Decentering or obliterating, obscuring Ovaherero and Nama genocide narratives?
Kae Matundu
“Decentering singular suffering: a Pan-Africanist perspective on genocidal memory and epistemology in Southern Africa” was the attention-grabbing headline of an opinion by Paul T. Shipale, in the Windhoek Observer on 13 June of instant.
Upon reading the headline and realising who the writer was, I could not but instantly be amused and be intrigued what Shipale really had to say about genocide and its memorialisation? Very much aware of the fact that he has been writing consistently and comprehensively many a times. Thereby establishing himself as a spin doctor of note for the ruling party, more than anything else. In the league of the likes of Josef Goebel from the Nazi era in Germany and/or Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraqi Information Minister who assumed the nom-de-querre of “Comical Ali” (“Chemical Ali“) for his notable and colourful television appearances, or “Baghdad Bob”, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the USA.
In his writings, I am not aware of him ever focusing on the genocides of the Ovaherero and Nama. He can bear me out if he ever did. There’s not much to say about 95% of his colonial expose. But my brief is with his depiction of the Ovaherero and Nama genocides as being essentially, integrally and fundamentally about, as the headline reads, “decentering singular suffering”. That essentially is saying the Ovaherero and Nama are and have, since bringing up the genocides committed against them by Imperial Germany from its occupation of the then South West Africa, been glorifying their genocides, which he is reducing to mere sufferings, if not belittling them.
Shipale reducing and relegating these genocides against that of whatever, and equally their “sufferings”, is not highly insensitive to fellows but goes against the very ideology of Pan-Afrikanism he pretends to espouse, believes in and adheres to and practices.
Let it be said and known to all and sundry, and crystal clear, at least to the author fellow Afrikans Shipale, that what the Ovaherero and Nama have been doing ever since bringing to Namibia and opening to her and the world at large, at least the likes of Shipale, is the horrendousness of their genocides, merely to voice their narratives. Which indeed they are entitled to as free people in a free and independent country guaranteeing them, as any other citizens, freedom of conscience, expression and even belief. Be it political, ideological and otherwise. One cannot but give the likes of Shipale the benefit of the doubt for their lack of understanding, if not absolute ignorance, of what the current genocide reparation movement, as spearheaded by the Ovaherero and Nama, is all about. Because, typical of the arrogant hegemonic posture they have adopted since independence, there is and cannot be any other colonial legacy other than that of themselves and their entities, whatever the nature of such entities. Political, historical, ideological. Hence Shipale’s depiction of the Ovaherero and Nama narratives of genocides as Eurocentric.
Personally I am not aware as a descendant of Ovaherero and Ovambanderu, since raising the issue of their genocides together with the Nama, the very European Shipale is claiming to be spearheading the reparations movement, ever referring to genocides rather than atrocities. Even referring to our colonial resistance as rebellions. To this day, when and while Germany has been awakened to what it committed to the Ovaherero and Nama as genocides, she remains intransigent that they were atrocities. Even legitimising their genocidal actions as having been necessary for the colonisation of the indigenes.
In this regard Germany has unilaterally committed and is pretending to be prepared to undo, if ever the genocides are to be undone, with bilateral aid through projects to the descendants’ communities of the survivors of Ovaherero and Nama genocides. So it is baffling what Eurocentrism Shipale is referring to. If the Ovaherero and Nama are and have been trying to put their genocides on the local and international agenda by none other than themselves as descendants of the survivors. While even our own Namibian government, so to speak, was and for the better part has been fence-sitting. Not only this, but to this day it is effectively not only dilly-dallying but hesitant, if not totally ambivalent and ambiguous, about how to deal with the question of restorative justice for the descendants of the survivors. As manifested by the Joint Declaration (JD), which has practically been and is being rammed down its throat by the Berlin government, and subsequently those of us as descendants.
To tickle the fanciful memories of the doubters and detractors, if any, the question of the genocide of the Ovaherero, especially its memorialisation, dates back to 1923, with the re-interment of the mortal remains of erstwhile Ovaherero Paramount Chief, Samuel Maharero, in Okahandja. Following their return from Botswana, then the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, where he passed on the same year. Since the Ovaherero have been undertaking annual pilgrims to Okahandja. That the Eurocentrists Shipale is referring to have disinterestedly and indifferently variously called Red Flag Day, Herero Day and/or Okahandja Day. There is nothing Eurocentric about this pilgrim, and it is not the only one of its kind among the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama. They abound, and their essence is no less and no more than the remembrance of their genocides. That the Europeans, let alone fellow Namibians, have only been distant spectators thereof with little realisation and/or appreciation of their historicity regarding the genocides of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama.
Shipale’s party-spinning sangoma role, now being refocused on the genocides of the Ovaherero and Nama, cannot be delinked from the government’s lackadaisical posture towards the Nama-Ovaherero genocide case against the government of the German Federal Republic.
Starting with the Okahandja Pilgrimage weekend now overshadowed by 26 August, now renamed Heroes Day; the construction of the Independence Museum on top of Orumbo Ruakatjombondi (the concentration camp which used to be there); the military school at Okahandja to overshadow where the first bullets against the German Imperial forces were fired from; and again Shipale, now comparing colonial atrocities committed against Mbandja and Oukwanyama people with the genocide against the Nama and OvaHerero/OvaMbanderu.
Also for the sake of the benefit of our fellow Namibians, for whom the genocides committed against our forebears have as yet to dawn, the revered and celebrated Ovaherero Paramount Chief, Hosea Kutako, did contemplate taking up our genocide at the UN during and while petitioning at the UN. But with hindsight and with the best advice of fellows, I decided the inopportunity thereof. Rather than focusing instead on the burning nationalist issue of the day, the country’s independence.
For the latter day descendants, foremost late Chief Kuaima Riruako to pursue the matter post-independence. Starting with a court case in the US. Once again a pointer that there’s nothing Eurocentric about the quest of the descendants for restorative justice. This being purely an initiative of the descendants from their vintage and vantage point of view. And indeed their respective experiences, including the psychological trauma they are enduring till today. Not to mention the socio-economic conditions they are facing, a legacy, partly, of the genocides. Only to be told they are wrong not to raise the issue on their own behalf. This cannot but defies logic, especially of the descendants. As one cannot speak and think about any pseudo-logic, however it may be defined, including as it may be cloaked in Pan-Afrikanism, more than this.
One also very much cannot but doubt if this would really have been the disposition of the likes of Frans Fanon. There can be no any counter-argument that indeed the genocides of the Ovaherero and Nama are rooted in German colonialism in Namibia. Imperial Germany’s colonial footprints had many and diverse manifestations. Likewise, its legacies. The Ovaherero and Nama maintain and continue to maintain that their resultant genocides were the most horrible manifestation of imperial Germany’s colonial excesses and brutalities in Namibia. Thus Shipale’s article purporting Pan-Afrikanism is, in essence, veiled denialism of the Ovaherero and Nama genocides and, in the final analysis, pseudo-intellectualism. Driven, more than anything else, by and from hegemonic and microscopic spectacles by a would-be member of the hegemonic class’ Brain Trust and/or anti-Ovaherero and Nama propaganda cabal and machinery.
There are and have been many colonial excesses in Namibia, as Shipale well notes in the article. Albeit his approach is clearly informed and driven by ulterior motives against the Ovaherero and Nama genocides. A symptomatic exemplification and amplification of the broader approach of the hegemonic establishment towards the Ovaherero and Nama genocides. All what the descendants are saying, and have been saying, re genocide, is that charity begins at home. They are and have been memorialising their forebears and still grieving and mourning their untimely condemnation to eternity through genocide. In a conscious act of self-reparation and healing. How anyone can hold anything against them for doing this is inexplicable. But also an act of betrayal against a people who are by no means inviting any sympathy or empathy but are trying on their own to come to terms with their sad and abominable past as a result of German colonialism.
Shipale, being an academic that he is and may be, and especially a Pan-Afrikanist, must have been following the reparations movement of the Ovaherero and Nama keenly and closely. Instead of being aloof all along. Only to become the quint-essential Pan-Afrikanist now. Who, for that matter, seems to be in and out of anti-recognition of what happened to the Ovaherero and Nama as genocides? Telling by and from his opinion, which does not need reading between the lines to understand that he is against the recognition of these genocides. Recognising that genocide was committed against them by no means accepting that it must have been committed. But simply the quest of Ovaherero and Nama for restorative justice. Which is intrinsically rooted, as Shipale wishes, in the broader struggles against colonialism, not only in Africa but of the oppressed people the world over.
But the Ovaherero and Nama struggle cannot but have a beginning that is rooted nowhere. A better and more appropriate beginning and reference than in Imperial Germany’s genocide against their forebears. Instead of this being in a vacuum and without any context. This is as far as the Ovaherero and Nama themselves are and may be concerned. Which seems otherwise for Shipale. If not from their own colonial subjugation, which culminated in genocides that directly affected them, how can they honestly be expected to understand colonialism in general and in an abstract and detached way? Rather than first coming to terms with their own colonisation and its dire consequences, foremost their genocides. From which their experiences can and may find any convergence with that of others, home and beyond?
If one cannot and is unable to grief the loss of his/her own within her/his home, how genuinely can she/he really be expected to do that of her/his neighbour who has also lost a loved one in his/her home at the same time? Dear Shipale must really be from another planet, if one may say so. One of abstractionism and Pan-Afrikanism masturbation and intellectual fantasy.
To pen off, I am inclined to advise Shipale to read the book Nuanced Consideration, Recent Voices in Namibia-German Colonial History edited by Wolfram Hartmann. This represents to me typical Eurocentrism and denialism, not what the Ovaherero and Nama are and have been doing to narrate their genocidal experiences.
Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro, a descendant of the survivors of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama genocides.
