Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
Lately various instances have been running in and out of State House for what the Presidency has been billing as the conventional, but in the parlance of the first lap of the 8th administration, perhaps it is the business unusual of Her Excellency’s democratic credentials of openness, punctuated, among others, by consultations with certain entities.
So far for most of them, if not all of them, in their various and respective hues and sizes, as well as differing outlooks, political parties and/or formations; traditional authorities and/or leaders of traditional communities; chiefs; paramount chiefs; kings – call them what you may. Who seem to have emerged from the consultations, or should one say façades of consultations, self-satisfied? A self-satisfaction that would only take an insider to understand what it derives from and is based on. Is it from the mere opportunity of having been to State House? Or the presumption of Her Excellency offering them the opportunity to get whatever they may have had off their chests? As much as it remains to be seen to what extent whatever they put across to Her Excellency shall ever manifest themselves and/or be reflected one way or the other in any of the government’s political action plan or programme. Which, for that matter, needless to say, is only reserved for only one and the anointed political party, the Swapo Party of Namibia. Like when Her Excellency has been publicly boasting that the Swapo Party’s last elections’ manifesto has now been integrated into the Sixth National Development Plan (NDP6). Never mind what it practically means and how such a thing may eventually be implemented, if ever for that matter. The Ruler Supreme has spoken and/or decreed, and her word cannot but be taken for what and as she has uttered it.
As a descendant of the survivors of the GENOCIDE of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama, one vexed question I would have expected some, if not most, of those who had the opportunity of consultations and/or audience with the President, was the matter of the recognition and/or acknowledgement of this GENOCIDE by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany. A matter our Namibian government has been seized with since 2015. But the seizure thereof with its German counterpart does not seem to have borne any tangible and/or acceptable fruits to this day. This is as far as most, if not all, of the descendants of the survivors of this GENOCIDE are concerned. But ironically few, if any, of the entities that met Her Excellency seem to have raised the matter. Let alone some of the usual suspects for whom just mentioning it, instead of tersely, firmly and unequivocally putting it to Her Excellency, sufficed. That is if the substance of those who may have raised it at all is to emerge one day. But from scanning the media following the audiences, there was hardly any takeaway by any descendant in this regard. Perhaps for these organisations the matter has become moribund, if not hackneyed, and thus trivialised to further crowd their already crowded agenda with Her Excellency with it.
Hold on! The Okandjoze Chiefs Assembly on Genocide (OCAG) also met the President on the 2nd of March. Whether by default as it may have seemed to be. Having only been afforded verbal notice two or three days that eventually, after more than a year of wishing to meet Her Excellency, there was at last an opening for this assembly of traditional leaders. Who have been brought together by their common rejection of the 2021 Joint Declaration (JD) between the Namibian government and its German counterpart. That the two governments and their adherent descendants have been purporting to be offering the ultimate reparations package. But which the assembly, and indeed other descendants, have rejected as mere bilateral development aid between the two governments. That the two governments are indeed entitled to engage each other about. But they should desist and refrain from reparations because the sovereigns on this issue, the descendants of the survivors of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama GENOCIDE, have never seen and accepted it as the reparation that they have been and still clamour and campaign for.
OCAG position was categorical. A reiteration of the rejection of the JD. End of story. And indeed, this was the end of what one would define more as a brief encounter instead of consultations. OCAG’s position, for the benefit of Her Excellency, was encapsulated in a written statement handed over to her. It remains to be seen if OCAG shall ever receive a written response to their written position, in which, indeed, they are not only reiterating their unwavering and uncompromising rejection of the JD. But also mapping the way forward. Cardinal among them is a request to the government to now channel this matter through the African Union (AU) pursuant to the Algiers Declaration that it adopted at its summit this February.
The Algiers Declaration is aspiring to and campaigning for colonial crimes to be codified in international law as crimes. OCAG is thus asking the Namibian government to altogether, forthwith, discard the JD. Last but not least, OCAG is also putting it to all, including the Namibian government, that a national dialogue on GENOCIDE, among and between all descendants of the survivors of GENOCIDE, in Namibia and in the diaspora, is long overdue.
*Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro is a descendant of the survivors of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama genocide, veteran and freelance journalist and reparations advocate and an adherent of restorative justice.
