Herero and Nama genocide
The Herero and Nama genocide or the Namibian genocide was the extermination of the Herero and the Nama people in German South West Africa by the German Empire between 1904 and 1908. Around 40,000 to 80,000 Hereros and 10,000 Nama died.
Facing the consolidation of German rule and attempts to subjugate Africans into a subordinate labor reserve, Herero chief Samuel Maharero launched a surprise uprising on 12 January 1904. Initially the Herero uprising was a success, although colonists were enraged at being defeated by a people they considered inferior. After reinforcements arrived from Germany, the Herero were surrounded and routed at the Battle of Waterberg in August.
During the following months, they fled into the Omaheke Desert where a majority died from thirst, starvation, or small-scale German massacres. German commander Lothar von Trotha ordered the execution of all Herero men, but in practice, women and children were also killed. After December 1904, German policy was to incarcerate all Herero people into concentration camps, where around half died due to lack of shelter and food, combined with slave labor. A number of racist laws were passed.
The Nama initially fought alongside the Germans including at Waterberg. However, they revolted against the Germans in September 1904 which lasted until 1908. German soldiers rounded up any Nama they could find and Trotha issued a second extermination order on 22 April 1905 this time against the Nama.
In 2015, Germany acknowledged that a genocide had been committed. Later negotiations with the Namibian government led to a controversial deal in 2021, according to which Germany would pay out 1.1 billion euros in the form of ex gratia development aid, while rejecting any legal responsibility for the genocide.
Background
The Bantu-speaking Herero people migrated to present-day Namibia from the north as early as the twelfth century. They lived mainly as pastoralists, with cattle central to their culture and economy, indicated by the name Herero meaning "possessor of cattle". For much of the nineteenth century, they were embroiled in conflict over grazing land and water with neighboring Khoikhoi groups, including the Nama people, to the south. From the 1840s, the region began to be drawn into global commercial networks with the arrival of Rhenish missionaries and expansion of the Cape Colony to the south. San peoples were also displaced from the Cape Colony and driven northwards into Namibia, increasing conflicts.German colonization
In 1884, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck claimed Namibia to combat British expansion into the region. German rule was initially nominal, with the first soldiers arriving in 1889. Significant numbers of settlers did not begin to arrive until the mid-1890s. The German presence was so minimal that the two main tribal groups in the area, the Herero and the Nama, viewed each other as the primary threat, while for the Germans, an alliance between the two warring tribes could have threatened the existence of Germany's only settler colony.The territory's third governor, Theodor Leutwein used pragmatic methods to achieve the destruction of the indigenous peoples' political independence and their reduction to a servile labor reserve. Because military conquest would have cost more than the German government was willing to spend, he minimized outright warfare by using a divide and rule strategy where indigenous tribes were forced to accept protection treaties against each other.
When these treaties were broken, Leutwein used his remaining allies to defeat the rebellious tribe and take their land and cattle, which was sold to settlers for a profit. In 1896 and 1897, he led campaigns that ended with the virtual extermination of the Khaua and Afrikaners. Leutwein focused on expanding the colonial infrastructure, such as roads, railways, and forts, to open the land for more economic development and European settlement. Due to lack of success with prospecting, many colonists instead switched to accumulating land and cattle placing them in direct competition with Herero. Large amounts of land were bought up by speculators and European cattle farmers. The Herero were further weakened by a rinderpest epidemic that killed the majority of their cattle and exacerbated intratribal conflicts, while forcing many Herero to starvation, indebtedness, or becoming migrant laborers.
Grievances
The Herero's key grievance and the structural condition which led to the outbreak of the war was the existence of an unfair judicial system. If a white person was killed, multiple Africans would be executed as punishment. In contrast, settlers could kill natives with effective impunity because African lives were deemed worthless, so the judicial system would find a way to exonerate or issue a minimal punishment. The result was widespread murder and rape against Africans by settlers, which weakened the colonial administration's monopoly on violence and overall authority. The victims were powerless to get redress for these crimes because police and soldiers were among the perpetrators. German employers were legally allowed to beat and flog indigenous employees.At the same time, Leutwein began to implement a strategy to concentrate indigenous people on reserves. Although some studies have emphasized struggle over land as the central cause of the uprising, the colonist population was not quickly increasing in 1903 and other research has shown that the land question was not urgent.
The Herero uprising
The Herero uprising was an act of desperation to retake their land, cattle, and political independence; as well as exact revenge. Historian Matthias Häussler writes that the war was limited in means but not ends; the Herero wanted the permanent end of German colonization. On 25 December 1903, a company of Schutztruppe had been diverted to the far south of the colony to quell an unrelated uprising by the Bondelswarts Nama, leaving the north stripped of troops—there were only 770 German soldiers in the entire colony.The Herero clans seized the opportunity to rebel on 12 January 1904. The uprising caught the colonists by surprise and saw a stunning success at first: farms and businesses were plundered, and 123 or as many as 160 Germans were killed. Most of those killed were farmers and traders; German soldiers were only one-tenth of the dead. The rebels generally spared women, children, missionaries, and white people who were not German. Individual attacks were planned to take advantage of deception and surprise, and the Herero seized weapons and supplies. The Herero killed men, took anything useful, razed buildings, and attempted to destroy everything else, in an attempt to destroy colonists' economic existence and force them to depart Namibia forever. The occurrence of mutilation, particularly castration, was in revenge for the sexual violence that had previously been visited on Herero women.
Many aspects of the war are poorly understood due to lack of sources dealing with the Herero perspective. Conventional wisdom holds that the attack was planned long in advance, perhaps at a 1903 tribal meeting. However, historian Jan-Bart Gewald has instead argued that it was provoked by Ralph Zürn, a German officer stationed in Okahandja, where Herero chief Samuel Maharero also had his headquarters, and that other Herero gradually joined in as Maharero persuaded them to. Regardless, some Herero hesitated to join in the uprising and this doomed the effort, if it had any chance of success to begin with. Häussler argues that the uprising failed in the first few hours as there was no serious effort to seize German forts or towns.
Settler response
In response to the attacks, the German settlers declared themselves victims and demanded full compensation of their losses from the imperial treasury. Public opinion in Germany, however, held them partly responsible for provoking the war. Exaggerated and fabricated atrocity propaganda portraying Herero as animal-like sadists spread widely with settler newspapers such as the playing a significant role in inciting violence. However, many colonists also welcomed the opportunity to decide the disputes over land and property in their own favor. Many colonists supported anything from the disarmament and dispossession of all Herero, to their imprisonment or even mass extermination. Leutwein, who argued against more radical proposals, believed that the Herero had to be rendered "politically dead". At the beginning of the uprising, captured Herero were subjected to hasty trials and quickly executed by shooting for cattle thievery. Women and children were also killed. From February, lynching was more common, and their naked bodies were strung up.Many Germans were lucky to escape with their lives and huddled in improvised shelter, watching their possessions and businesses be destroyed and uncertain as to the fate of family and friends. The society mobilized quickly and reportedly even women carried arms. A large number of men volunteered for the militia, far outnumbering regular soldiers. Although they were later replaced by regular reinforcements, locals continued to be employed as guides and advisers, and the newly arrived soldiers adopted the same values. Panicked settlers started to round up any Hereros they could find, jailing all the women in Swakopmund in concentration camps and sending 550 men to Cape Town. Some were later sold to Cape Colony mine labor recruiters. An extreme desire for revenge took hold among most colonists, which missionaries unsuccessfully tried to quell. Even years later, after any threat had long since been crushed, the colonists' media continued to complain about the supposedly lenient treatment of the few remaining Hereros.
Response from Germany
As news of the first atrocities against Herero reached Germany, socialists raised the matter in parliament. Demanded an explanation, Leutwein admitted that August Bebel was mostly correct in his assessment, but professed that he was unable to stop the violence that was demanded by the public and his soldiers, nor was he able to condemn it under the circumstances. With the German authorities unwilling and unable to control their own forces, violence escalated further on both sides. Leutwein's efforts to parley with Maharero in February failed after an angry backlash from both colonists and his superiors. Even after the arrival of reinforcements in March, Leutwein was unable to defeat the Herero's guerrilla tactics, and endured a series of defeats. The defeat of a great power by African tribes considered inferior was a unbearable humiliation for Germany's leaders.Because his tactical retreat in the battle of Oviumbo was seen as a failure, the German General Staff lost confidence in Leutwein and replaced him as military commander by the general Lothar von Trotha, who arrived on 11 June with orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II to "crush the rebellion by all means necessary". Although Leutwein unsuccessfully attempted to make a separate peace with most of the Herero, Trotha refused offers of surrender. After months of build-up of supplies and troops, Trotha still had only 1,500 soldiers at Waterberg.
After April perhaps hoping to help himself maintain control over the Herero chiefs, Maharero concentrated his forces—around 60,000 people and their cattle—at the base of Waterberg, a mountain with abundant food and grazing land. The Herero forces and supplies were running lower and lower, while the colonists received an influx of manpower and supplies from Germany. Maharero expected that he could stay until at least February; most of the Herero still hoped for a negotiated solution to the war. The concentration allowed the Germans to surround them and defeat them in a conventional battle on 11 August, negating the Herero's strengths at guerrilla warfare and amplifying their weakness in numbers and armament. After a day of battle, most of the Herero escaped to the southeast. Although Trotha declared victory, other German officers present disagreed, as the original aim had been to end the war with one blow.