Kwibuka, a Kinyarwanda word that loosely translates as “to remember,” is a period to pay respect to genocide victims and reflect on Rwanda´s history and ways to overcome its legacies of conflict. This week, Kwibuka will begin once again, but the ongoing pandemic means that this time will continue to look very different than previous years. 

Before the pandemic, Kwibuka involved many large group gatherings and collective commemorative rituals. The remembrance period customarily begins with a night vigil, a traditional funeral rite in Rwanda, taking place on the eve of actual commemoration. Alongside this comes a “walk to remember” that kicks off other ceremonies at commemorative spaces, like stadiums, memorials, state administrative offices. For the government, Kwibuka gatherings provide a platform to pass on political messages. Annual themes reflecting the government´s vision, like “Remember, Unite, Renew,” can be read on banners across the country.

For many genocide survivors, Kwibuka is both an emotionally challenging time and a time to feel spiritually connected with those killed during the genocide through visits to their burial sites. Physical presence at burials and ceremonies like laying wreaths facilitate this connection to loved ones, as Rwandan spiritual tradition holds that communication is possible at the grave of the dead. This mourning generally requires Rwandans to travel to memorials and other sites where their loved ones were killed. Kwibuka can also promote connection within communities through events at the family level, community level, or even within diaspora communities.  In normal circumstances, Kwibuka necessitates travel, large group gatherings, and physical closeness – actions that are unsafe during the pandemic. 

As author Eric Sibomana wrote last year, COVID-19 has led to significant alterations in commemorative policies in Rwanda. It triggered a shift from physical to digital forms of commemoration, and consequently, the number of mourners attending commemorative ceremonies was reduced. Rituals requiring mass participation were prohibited, and other practices such as the night vigil, a walk to remember, among many others, were canceled to adjust the pandemic regulations.

Last year, the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG), the state agency that organizes Kwibuka, called for significant shifts. CNLG Executive Secretary Dr. Jean Damascène Bizimana said, “The official opening of commemoration ceremonies at district levels on April 7 will not take place. All citizens will participate in the commemoration from their homes using TV, radio, and social media.” 

Meetings and ceremonies requiring physical contact and large group gatherings were banned and replaced by video conferencing. In addition to the digitalization of memorial rites, CNLG committed to issuing a daily write-up to help mourners catch up with the aired materials. Officials also suggested alternative forms of commemoration during the lockdown. Some of these were collective, like tuning into commemorative television and radio broadcasts. Others encouraged individual acts of remembrance, like lighting a candle or connecting with community members to discuss genocide memory. 

Shifts in the organization of genocide commemoration speak to debates in the collective memory literature about the importance of physical presence in solidifying the power of memory in sacred space and ritual. For Randall Collins and his theory of interaction ritual, “bodily co-presence” is a required ingredient to establish the collective efference that makes the ritual outcomes of emotionality, solidarity, and norm-setting possible. Through this lens, shared physical presence enables the power of ritual, and to disrupt this physicality is to sap the ritual of its strength.

Many scholars, however, have advanced alternatives to the necessity of co-presence. Jeffrey Alexander and Katz and Dayan point to the capacity of technology to expand the reach of ritual space. Television and radio have the capacity to broadcast rituals to those who might otherwise not be able to access them.

Further, Campos-Castillo and Hitlin theorize that this reach illustrates the inherent subjectivity of co-presence: not all actors experience shared space in the same way. They argue that the power of co-presence is based upon a feeling of unity, which draws from shared attention, emotion, and action over physical proximity. Rather than a binary between present or not, their work illustrates how traditional rituals also differ for those who experience them. 

While scholars debate the impact of shifting to digital forms of commemoration, there are also practical concerns at hand. For example, the pandemic points to the limitations of commemorative mediums that rely on technology. Remote broadcasts are inaccessible to many Rwandans, especially rural inhabitants with limited access to digital platforms or literacy education.

With high rates of illiteracy in rural areas, oral tradition remains a strong means of communication. This suggests the effects of Covid-19 have further isolated the less technologically equipped and illiterate community of mourners in Rwanda, who could not fully participate in commemoration during the pandemic. 

COVID restrictions are beginning to lift across the globe, but this year’s Kwibuka will certainly continue to look different than in pre-pandemic years. While many social scientists point to the potential impact of remote commemorative rituals, such commemoration is different in terms of both power and reach.

And further, the case of Rwanda shows how this difference most impacts those who experience economic and educational marginalization. While the pandemic has shown the potential of remote experiences, such inequities are an important reminder that distanced sites of memory are not equally accessible.

Eric Sibomana is a Rwandan scholar, holder of M.A. in Genocide Studies and Prevention, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Vienna- Austria, and a researcher in the European Research Council (ERC) funded project on “Globalized Memorial Museum,” at the Austrian Academy of Science, Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History. His research interest is in atrocities – war and genocide – their memorialization and musealization politics and dynamics -political, social, cultural, and judicial – attached to them; and in dead body politics. Since 2012, he has worked on national and international projects centered on genocide in Rwanda and its responses – Gacaca jurisdictions, social integration of former perpetrators, and reconciliation. Also, he has served as a research associate at the African Leadership Center (ALC/Nairobi, Kenya) since 2019.  

Brooke Chambers is a Ph.D. Candidate in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Sociology. Her research interests include collective memory, political sociology, genocide, and the law. Her dissertation work examines generational trauma in contemporary Rwanda, with a focus on the commemorative process. She was the 2018-2019 recipient of the Badzin Fellowship in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and a 2019-2020 Fulbright Research Fellow.

At 110 million people, Ethiopia is the second-most populous country in Africa. Tigrayans are an ethnic minority that comprises about 7% of the country’s population. Their regional political party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), has wielded a disproportionate amount of power in Ethiopia in recent decades, dominating the national ruling coalition from 1991 until 2018, during which time an official system of ethnic federalism inextricably linked ethnicity and politics.

The TPLF made many enemies during its years in national leadership; a period characterized both by Ethiopia’s rapid economic growth and infrastructure development and by tremendous repression of individual rights. After current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took power, he embarked on a series of reforms that earned him international praise.  At the same time, tensions were brewing. Many Tigrayans were expressing skepticism that Ethiopia was trending in the right direction.

When TPLF forces attacked the national military’s Northern Command in early November 2020, Abiy sent Ethiopian government forces to Tigray. They were joined by Amhara militia groups and, within weeks, by Eritrean forces coming from the north.

The Ethiopian government’s official position is that “rule of law measures” or “law enforcement operations” are being carried out against the TPLF “criminal clique.” They claim military operations ended in November. However, the ongoing, full-scale military incursion enveloping the entire Tigray region contradicts this explanation; arresting TPLF leaders doesn’t require airstrikes, artillery, and months of troop deployments.

The perception among Tigrayans is that they are being targeted in an ethnic cleansing campaign. This view is reinforced with each new report of indiscriminate shelling of residential neighborhoods and each new revelation of unspeakable brutality directed towards civilians by armed forces. The total disregard shown by the Ethiopian government for Tigrayan civilians’ welfare has been a notable theme of the crisis. 

Despite a deluge of evidence that Eritrean soldiers have a significant presence across much of northern Tigray, including video documentation and countless firsthand accounts, the Ethiopian government has made no attempt to protect its citizens from their rampage, insisting that the Eritrean forces are not there.

Those like me, who were previously Peace Corps Volunteers in Ethiopia (RPCVs), have been touched by the conflict in a unique way. With some exceptions, most of us do not have family ties to Ethiopia or identify with any particular Ethiopian ethnic group, and none of us are affiliated with any Ethiopian political party. What we do have are deep personal ties to communities where we spent years of our lives. RPCVs who lived in Tigray find ourselves anxiously waiting for news of the fates of people we care about; our friends, neighbors, colleagues, and former students back in the place we once called home, the place where my Tigrayan friends took to calling me zihawna (“our brother”) and wudi adinna (“son of our country”).

In our conversations in recent years, some of my former students expressed doubts about whether they would be safe if they attended university outside Tigray; they feared that being Tigrayan would make them targets for retaliation by those who harbored grievances against the TPLF. When I returned to Ethiopia in 2018, I saw that this trepidation was widespread. I noticed increased security measures in rural Tigray that didn’t exist during my Peace Corps days.

Now, all their worst fears are being realized. The government-imposed telecommunications blackout of Tigray (now only partially lifted) slowed, but did not stop, the gradual flow of information about conditions on the ground to the outside world. Journalists’ access to Tigray is substantially restricted, and some of those who have been able to enter have been targeted for arrest. Meanwhile, humanitarian organizations have inexplicably been blocked from accessing most of the region. 

The current situation in Tigray raises many questions. What is the actual objective of the national government’s military offensive, given that it’s clearly wider in scope than the mere arrest and capture of TPLF leaders? What is the purpose of unleashing Amhara militias and Eritrean forces on the civilian population? Why shut down telecommunications access for millions of people? And what will the future of Ethiopia look like when the war ends?

The world will be watching for the answers.

Thor Hong (MPP ’15) was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia from 2011
to 2013 and a coordinator for the Young African Leaders Initiative
from 2014 to 2015. He lives in Washington D.C.

The figure of 800,000 Rwandan deaths has long been associated with the Rwandan genocide. It has been widely cited in scholarly works, documentaries, museums, and memorials. This casualty figure, while widely cited, is also highly contested. In the most recent edition of the Journal of Genocide Research (2020), this figure is methodologically deconstructed and debated. While the figures modeled in the journal are also contested by scholars, the debates surrounding the politics of numbers raise important questions and concerns about how victimhood is constructed in the wake of genocide and mass atrocity.

As the above quote alludes to, the numbers debate is political in nature. While sociologists, political scientists, demographers, and economists attempt to arrive at casualty figures for the Rwandan genocide, Jens Meierhenrich argues that this debate is inherently imbued with morality and claims of victimhood. This is because, within violent conflicts such as war and genocide, there is a propensity to equate the group with the highest number of victims with true victimhood.

Calculating Casualty Figures

Before diving into the various numerical conclusions of the authors featured in the debate, it is crucial to recognize that these numbers are highly subjective and reflect the myriad of statistical modelling decisions that must be made when deriving these figures. 

All of the authors point to the problematic nature of trying to derive a precise estimate of casualty figures based on the existing data. One of the first hurdles for scholars is calculating a pre-genocide baseline, in which they determine the population of Rwanda as a whole, as well as its racial breakdown.

For example, McDoom (2020) argues that precise figures are impossible for a few reasons. First, the existing data scholars used to derive these numbers, such as census data and population growth models, are faulty. In the period leading up to the Rwandan genocide, censuses underreported the number of Tutsis in Rwanda, in an effort to justify the ethnic quotas that had been put in place by the Habyarimana regime. Tutsis may have also self-reported as Hutu in an effort to avoid discrimination. Furthermore, as Armstrong and his co-authors (2020) explain, many arbitrary decisions must be made in the process of modeling causality, and scholars must place a significant amount of credibility and faith in the aforementioned existing data.

The above chart summarizes the key authors in this debate who have modeled their own casualty figures. It is important to note, however, that several others have weighed into this debate providing feedback on the above numbers and the various methodological approaches. This chart also includes the highly contested numbers of Davenport & Stam (2009), the oft-cited Human Rights Watch Report, and the Rwandan Ministry of Local Affairs’ own numbers (found at memorial cites across the country).

There are a few points worth stressing in this table. First, the majority of estimates regarding Tutsi deaths during the 1994 genocide are around 500,000, with the Rwandan government’s own reporting being an outlier. Interestingly, however, is the vast array of casualty figures of Hutus, ranging from 60,000 to 700,000. It is also important to note that many of these casualty figures are derived from not only direct killings of Hutus, but also Hutu deaths as a result of disease and access to resources. This is a result of living in refugee camps in the immediate aftermath of the genocide.

Why does this debate matter, and should it? 

It is apparent that many of the scholars in this journal point to increased numbers of Hutu deaths. Thus, if the number of fatalities between Tutsi and Hutus is much closer than initially believed, the Rwandan government’s claims of exclusive Tutsi victimhood stand to be challenged. And, if these higher Hutu casualty figures are accurate than perhaps we need to focus on the structure of genocide, highlighting how it occurred within the context of a civil war.

This raises some important questions. For example, as McDoom asks: “Should the killing of Hutu be seen as morally less reprehensible or equivalent?” (2020, 84). And should Hutu victimhood be acknowledged? McDoom argues that recognizing Hutu casualty figures matters for three reasons: it shapes the categorization of violence, it raises questions of the experience of memory and justice following the genocide, and it has implications of reconciliation. As previous scholars have noted (Berry 2018), recognition of a group’s victim status often transfers into distinct political advantages and economic resources. Additionally, by acknowledging Hutu casualty figures, it complicates current perceptions of Hutus as the sole perpetrators and Tutsis as the sole victims of violence. It may go as far to imply that following (or during) the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi, a politicide against Hutus may have also occurred, in which Hutus were targeted for their political beliefs, rather than for their ethnic identity. At it’s very least, however, discrepancies in the numerical figures and identities of victims warrants question the validity of the oft-cited 800,000 casualty figure.

A dispatch to the Omaruru District Commander, for instance, details the separation of Emma, an 8-year-old Herero girl, from her parents as they departed from the capital city of Windhoek. It concludes that “she ran after her parents since she belongs with her Omaruru family.” Emma’s fate remains a mystery to the present day. 

Another collection exposes the bureaucratic extent of German settler-colonial practices in Namibia. In a folder of “native passports” (Paßmarken), I found several lists of all “employed prisoners-of-war.” These records include a person’s name, age, “tribal” affiliation, and the last-known location of their parents. In most cases, officials simply wrote “dead” (tot) with no additional information. Several colonial administrators remarked in documents that these efforts provided the imperial government an “effective means of controlling the local populations.”   

After the arrival of German settlers in Namibia in 1884, colonial officials moved quickly to displace Africans from their traditional lands, first through negotiations and the establishment of so-called “protection treaties,” and later through force of arms. The most destructive effort began in 1904 when soldiers under the command of General Lothar von Trotha initiated the first genocide of the twentieth century against the Herero and Nama, the largest and most powerful communities in the colony.

In what historians now refer to as his “Annihilation Order,” Trotha decreed in October 1904 that:

The Herero are no longer German subjects [and] must now leave the country. If it refuses, I shall compel it do so with the [great cannon]. Any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun or cattle, will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children. Such are my words to the Herero people.

Trotha’s actions resulted in the murder of approximately 60-80% and 25-35% of the Herero and Nama’s pre-1904 populations, respectively. The German colonial government also rounded-up entire families and placed them in concentration camps (Konzentrationlager), where thousands more died from exposure and inhumane treatment. In 1908, German authorities relocated survivors to segregated “native reservations” (Eingeborenenwerften), required them carry “native passports,” and forced them to rely on the colonial government for basic commodities and supplies.

Descendants of Herero and Nama victims continue to lobby Namibian and German political leaders for reparations and the return of their traditional homelands. Their appeals and legal efforts, however, have thus far warranted them few victories.

Any serious historian recognizes the importance of historical context and the necessity for evaluating the past on its own terms. At a time when high-profile media personalities invoke a skewed or blatantly false historical narrative to justify policy on a seemingly daily basis, I am wary of arguments that clumsily rely on unnuanced comparisons.     

But professional responsibility does not abjure scholars the right to call attention to present-day human rights crises, from those fleeing systematic violence in Syria to the reported atrocious conditions and treatment of people in detention centers at the U.S. southern border. Academics in the humanities, in particular, dedicate their careers to the collection, examination, and comparison of diverse source materials in an effort to provide answers to complicated questions. Critical analysis, however, oftentimes leads to uncomfortable conclusions.

We can no longer comfort ourselves in a false logic that regards discriminatory practices against so-called “stateless” peoples as a unique aspect of German history or the distant past. It is incumbent for each of us to continue to learn about the plight of the rightless so as to identify the dangerous potentials of their condition. History does not repeat itself, but a critical evaluation of past events can at least provide us means to learn about the destructive capabilities of nationalism, racism, and collective fears of a so-called “Other.”

The tenets of liberal democracy necessitate that we contemplate the lessons of history. A failure to do so imperils the standing of everyone, but most especially those who have nothing left except for what Hannah Arendt pointedly identifies as their “abstract nakedness of being human.”

Dr. Adam A. Blackler is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wyoming. His current book project, entitled Heathens, “Hottentots,” and Heimat: Southwest Africa and the Boundaries of German Identity, 1842-1915, explores the transnational dimensions of German colonialism, race, and genocide in German Southwest Africa. He is presently co-editing After the Imperialist Imagination: A Quarter Century of Research on Global Germany and Its Legacies, an anthology on German interactions across the globe (Peter Lang, 2020). He will publish “Settler-Colonialism and Its Eliminatory Repercussions in the Nineteenth Century” in A Cultural History of Genocide: The Long Nineteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Collection citation:
Archives:
National Archives of Namibia (NAN) – Windhoek, Namibia

Collections:
Kaislerliches Bizirksamt Windhoek (BWI)
Zentralbureau des Kaiserlichen Gouvernements (ZBU)

Many Rwandans and foreigners have sought to capture this moment through media coverage, memoirs, film, and documentaries. Images of the killings and of refugee processions, of machetes and of bullet holes, are familiar across the world. But for those who grew up in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, the pain of this violence is far more immediate than these decades-old snapshots have the capacity to show.

For many young Rwandans, the genocide continues to have a regular presence in daily life. As a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, I study this generational trauma, or the social effects of conflict that are experienced by the descendants of those who experience violence. I speak with Rwandans in their early twenties about the effects of past violence on their lives. The genocide separated families, destroyed communities, and left young children to make sense of this loss. As one interviewee poignantly put it, “Parenting when you are 28, 29 – you were never a kid. And you never knew how to do this, because you had no parents to teach you.”

For Rwandans born after 1994, this trauma manifests differently for each individual. I’ve met with young men and women who lost most, or all, of their family members during the genocide. As one such woman succinctly reflected, “You feel that gap that you have, always.” These young adults have had to navigate the past twenty-five years while carrying their loss, depending on peers or remaining family members as they find their way. Many young adults who lost loved ones seek to remember through annual commemorations or visits to memorial spaces – for others, the pain is too much to participate.

Some have sought out those responsible for the death of family members, seeking answers or closure. One young man who did so shared, “I [had] to go there and know what was in his mind.” Many children of perpetrators have too struggled in the aftermath of the genocide, with incarceration sometimes leaving responsibility for the household on the shoulders of young boys and girls. The genocide was communally-based and wide-reaching; most Rwandans are personally affected in some way, and they must seek to make sense of this past while they move forward with their lives.

While this trauma has marred the trajectory of so many young adults, our conversations don’t solely dwell in tragedy. Interspersed in our conversations about memory are their goals, joys, and desires for the future. Many hope to be involved with tourism, showcasing Rwanda’s beauty to visitors. Some seek to thrive in the nation’s bustling business sectors, while others seek to create art that captures their journey. And more than anything else, interviewees express a hope for happy families and for peace. As one woman expressed, “What you’re looking is a better country, a better life, a better future.” As we remember the 1994 Rwandan genocide on its 25^th anniversary, those depictions of the genocide, snapshots of the violence and suffering, again come to the fore. And the memory of those lost is essential. But we should also reflect on these next generations of Rwandans, those who live with these scars as they strive for their futures. And we must also reflect that no country is wholly defined by violence. In the Global North, many know Rwanda solely for the 1994 genocide. But these young adults are among Rwandans who are advocating for a future shaped, but not defined, by the country’s past.

Brooke Chambers is a PhD student in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Sociology. Her research interests include collective memory, cultural trauma, political sociology, genocide, and mass violence. Her current work examines generational trauma in contemporary Rwanda, with a focus on the commemorative process. She is the 2019-2020 Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

In the last two decades, the Herero and the Nama have sought justice, recognition and reparations from the German government for the genocide they endured at the beginning of the 20^th century. Recently, they have taken their struggle to an American court, which started hearing their case a few weeks ago. The German government officially referred to the 1904-1907 events as a “genocide” only recently (in 2016) and still refrains from dealing with who was responsibility and rejects calls for reparation. Instead, Germany has attempted reconciliation through other channels, such as providing aid to the Namibian government and returning victim remains that were stored in Germany after the genocide.

The historiography of German colonialism and Namibian history has witnessed fierce debate regarding the events that took place in Southwest African between 1904-1907. Still today, some historical questions remain. This short essay will try to identify the main debated issues of this genocide and will highlight the most important ideas of the historians who have researched this subject.

What have Historians Discussed?

Historiographical discourse about the genocide only began in the 1960s in East Germany, where archives as well as political motivations facilitated academic interest in German colonialism. The meager academic occupation with the war was still evident in the 1980s, when American historian Jon Bridgman stated that “this war has, in a little more than two generations, disappeared from history”.[1] Nevertheless, the scholarship of the genocide has surged since the 1990s. The ongoing historical debate about the roots of the Holocaust, most prominently around the argument for a German ‘special path’ (Sonderweg), as well as the independence of Namibia (1990) and the 100^th commemoration of the war (2004), all contributed to the increasing interest in the genocide. The Herero and Nama War was now described as “the first German Genocide,”[2] “the first anti-partisan war in the history of the German Army,”[3] and “the first German attempt to establish a racial state.”[4] These epithets mirror the transformation of the genocide into a key issue, even a milestone, within the broader history of Germany.

It is important to note that the historical writing about the genocide has mostly been done by German scholars based on German sources. With few expectations, most of these scholars unfortunately largely ignored the perspectives of the Herero and the Nama.

In the last few decades, historians have been engaged with three key questions. The first question is the debate whether the Herero and Nama War qualifies as a genocide (and not, say, a typical, though quite ruthless, colonial war). The second question revolves around the motivations for the genocidal violence and the importance of the ideas that stood behind it. Strongly related to this is the issue of the genocide’s inevitability, and its place within the broader history of Germany. The third question regards the responsibility for the genocide, and is crucial for the current claim for reparations.

First Debate: Was the Herero and Nama War a genocide?

Since the 1960’s, main-stream historiography tended to accept that a genocide was perpetrated during the war, notwithstanding some debate about this issue at the end of the 1980’s and the beginning of the 1990’s.

The first historian to provide a comprehensive research on the genocide was Drechsler in his 1966 monograph Südwestafrika unter Deutscher Kolonialherrschaft: Der Kampf der Herero und Nama gegen den deutschen Imperialismus.[5] Drechsler was the first scholar to claim that the German army perpetrated a genocide (then a relatively recent term coined by Rephael Lemkin in 1944) during the war, and that its atrocities were far more brutal than previously believed. German policies and motivations, coupled with the high death rate, are proof that the events were tantamount to genocide. Drechsler claimed that although a surprise, the war was aligned with the colonial goals of Germany, and enabled the colonialists to use it as an excuse to fulfill their greedy and power-hungry ambitions. Drechsler pointed out that the groups who benefited the most from the war were the big corporations, land and shipping companies, and war-related industries. Drechsler’s work fitted in the East-German criticism of West-Germany and capitalism in general, drawing a connecting line between Imperial capitalism, the Third Reich and the West-German Federal Republic.

Even if Drechsler’s Marxist agenda was at times looked upon with suspicion, his conclusion that the war entailed a genocide was a historiographical breakthrough, adopted by Western historians and remained widely accepted in the academic community today. This virtual academic consensus supported the U.N. decision to declare as early as 1985 that the “German massacre of the Herero in 1904” qualifies as a genocide, and therefore as the first genocide of the 20^th century.[6]

The most significant challenge for this consensus appeared in the second half of the 1980s. In 1985, anthropologist Karla Poewe claimed that the language of extermination used by the military leadership during the war was part of a psychological war, and did not reflect authentic genocidal intent.[7] In 1989, Brigitte Lau, a German-Namibian historian, published an essay that rejected the now widely accepted claim that the Germans perpetrated genocide during the war.[8] Lau argued that the historians of the war viewed it through an Europocentric lens, for example by describing the Herero and the Nama as helpless natives, and the German army as supposedly undefeated. Lau doubted the number of victims calculated by Drechsler and others, and noted that most of the relevant documents about the war were lost during WWI.

Lau’s essay evoked a fierce reaction among scholars, who responded with a new wave of publications that aspired to reaffirm the common historiographical stance about the genocide.[9] The challenge posed by Lau and others, thus, was beneficial for developing and complicating the analysis of the genocidal nature of the war. Scholars paid growing attention to the question of genocidal intent and planning, the use of genocidal discourse, collective responsibility and the participation of the state’s apparatuses in the killing. The solid evidence to support the genocidal nature of the war was summarized, clarified, rethought and refined, and ultimately weakened the revisionary claims of Poewe and Lau, whose arguments were now marginalized and widely denounced.

Second Debate: What were the motivations behind the genocide? Was the context local and specific, or broad, systematic and embedded in German/European culture?    

This question can be divided to two. The first is about the specific reasons that led Germany to conduct a genocide in Southwest Africa. While it is virtually agreed that both ideological and military-realistic aspects existed in the background of the genocide, different scholars have tended to emphasize one over the other. Some scholars stressed the prominent weight of racist beliefs among the architects of the genocide, mostly General Lothar von Trotha and Field-Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, as well as the genocidal tendencies of the German administration and settlers in Southwest Africa. Conversely, other scholars have accentuated the military and realistic sides of the genocide. These scholars claim that the genocide was not pre-planned and the racist views, albeit prevalent, were secondary within the strategic and tactical war policies. Instead, the genocide was caused by the escalation and radicalization of the German military campaign, that happened largely because of the difficulty and frustration of fighting a guerilla war without the right theory or experience to do so. A recent contribution to this argument is the work of Susanne Kuss. Kuss compared the Herero and Nama War to two other German colonial conflicts that were fought in the first decade of the 20^th century – The “Boxer Rebellion” and the Maji-Maji War. These two conflicts, though violent and brutal, did not end up as a genocide. By comparing these three cases, Kuss argues that German colonial military policy depended mostly on local circumstances, and the genocide in Southwest Africa was a result of “the collapse of a carefully planned orthodox military strategy” and not a deliberated intent.[10]

The second issue within this debate about the motives behind the genocide relates to the place of the genocide within the broader history of Germany. This question has been a platform for a heated scholarly debate in the last two decades. The proponents of placing the war within the framework of German historical continuity focus on highlighting the war’s influences on and links with later parts of German history, i.e., the First World War, the rise of Nazism, the Second World War and the Holocaust. One of the leading scholars to argue for continuity is Jürgen Zimmerer, who published in 2011 a monograph named From Windhoek to Auschwitz. Zimmerer claimed that the genocide committed in Southwest Africa marks a historical turning point from ‘traditional’ colonial massacres, committed largely by local or private actors, to state-organized, centrally-planned and bureaucratized mass killings, such as those perpetrated in the Holocaust. Zimmerer stressed the immense importance of ideological precedents that emerged during the war, such as the realization of the previously-fantasized race war and the post-war establishment of a ruling system based on social engineering and ethnic hierarchies, which potentially enabled a foundation for a racial utopia.[11]

Another perspective on the continuity of German history is provided by Isabel Hull. Hull emphasizes German-Prussian military thought as the main reason for the radicalization of violence during the war.[12] She demonstrated how the immense independence of the German Military within the decision-making process in the Empire and its free access to the Kaiser, were crucial factors for the unfolding genocide. By doing so, Hull has put the onus on German militarism, rather than German racism, and thus highlighted the war’s links to the First World War, rather than Nazism or the Second World War.

On the other hand, some scholars have questioned the claim that the genocide represents a German peculiarity, pointing out to the broader imperial and settler-colonial context. Some claimed that the local and regional contexts of an asymmetric war conducted in a settler colony were more relevant than the German peculiar system. For instance, one of the first West-German scholars of the genocide, Helmut Bley, asserted that “South-West Africa offers many parallels to development in other European colonies, and in its outline German expansion followed a well-established pattern of colonial growth.”[13]

Others pointed out that the genocide was not significant in Nazi thought, and that there was a stark difference between the Herero and Nama genocide and the Holocaust. Birthe Kundrus, for instance, argued that “the way from Windhoek to Nürnberg was far, very far.”[14] Parallelism between the Herero and Nama genocide and the Jewish Holocaust is methodologically dangerous, since it may reduce German colonialism “to a mere precursor of National Socialism.”[15] She claimed that European antisemitism and colonial racism have different roots and attributes, and they are two distinct experiences.

Third Debate: Who was responsible for the genocide? 

Even though most scholarship agrees on the fact that genocide happened in Southwest Africa, the question of who to blame is still highly debated. Was annihilation mostly a personal initiative of the military commander in charge, General Lothar von Trotha? And by extension – was it a military initiative independent of, and even defying, the German political leadership? Or, on the contrary, the military policy was only an execution of political orders or – at least – mindset?

Most historians agree that either way, General von Trotha’s role was extremely significant to the unfolding of the genocide. It is also agreed that German military high command favored, or at least did not actively oppose, von Trotha’s tactics. It is also commonplace that the German government in Berlin and the administration in Southwest Africa had reservations about the genocidal violence, but the stances of the Kaiser, Wilhelm II, are still contested.

The evidence is ambiguous. On the one hand, it was the political authority that ordered to halt the extermination policy conducted by von Trotha and supported to a large degree by the German military high command in Berlin. There were also strong voices in the German government, the colonial administration and among German settlers that vehemently opposed the mass killings, and blamed von Trotha personally.

On the other hand, as mentioned, von Trotha had the support of high officials in Berlin, and claimed that the Kaiser himself gave him the green light to suppress the Herero revolt by any means. Scholar Jeremy Sarkin elaborated on the issue of the preexisting genocidal intent, and claimed that the orders for genocide were given to von Trotha by Wilhelm II before the former was sent to the colony.[16] Sarkin was criticized for basing his argument on scant material and overinterpretation, but his claim is significant as it raises the question of responsibility and therefore contributes to the present debate about reparations.

In addition, as Bley contended, the second phase of the genocide which included mass confinement in concentration and labor camps was mostly committed by civil authorities and not by the German military.

Conclusion: New Directions?

The scholarship about the Herero and Nama War has evolved and grown in the last two decades. Memory of the war has not disappeared as was claimed in the 1980’s. Yet, many aspects of the war still require a better scholarly focus.

First, there are still some more “classic” issues which have not yet been explored. Biographies, especially full scale and academic ones, of the main figures behind the war are still rare. Comprehensive biographies of Lothar von Trotha or Hendrik Witbooi are warranted.

Second, some historical groups still have not received appropriate attention. Especially the victims. Only two significant works were published about the Herero and only one about the Nama. The German settlers, a prominent group during and after the genocide, hardly received designated focus by scholars, who tend to focus on the German authorities and institutions. The role of the settlers in the genocide is crucial, since it is intimately connected to the question of responsibility. In addition, the role of other indigenous groups, such as the Ovambo, during the genocide are also largely unexplored.

Furthermore, granting the war and Southwest Africa in general more global as well as local perspective is necessary. The war has been well researched vis-à-vis the German metropole, and is well-placed within the framework of German history. Nevertheless, it was hardly put in the global context. Comparative research is still very limited, and the war was not fully positioned within the broader history of Settler Colonialism as well as the history of global colonial wars. The war is also required to be examined in relation to the local histories of Southern Africa and Namibia specifically. Scholarship has yet to examine the war’s long term, post-German implications on the balance of power in the broader Namibian society, as well as the influence of the war on other societies in the region, native and European alike.

Asher Lubotzky is a PhD student in the History Department at the University of Indiana, focusing on Africa

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[1] Jon Bridgman, The Revolt of the Hereros, Los Angeles, CA, University of California Press, 1981: p. 1. More than a decade later, Bridgman’s statement was criticized by Gesine Krüger for his disregard of the Herero memory. Krüger, pp. 14-15.

[2] Gesine Krüger, Kriegsbewältigung Und Geschichtsbewusstsein, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999: p. 7.

[3] Walter Nuhn, Feind überall: Der Grosse Nama-aufstand (hottentottenaufstand) 1904-1908 In Deutsch-südwestafrika (namibia): Der Erste Partisanenkrieg In Der Geschichte Der Deutschen Armee, Bonn, Bernard & Graefe, 2000.

[4]  Jürgen Zimmerer, Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz?, Berlin, Lit, 2011: p. 23.

[5] Horst Drechsler, Südwestafrika unter Deutscher Kolonialherrschaft: Der Kampf der Herero und Nama gegen den deutschen Imperialismus (1884 – 1915), Berlin, Akad. -Verlag, 1966.

[6] See paragraph 24 of the UN Whitaker Report, 1985: “UN Whitaker Report on Genocide, 1985, paragraphs 14 to 24, pages 5 to 10”, <http://www.preventgenocide.org/prevent/UNdocs/whitaker/section5.htm#p17> [accessed 10 December, 2017].

[7] Karla Poewe, The Namibian Herero: a History of the Psychosocial Disintegration and Survival, New York, E. Mellen Press, 1985. Poewe relied on a questionable publication by Gert Sudholt which appeared in 1975, and has been since harshly criticized by most of the experts of German colonialism.

[8]  Brigitte Lau, “Uncertain Certainties. The Herero–German War of 1904”, Mibagus, 2 (1989).

[9]  See for example: Tilman Dedering, “The German-Herero War of 1904: Revisionism of Genocide or Imaginary Historiography?”, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1993): pp. 80-88; Werner Hillebrecht, “‘Certain Uncertainties’ or Venturing Progressively into Colonial Apologetics?”, Journal of Namibian Studies, 1 (2007): pp. 73-95.

[10]Susanne Kuss, German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2017. p. 4.

[11] Jürgen Zimmerer, Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz?, Berlin, Lit, 2011.

[12] Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2005.

[13] Ibid: p. xvii.

[14] Kundrus, Phantasiereiche: p. 126.

[15] Kundrus, “From the Herero to the Holocaust”: p. 300.

[16] J. Sarkin, Germany’s Genocide of the Herero: Kaiser Wilhelm II, his General, his Settlers, his Soldiers, Woodbridge, Currey, 2011.

Three years ago I wrote about my frustration about the insistence of labeling conflicts in Africa genocides to raise awareness. This debate, I argued, often allowed the international community to engage in endless hand-wringing while people were being killed, displaced, raped, and maimed. Early last month, Voice of America published a story saying that UN investigators thought that the atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo fell ‘short of Genocide.’ Implicitly, this framing implied the “mass rapes, mutilations, and beheadings” though awful would be even worse when occurring within the context of a genocide. They were, rather, “war crimes and crimes against humanity” and a casual reader would be right in assuming that these were somewhat not as bad as a full-blown genocide. Such terminological disquisitions harken back to the infamous “acts of genocide” statement by US State Dept. spokesperson Christine Shelley about Rwanda in 1994. The other end of this labeling spectrum is captured in an article by the Baptist Press about the Middle Belt in Nigeria. In this article, the author framed conflicts in Nigeria as genocide against Christians.  This particular report appears to push to the side the fact that most of the victims of Boko Haram have been Muslim communities in Northern Eastern Nigeria with targets often being Mosques, IDPs, Villages, Towns, etc.

These two cases illustrate not only the politics of naming conflicts in Africa but also the challenges the international community faces when trying to parse out the goings-on during a conflict and evaluate possible responses. How helpful is the term? Tribunals have wrestled with the issue of determining explicit “intent to destroy” a group years after the events and often with copious evidence gathered (see the ICTY). Needless to say, this is an even more challenging task when the events are still unfolding. It often feels like when it comes to Africa specifically, and the Global South generally, there is a race figure out whether or not an atrocity is genocide (and with this just as bad or worse than Rwanda). This is not to rehash old and on-going debates about the usefulness of the term itself. I ardently believe that genocide is the worst form of crimes that can be perpetrated against a people. However, I am wary of the implicit message in framing atrocities such as those in the Democratic Republic of Congo as ‘falling short.’ This implies that there is a race to the top spot of human suffering and only those that make it are labelled genocide, creating a hierarchy of atrocity and human suffering.

j. Siguru Wahutu, PhD is a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society atHarvard University. Starting in 2019, he will be an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU.

Depictions of colonized African peoples from Southwest Africa (DSWA, present-day Namibia), Germany’s first overseas colony, were prevalent throughout the German metropole at the turn of the twentieth century. Tobacconists catered to the erotic fantasies of colonial enthusiasts with images of Herero girls in their advertisements. Coffee companies used portraits of black African women to affirm the quality of their beans. Youth magazines allowed children to escape into “exotic” domains where their imaginations could wander unhindered by “civilized” social expectations. Anthropologists shifted the paradigms of scientific analysis by studying “natural peoples” as faceless objects. Novelists published romanticized accounts of faraway conflicts, a practice that over time made the realities of colonial bloodshed palpable for a continental audience. Though characterizations like these typified the contemporary discourse on Africa and epitomized Europe’s dominance over the continent, they belie the significant degree to which Africans in turn influenced the evolution of German imperial policy in southern Africa.

A focus on the Witbooi Namaqua—the largest ethnic group of the Khoikhoi community indigenous to the Cape Colony (present-day South Africa) and the Bechuanaland Protectorate (present-day Botswana)—offers an occasion to reorient our understanding of the relationship between Germany and its empire in southern Africa. In particular, they illustrate the prominent role of Africans in German colonial history and also reveal how peoples in distant places like Windhoek, Otjimbingwe, and Hoornkrans manipulated German efforts to control affairs in the colony. After the colonial administration raised the imperial flag in DSWA, the Witbooi tested the limits of German power using a variety of methods. They attacked rival communities aligned with the colonial government, rendered trade routes that ran through this territory impassable, forbade white settlers from prospecting on this land, and refused to sell cattle, supplies, and property to imperial forces. The Namaqua’s leader, Captain Hendrik Witbooi, also wrote letters to colonial officers, missionaries, and foreign diplomates where he mused on religious matters, his relationship with rival African societies, and the inherent violence of imperial occupation.

As Witbooi unmasked the realities of colonial life to settlers, German officials grew more determined to neutralize non-compliant African populations and increasingly relied on the colonial Schutztruppe (protection force) to impose their policies. It is not my intention to suggest that Africans made their own conditions worse through acts of resistance. Colonialism was an inherently violent enterprise that pressed entire societies into slavery, economic dependence, and cultural ruin. The conduct, practice, and rationale for imperialism may have differed from empire to empire, but all colonial powers pursued their national goals without the consent of colonized populations. It is also important to recognize that the Witbooi Namaqua were not the only group that challenged German imperial occupation. Many communities fought against German supremacy in Africa between 1884 and 1915. In fact, opposition to foreign rule was so relentless in DSWA that German administrators never gained full control of the colony until after Lothar von Trotha carried out the first genocide of the twentieth century.

Instead, my aim is to counter the persistent narrative that misrepresents colonized populations as passive victims in the face of German domination. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler remind us that European colonial powers “were neither monolithic nor omnipotent.” They balanced a myriad of political agendas, economic strategies, and systems of control to maintain power in their respective empires. Germany’s occupation of DSWA exemplifies this argument in several notable ways. First, the appearance of German officials in DSWA did not immediately transform the political and social dynamics of the colony into one that favored the colonial government. Even after the first contingent of imperial soldiers in the Schutztruppe arrived in 1889, most local Africans, as well as resident German missionary associations, still regarded the Witbooi Namaqua as the most powerful society in southern Damaraland. Second, imperial leaders were at a loss over how to confront and overcome the persistent challenges to their authority. Witbooi’s refusal to accept German rule, along with his stubborn efforts to spread the Namaqua’s authority into central and northern Damaraland in particular, induced policy makers to consider a wide range of strategies. German officials not only tried diplomatic outreach and bribery, but also issued blanket threats—all in an attempt to pressure Witbooi to submit peacefully. When those policies failed, they sanctioned the use of armed aggression to drive the Namaqua from power. As more soldiers and military equipment landed in the colony, the role of the imperial regime grew in size and scope.

Though colonialism was a controversial issue in the Kaiserreich, the increased attention given to Africa in newspapers and political speeches elevated the Witbooi Namaqua’s acts of resistance into a national story. As calls to suppress them grew louder in the colonial and national press, the German government moved to expand its role in southern Africa, culminating in its declaration of DSWA as a settlement colony in March 1893. In the span of nearly ten years, what had started as a minor commercial enterprise in a faraway African territory had grown into an important extension of the German state. The Witbooi Namaqua played a significant role in this political transformation: their refusal to accept German authority forced colonial officers to confront their administrative limitations in the colony and to question the purpose behind imperial rule in southern Africa. Most significant, however, the Namaqua shattered the illusion of German cultural superiority. After 1884, settlers and colonial officials quickly discovered that they could not govern merely on the basis of their national convictions or sense of adventure. When the façade of imperial fantasy gave way to colonial reality, German policy makers realized that they needed to increase the scope of the colonial government to subdue the Namaqua. African resistance compelled imperial authorities to react with military force, a response that only a small minority celebrated in Germany. In spite of its controversial reception, however, armed aggression emerged as the principal instrument that colonial authorities used to defend their African empire by the turn of the twentieth century.

* A longer version of this blog post can be found in Central European History, 2017, pages 449-470.

Dr. Adam A. Blackler is an assistant professor of history at Black Hills State University. His book manuscript, Heathens, “Hottentots,” and Heimat: The Boundaries of Germanness in Southwest Africa, 1842-1915, exposes the other side of imperial domination by looking specifically at how Africans confronted German rule. He will start a new position in the department of history at the University of Wyoming in Fall 2018.

What happened to the Libyans during 1929-1934 at the hands of Italian fascists?

110, 000 were interned in concentration camps for four years as a strategy to cut the base of support for the anti-colonial resistance. They were starved and denied medical treatment, and only 40,000 came alive after 1934.

Why is this genocide unknown?

The fascist Italian government denied any international media access to the camps. The allies covered up any trail of war crimes, and the fascist government was never put on trial. Libya remained a colony until 1951. However, since the foundation of Libyan Studies Center in 1977, there has been Libyan scholarship and documentations of the genocide in Arabic. The Center collected archival material and oral history from that year until 2000.

In your talk, you mentioned that the study of Libya in the West as well as in the East is often problematic. Can you explain why?

Most American scholars rely uncritically on French colonial studies which largely remain silent on Libya and the Maghrib at large. Additionally, only few western scholars were allowed in to do research after 1969 because of the new nationalist regime and the conflict with the USA government. Consequently, Libya is viewed through an orientalist and colonial lens which largely focuses on Tribalism, Qaddafism, and anarchy. Yet even Arab and other African and Asian scholars knew little about the genocide because the oral history started a bit late in Libya.

In your talk, you suggested a reframing of our understanding of the Holocaust to understand its connections to colonial genocides. Can you elaborate on this point?

Libya, Namibia, and the Congo were a rehearsal of white supremacy, progress, and the civilizing mission. We must not forget the German experimentation on natives in Namibia, and the Nazi interest in Fascist colonies as a model. The Holocaust then has to be read not as a unique case, but a continuity of colonial genocide in Europe.

What can poetry; proverbs and oral history teach us about this genocide? What are the limits of the archives?

The archive is the product of colonial ideology, and thus to reach the subaltern voices one has to find them in their songs, poetry, and oral traditions

Finally, what drew you to researching this topic?

My own grandparents and parents experienced colonialism first hand in Libya. They told me their stories and struggle for survival as a child.

Miray Philips is a Ph.D. student in Sociology where she studies narratives of violence and suffering, collective memory, and knowledge production on conflict in the Middle East and North Africa. Miray was the 2016-17 Badzin Fellow.

In August, former University of Minnesota graduate student, and current Ohio State professor, Hollie Nyseth Brehm’s work was cited in an article in the magazine ScienceNews. In it, Dr. Nyseth-Brehm suggests that the popular belief that your average citizen kills their neighbor because they were ordered to do so often misses the mark. Citing work by Dr. Nyseth Brehm, the author, Bruce Bower, suggests that people who kill during genocide are motivated by patriotism and the need to protect the homeland from perceived enemies. In the case of Rwanda these enemies were Tutsis. Additionally, killings occur sometimes not because of some high ideal of the amorphous notion of nationhood, rather it is motivated by wanting to pilfer property held by the group identified as “Other”. Another reason why people kill their neighbors is because their family members or friends have already killed. Thus, people may kill because of peer pressure both within the home and their social circles. Furthermore, Bruce also finds that there are differences in gender when looking at the rate of killing and points out that in Rwanda “Hutu women killed on a much smaller scale that the men did”.

Dr. Nyseth Brehm’s work also highlights the importance of understanding genocide and violence as a micro-level event that is affected and structured by local conditions. One benefit of taking this approach is finding that violence during the Rwandan genocide was often worse in areas where a large number of the population was educated. Here, again, we are confronted with the reality that sometimes education is not the panacea to limiting intensity of violence.

j. Siguru Wahutu is a 2017-2018 visiting fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of Minnesota. He  was the 2013-2014 and the 2015 Bernard and Fern Badzin Graduate Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (University of Minnesota).