Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
CERTAINLY any Pan-Africanist cannot but commend as well as welcome the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) of a resolution on the Transatlantic Slavery and the Slave Trade.
Defining the unspeakable and despicable acts of former colonial powers in Africa, foremost the Transatlantic Slavery and Slave Trade, as “the gravest crime against humanity” is giving a moral as well as political weight to the long demand and aspirations by and of Africans and people of African descent in the diaspora for reparations from the former colonial powers. Expectedly, foremost, the United States of America (USA) voted against the resolution. While the European Union, not surprisingly as a club of mostly former colonising powers, abstained.
The reasons for the USA’s and Europe’s positions vis-à-vis the resolution could not have been more predictable. With the excuse of the resolution elevating and/or putting slavery and the slave trade above other colonial atrocities and excesses.
Thus creating, albeit the resolution’s detractors and colonialism’s apologists, a hierarchy of sufferings and/or atrocities. While according to them, all suffer equally. How and what they know about the sufferings of the African people during colonialism, sufferings inflicted very much by these former colonial powers, to now be the best judges of the magnitude of the sufferings is not only baffling but also ironic.
But needless to say there’s more to the opposition of the former colonial powers to the resolution than meets the eye. Because it is difficult to see how these former colonial powers cannot and should not oppose the resolution. Simply, as yet, they are not prepared to be held responsible and accountable for their colonial crimes. Most of all, to pay for them, as the resolution is demanding. Very much against the resolution being applied retroactively, a principle which many of them, as expected, are ready to continue to uphold and defend.
One of these European powers is the Federal Republic of Germany, which itself has been intransigent in accounting for its colonial crimes in Namibia, foremost the GENOCIDE of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama. Citing and/or relying on the same principle of the intertemporal law. Simply meaning a specific law being applied to crimes of its specific time. Meaning when a crime was committed, it must be punishable by any law in existence at the time when it was committed.
That if there was no such law at that time, then the said crime could not be said to have been illegal. That also should subsequently be a law against such a crime so that it does not be applied retroactively to crimes committed before its existence. Pertaining to the GENOCIDE Imperial Germany committed against Namibia, this has been Germany’s argument. Maintaining, among others, that the GENOCIDE its forerunner colonial administration committed is only GENOCIDE in today’s terms. Meaning according to the law today, specifically the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of GENOCIDE.
Which, thus, is inapplicable to the GENOCIDE which was committed against the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama in the 20th century. Thus, long before the 1948 UN Convention.
Ironically, this also seems to be the position of the Namibian government if evidence led by its legal team, ironically on behalf of Germany, in the pending case on the Joint Declaration (JD), brought in the Namibian High Court by the Landless People’s Movement (LPM)’s parliamentarian, Bernadus Swartbooi, and others.
“Namibia in historic UN vote to criminalise slavery” was the headline of a local English daily after the adoption of the resolution. Not only this, but the article further hails Namibia as “amongst the leading nations that overwhelmingly voted to have the transatlantic chattel slave trade declared the gravest crime against humanity.”
For the descendants of the survivors of GENOCIDE in the then German South West Africa, surely the resolution as specific as it is and sounds and is about slavery cannot but have a significant meaning to them and their cause, which is specifically about GENOCIDE. But it was committed during German colonialism, just as much slavery was committed during colonialism.
Thus, for them, in view of the difficulties that they are currently having and have been having with their government, the Namibian government, in not only articulating their cause but also recognising GENOCIDE for what it is, a crime against humanity in terms of the 1948 UN Convention, this may just be not only an opportune but also a proper platform.
To elevate the cause to its proper context and place instead of relegating it to a bilateral matter and thus one of aide instead of reparations, as both the Namibian government and its German counterpart have been doing against the best wishes of the descendants.
True to the Namibian administration’s ambivalence and ambiguity on the matter, Namibian President Her Excellency Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has been quoted lately in the local media as reiterating her government’s support for reparatory justice. It stands to reason if Her Excellency and her government are only supporting reparations when they are for others and not her own people like the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama. As certainly with regard to their cause, it has been all along clear that they have not been in synchronisation and alignment. Judging and telling from their unequivocal rejection of the JD. That Her Excellency’s administration is clinging, having made it even categorically clear earlier this month (March) when the Okandjoze traditional leaders reiterated their rejection of it.
Now that the UN is going to be seized with the matter, it behoves and is incumbent upon the descendants of the survivors of GENOCIDE in Namibia to grab and navigate the uncharted waters of Ghanaian President His Excellency John Mahama’s resolution.
*Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro is a descendant of the survivors of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama genocide, a veteran and freelance journalist and reparations advocate and adherent of restorative justice.
