Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
Johann Wadepul or not, and with or without him, at this juncture the German foreign minister’s recent international diplomatic itinerary, which included a visit to Namibia’s southern neighbour South Africa but excluded Namibia herself, would have made no difference.
As the saying goes, you reap what you sow. It would not have been necessary for Wadepul to come to Namibia – for what? One cannot but ask.
Wadepul’s visit to South Africa went unnoticed, especially to the descendants there.
This could have been different if the descendants in South Africa and their government were and have been an integral part of the so-called negotiations that since 2015 have been going on between Namibia and Germany.
Ideally, by now, given coordination and the requisite diplomatic mobilisation, Germany’s intransigence regarding the reparations demand of the descendants should have made it a pariah state, meaning wherever and whenever any of its government officials landed, be it in Namibia, Botswana, or South Africa, they would receive a hostile reception.
But this is not the case because the descendants in Botswana and South Africa have, by deliberate design by the German government and its Namibian counterpart, been kept at bay and in the dark from the demand for reparations, which has been kept exclusively an issue between the two governments as state actors.
Despite the fact that this matter is essentially not between the two state actors but between the Ovaherero and Nama, wherever they may find themselves, and the German government.
Bi-National Commissions of Cooperation exist between Botswana and South Africa, where ordinarily the demand of the descendants from all three countries, Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa, should have been on the agenda.
But by deliberate omission and non-commission, this demand has been kept off the agenda of the two bi-national commissions. From the perspective of the Ovaherero and Nama reparations movement, there has been no ambivalence that the genocide committed was committed against all forebears.
Hence the cause for restorative justice is indivisible, reparations as much if and when realised one day. Thus, there must be no difference, discrimination, or divisibility between Namibian, Botswana, and South African descendants.
This gives rise to the concern currently by fellow descendants in Namibia of Namibia having been excluded from the recent visit of the German foreign minister.
If all countries and their descendants had, from the word go, been engaged in this cause in a coordinated way, such a question would not have arisen.
When Wadepul, or any German government or state official, finds themselves in South Africa, Botswana, or Namibia, descendants and their respective governments would have raised and confronted whoever with their demand.
But as it has turned out, for reasons only the Namibian government knows, it has kept the matter to itself, excluding in the process not only the descendants in Botswana and South Africa but also their respective governments.
But this isolationism is coming to an end sooner than the Namibian government would and could imagine, as restorative justice, following the United Nations General Assembly’s historic resolution on the Transatlantic Slavery, is destined no longer to be dealt with on a bilateral basis, like Namibia has been doing with disastrous outcomes like the neo-colonial Joint Declaration.
Meaning that any country’s framework shall henceforth be subjected to African continental, if not international, standards, principles, and guidelines of what true reparations are and represent.
Similarly, negotiations which have been going on between Namibia and Germany must now be submitted to review by this framework.
If both the Namibian government and its German counterpart thought they would get away with murder with the Joint Declaration, chickens are eventually coming home to roost.
In this context, whether Wadepul was in Namibia or not during his recent visit is immaterial.
Because the descendants, especially in Namibia, are now resolute and determined that they shall no longer allow their Namibian government and its German counterpart to take their cause for granted, as has been the case all along, by lobbying for and submitting their cause and making it part and parcel of the ongoing and revitalised initiative for restorative justice for all African people and people of African descent in the diaspora.
The cause for restorative justice, and as much the cause of the Ovaherero and Nama for reparations for the genocide committed by Imperial Germany, is now moving in a direction that the descendants cannot keep running to both the Namibian government and its German colonial master, but the other way around, with the two governments compelled in all earnest to sit around the table with the descendants. not only the descendants from Namibia, as has been the case, but all descendants, including the Batswana of Namibian descent and likewise South Africans of Namibian origin.
At a platform no longer dictated to by Germany. But this can only happen if all descendants in unison are resolute and determined to use this window of opportunity.
Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro is a descendant of the survivors of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and Nama genocide, veteran and freelance journalist, reparations advocate, and adherent of restorative justice.
