Kae-Matundu-Tjiparuro
Yours Truly Ideologically, admittedly struggled to find an appropriate and apt heading for this week’s column. Which is about the International Conference in Algiers, Algeria, from 30 November to 1 December, 2025.
At this conference Namibia was represented by International Relations and Cooperation and Trade minister Selma Ashipala-Masavyi. Its outcome is the Algiers Declaration. Notably, the motion for the African Union summit, next February, to resolve that all colonial crimes committed against former African colonies become crimes in international law.
Certainly the Algiers Declaration did not fall from heaven, but intense preparatory work must have preceded it. Mentioning, amongst others, the 2023 International Conference On Building A United Front To Advance The Cause of Justice And Reparations. Held in Accra, Ghana. Ashipala-Masavyi was then Namibia’s High Commissioner in Accra. Whether she ever participated in that conference and what her specific contribution was is only privy to her and fellow High Commission staff and the foreign relations fraternity. Highly confidential even to the descendants of the survivors of the genocide in Namibia of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and Nama. To whom the likes of Ashipala-Masavyi, if only a matter of courtesy, should ordinarily and rightly, if not answerable, be in the least accountable and transparent at all times pertaining to matters of genocide as they may relate to Namibia and the Namibians so affected.
Whether unknown to Ashipala-Masavyi or not, a descendant of the survivors of Imperial genocidal acts was at the Accra International Conference in 2023. By some ominous occurrence none of the diplomats based in Accra then could affirm Ashipala-Masavyi’s presence at the conference. And by some strange twist, neither did this descendant run into any staff member from the Namibian High Commission. Or vice versa, Ashipala-Masavyi or the Namibian High Commission staffers running into him.
As testimony to his presence at the Accra International Conference in 2023, Jefta Nguherimo was able to share his humble contributions to this conference. Lamenting, among others, the lack of support from, among others, the very African Union to help them take the genocide case up to an international platform starting with the AU itself and as far higher up as the United Nations.
It was none other than the very Accra International Conference that made it possible that the AU themed 2025: Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations.” That has become one of the anchors of the Algiers Declaration.
Just as we are winding down 2025, which is supposed to have been the year of justice for Africans, including those in the diaspora, in terms of justice for their colonial trials, including for the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and Nama, and the genocide committed to them by Imperial Germany, Ashipala-Masavyi enters. Not so much to advance the cause of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and Nama, but to continue to forefront the dreaded Joint Declaration (JD) between the Namibian government and its German counterpart. That, for all intents and purposes, has nothing to do with the quest of the affected communities for true and genuine restorative justice. Commensurate with the destruction, suffering, human denigration, and degradation, including death through genocide, that Imperial Germany committed against them. That is if any reparations shall ever be commensurate. Sufferings from which, 121 years this year, the descendants are continuing to suffer and still dressing the wounds thereof, physically and deep down in their souls.
In her interview with New Era’s Loide Jason, Ashipala-Masavyi could not but risk being interpreted as double-speaking. Very much welcoming the Algiers Declaration as a good beginning. But when it comes to its possible application to the genocide of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and Nama, it seems to continue to be harping on the Joint Declaration (JD) between Namibia and Germany. “We are almost there. A few issues are still being ironed out, but we are hopeful. What we are doing here in Algiers is in line with the effort to close that painful chapter,” Ashipala-Masavyi is quoted in the New Era as saying.
Yours Truly Ideologically, I do not know how many of the descendants out there would share her sentiments in this regard. As the sentiments of most, if not all, the descendants seem to matter little, let alone be of any consequence to the Namibian government. That has alienated the descendants and has made the cause of genocide, apology, and reparations exclusively its own. This being the reason why the descendants have usually, by the deliberate design of the Namibian government, been kept away from such international forums as the recent international conference on the crimes of colonialism. To which the genocide of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and Nama is but one living example of Imperial Germany’s colonial brutalities in the then South West Africa, today’s Namibia. For Ashipala-Masavyi, and the Namibian government, would not dare any of the descendants, most if not all of whom have categorically been at variance with the Namibian government’s approach to this matter. That is diametrically opposed to that of the descendants. While all the Namibian government has been doing is warming up to Germany for the sake of its bilateral relations with her. Oblivious that Namibian-German bilateralism cannot but be defined, if not solely so, by the colonial history between the two countries, written in the blood and genocide of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and Nama.
One of the instruments informing the Algiers Declaration is the Accra Proclamation of November 2023 on the establishment of a united front for justice and reparations for Africans, formulated at the Accra International Conference, which it has never been clear if indeed Ashipala-Masavyi attended and what her and Namibia’s contribution may have been in this regard. From the détente between Namibia and Germany, one could expect little from Namibia at such a forum or any other for that matter, now and ever. Hence, Nguherimo’s sentiments, who attended the Accra conference, as per his opinion piece in last Thursday’s New Era, cannot but be perfectly understandable. “The contradiction is unmistakable. Namibia cannot champion the international criminalization of colonialism abroad while refusing to confront its own hesitation at home,” laments he.
But one thing seems certain. The march for restorative justice is ongoing at home and on the continent. Unstoppably and irreversibly so. The Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and Nama have, in the Algiers Declaration, an instrument that they can ignore at their own peril and to the detriment of their cause. Their cause is no more an isolated one and is at the behest of the Namibian government and its German counterpart. Certainly this is the juncture where the Namibian government awakens from its illusion and throws the JD where it belongs, the dustbin of post-colonial Namibian-German bilateral diplomatic relations, where it has disposed of many other failed projects, like the Special Initiative. Is the Algiers Declaration a clear signal that the JD Chickens are coming home to roost? The title to this week’s column seems to eventually suggest itself.
