By Ira K. Stone — For the Historical Record, InnerKwest | October 10, 2025
Long before the world etched the names Auschwitz, Srebrenica, or Rwanda into the conscience of humanity, there was Namibia. Then called German South West Africa, this sparsely populated colony became the stage for what many historians now call the first genocide of the 20th century. Between 1904 and 1908, German colonial forces carried out a campaign of extermination against the Herero and Nama peoples, leaving tens of thousands dead.
It is a story written in sand and silence—its victims buried in the Omaheke desert, its consequences carried through generations. For much of the 20th century, it was forgotten or deliberately suppressed. Yet, to understand the architecture of colonial violence and its long shadows, the world must reckon with Namibia’s genocide not as a side note, but as a foundational event.
The Colonial Project
Germany entered the “Scramble for Africa” later than Britain, France, and Portugal, but when it did, it came with force. In 1884, the German Empire declared sovereignty over what it named Deutsch-Südwestafrika. It was an arid expanse of desert and plateau, but to the eyes of German settlers, it offered fertile grazing lands for cattle, copper, and potential wealth.
The indigenous peoples—the Herero, a cattle-herding nation, and the Nama, skilled traders and pastoralists—had long histories of survival in this unforgiving environment. To them, land was not a commodity but a birthright. To German colonists, however, it was property to be seized, surveyed, and fenced.
Settlers increasingly encroached on Herero grazing lands, confiscated cattle, and enforced systems of debt that stripped Africans of independence. German administrators imposed harsh labor regulations, backed by military might. Violence simmered beneath the surface, waiting for a spark.
The Uprising
That spark came in January 1904. Under Chief Samuel Maharero, the Herero rose in rebellion. Armed with courage but outmatched in weaponry, they attacked German outposts and farms. Their aim was not indiscriminate slaughter but survival—the reclaiming of land and dignity.
Germany responded with ferocity. Kaiser Wilhelm II dispatched thousands of soldiers, led by General Lothar von Trotha, a man whose worldview was steeped in racial hierarchy and militarized ruthlessness. To von Trotha, the Herero were not human equals but obstacles to German destiny.
The Extermination Order
On October 2, 1904, after the Battle of Waterberg, von Trotha issued his infamous Vernichtungsbefehl—the Extermination Order:
“Within the German borders, every Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women or children. They must be driven back to their people, or they will be shot.”
It was a death sentence for an entire nation.
German troops pursued Herero survivors into the Omaheke Desert, sealing wells and poisoning waterholes. Dehydrated families collapsed under the sun, their bones left bleaching on the sand. Contemporary observers described horrific scenes: women clutching lifeless infants, men staggering deliriously, vultures circling overhead.
The Nama, led by Hendrik Witbooi and later Jakob Marengo, soon joined the resistance. For their defiance, they too faced extermination.
Concentration Camps and Atrocity
Those not killed in the desert were rounded up and sent to camps that bear an eerie foreshadowing of later horrors. Shark Island, off Lüderitz, became the most notorious. Prisoners endured forced labor, malnutrition, and disease in conditions designed to destroy them.
German doctors conducted pseudo-scientific experiments on prisoners, measuring skulls and preserving body parts to “prove” theories of racial superiority. Photographs from Shark Island show skeletal prisoners in chains, staring blankly into the camera—silent testimony to colonial cruelty.
By 1908, the genocide had run its course. Of the 80,000 Herero, only about 15,000 survived. Of the 20,000 Nama, half were killed. Entire clans disappeared from history.
A Precursor to Future Genocide
Historians cannot ignore the chilling continuity. The techniques—mass displacement, extermination orders, concentration camps, racial science—echoed three decades later in Nazi Germany.
Some officers who served in Namibia, including Franz Ritter von Epp, later rose within German military and political structures. The colonial laboratories of death became the rehearsal stages for Europe’s later atrocities.
Namibia’s genocide stands as a bridge: connecting the violence of empire to the industrialized slaughter of the Holocaust.
The Long Silence
For decades, the genocide remained obscured. Germany, stripped of its colonies after World War I, buried its colonial record under the rubble of two world wars. The victims, reduced in number and scattered across reserves, struggled under South African apartheid after 1915.
Only in the late 20th century did scholars and activists revive the call to name the events for what they were: genocide. Survivors’ descendants carried oral histories of starvation, dispossession, and humiliation. Their demand was simple: acknowledgment and justice.
Germany’s Reckoning
In 2004, on the centenary of the genocide, Germany’s development minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul stood on Namibian soil and asked for forgiveness. It was the first official recognition. Yet words did not easily translate into reparations.
After years of negotiation, in 2021 Germany pledged €1.1 billion in development aid, framing it as a gesture of reconciliation. But many Herero and Nama leaders rejected the deal, arguing it bypassed their communities and avoided direct reparations. To them, aid was not justice—it was another colonial compromise.
The debate continues: how should nations atone for crimes of empire? Can money repair generational trauma, lost land, and severed futures?
The Uneven Ledger of Reparations
Germany has demonstrated, through decades of reparations to Jewish survivors and to the state of Israel, that it is possible to confront atrocity with financial compensation, memorialization, and policy changes. Billions have been paid, and even today Germany continues to honor that responsibility.
Yet when it comes to Africa—specifically Namibia—the reckoning has been halting, partial, and reluctant. Why? Is African suffering somehow weighed differently? Does distance, race, or global power tilt the moral ledger?
The genocide of the Herero and Nama stands as a mirror to Germany’s conscience. To recognize one crime while minimizing another reveals a selective morality. True atonement demands consistency. Reparations for Namibia are not charity, nor “development aid.” They are overdue payment for stolen lives, stolen land, and a stolen future.
If Germany can pay reparations faithfully for the Holocaust, then justice demands that the same moral clarity be applied to its African crimes. Anything less is another act of colonial diminishment—another silence laid on top of mass graves.
Reparations Context
After World War II, Germany signed the Luxembourg Agreement of 1952, committing to reparations for Holocaust survivors. Payments went directly to:
- The State of Israel to assist in resettling survivors.
- The Claims Conference, headquartered in New York, to distribute funds globally.
- Individual survivors through pensions and lump-sum payments, many of whom lived in the U.S.
Because so many survivors emigrated to the United States, a large portion of Germany’s reparations passed through American organizations and directly into the hands of Holocaust survivors there.
This proves the precedent: Germany not only can sustain reparations, but has successfully delivered them worldwide for nearly 80 years. By comparison, its reluctance toward Namibia looks less like inability and more like selective morality.
Why It Matters Today
The Namibian genocide is not just a historical tragedy—it is a mirror reflecting the unfinished business of decolonization. Across Africa and the diaspora, communities still grapple with the legacies of land theft, racial hierarchy, and economic dependency rooted in colonialism.
Ignoring Namibia’s story risks sanitizing history, erasing the connections between past atrocities and present injustices. It is no coincidence that discussions of reparations for slavery, apartheid, and colonialism often meet resistance. To acknowledge them fully would require rethinking global wealth, power, and sovereignty.
Namibia reminds us: silence is complicity. Memory is resistance.
Closing Reflection
On the windswept desert of Omaheke, bones still surface after sandstorms—fragments of a people nearly erased. The Herero and Nama did not vanish; they endured, rebuilt, and carried their story forward.
Their genocide, the first of the 20th century, is a warning that must echo across centuries. When humanity dismisses certain lives as expendable, the ground is laid for atrocity. When empires cloak conquest as civilization, annihilation follows.
To honor Namibia’s dead is to speak their names, to write their history, and to demand a future where no people can be silenced into oblivion. In my estimation, the victims are still due what others have been awarded. Justice cannot be selective. Reparations cannot be conditional. Until the same moral clarity applied in Europe is extended to Africa, Germany’s debt remains unpaid.
“The victims are still due what others have been awarded. Until the same moral clarity applied in Europe is extended to Africa, Germany’s debt remains unpaid.”
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