany answer to the court, the Namibian government has been the very one fighting against Germany made to join the case.
Thereby shielding Germany from accountability. As much as the Namibian government itself wilfully has opted not to account to the sole and authentic in this matter, the descendants.
If Swapo, and the Namibian government, are and have truly been on the side of the descendants, compelling them to resort to Namibian courts, there and then the Swapo Party and its government, must have done a serious rethinking and recalibration.
Having been presented a golden opportunity to earnestly and truthfully, but above all, caringly and understandingly, embrace the descendants.
To first and for once engaging them in a serious and genuine endeavour to foster a workable solution between them and the descendants. So that together they confront the German government.
For it to emerge from its chosen presumed fortress of denialism. From where at best it has been treating the descendants and the Namibian government, still as mere colonial subjects not worthy of its respect.
It is still not late for the Namibian government to wake up from its slumber in this regard and engage the descendants meaningfully. Backing them fully and unconditionally in the direction that Africa is now navigating restorative justice.
The African route to reparations as embodied in the 19-point global framework for reparatory justice. As the JD is nothing but a mockery and travesty of true restorative justice. I dare the Namibian government to submit the JD to the African framework for review. Certainly it cannot stand the test!
Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro is a descendant of the survivors of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama genocide, veteran and freelance journalist and reparations advocate and adherent of restorative justice.
