Namibia has held its first-ever Genocide Remembrance Day, commemorating the tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people killed by German colonial forces in the early 20th century.
Speaking at a solemn ceremony in the gardens of the Namibian Parliament on Wednesday, President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah called for renewed efforts to secure reparations for the atrocities committed between 1904 and 1908, when German troops killed an estimated 70,000 Indigenous Namibians.
“We should find a degree of comfort in the fact that the German government has agreed that the German troops committed a genocide against the people of our land,” Nandi-Ndaitwah said. “We must remain committed that as a nation, we shall soldier on until the ultimate conclusion is reached.”
Germany, which ruled Namibia as a colony from 1884 to 1915, officially recognised the genocide in 2021 but has yet to agree on reparations, despite a decade of negotiations. Talks that began in 2013 have so far failed to produce a concrete resolution.
In a statement earlier this week, Germany reiterated its “moral and political responsibility” for the genocide and emphasised the importance of reconciliation but stopped short of committing to reparations.
Namibia’s Genocide Remembrance Day is intended to honour the memory of the victims and to amplify calls for justice and reparative action for the descendants of the Herero and Nama peoples.
