Enlarge image
Vikuii Reinhard Rukoro at an official event in March 2019: "I will expose Germany"
Photo: Christian Ender / Getty Images
The traditional Herero chief Vikuii Reinhard Rukoro has announced mass protests against the planned visit of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to Windhoek. The German head of state wants to officially ask for forgiveness for the German colonial crimes in what is now Namibia. If Steinmeier asked for an apology in the Namibian parliament, opposition politicians would leave the room, Rukoro told the Bild newspaper on Saturday. There will also be mass demonstrations by the Herero and Nama in front of the building.
"I will expose Germany," emphasized Rukoro, who is one of the leading critics of the reconciliation agreement between Germany and Namibia to come to terms with the bloody German colonial history.
He wanted to expose Germany "to the embarrassment that they signed an agreement on the genocide of Hereros and Namas, which was ratified by a parliament made up of Swapo people and Ovambos who know nothing about the genocide," Rukoro explained.
Victim representatives criticize a lack of participation
The reconciliation agreement that became known last week, in which Germany for the first time recognized the atrocities committed by so-called German protection troops against the Herero and Nama between 1904 and 1908 as genocide, had triggered a wave of criticism among representatives of the victims' groups in Namibia.
It is planned that Steinmeier will travel to Namibia as part of the reconciliation process and officially ask for forgiveness there on behalf of Germany.
A date for the visit has not yet been set.
The agreement has yet to be ratified by the Namibian parliament.
Representatives of the Herero and Nama complain, among other things, of the lack of participation of representatives of victim groups in the negotiations between Berlin and Windhoek.
They also criticized the fact that Germany does not pay any direct compensation to the victims' descendants.
Reconstruction aid instead of reparation payments
The reconciliation agreement provides for German reconstruction aid amounting to 1.1 billion euros, which will be paid out over a period of 30 years and will primarily flow into social projects in the Herero and Nama settlement areas.
However, the federal government expressly rejects reparations.
She takes the position that she cannot legally accept responsibility for the genocide because the relevant UN genocide convention was only passed in 1948.
Namibia's Vice President Nangolo Mbumba criticized the German payments on Friday as being too low. The amount of 1.1 billion euros that the two governments have agreed on is not enough, he said at the official presentation of the agreement. This does not adequately cover the original amount of the compensation claimed. "I don't think any Namibian thinks that the money is enough to compensate for everything that has happened." But these are historical decisions that should have been made. If you could have gotten more money from Germany, you would have done it.
Namibia - then German South West Africa - was a German colony from 1884 to 1915.
Herero and Nama uprisings were brutally suppressed by the German colonial troops.
The then German governor Lothar von Trotha later ordered the scheduled annihilation of the two ethnic groups.
Historians speak of the first genocide of the 20th century.
hpp / AFP / Reuters
