Please allow me to respond to an article published in Namibian Sun on 6 May under the heading ‘28 May Is Not the Date the Concentration Camps Were Ordered to Close’ by Mitiri Festus U Muundjua.
Muundjua is a person I respect.
However, without checking the facts with Swanu of Namibia or with me, he seemingly preferred to play to the gallery.
It calls for a rejoinder to dispel the myths about the supposed ‘non-existence’ of the day of 28 May in 1908 in respect of the closure of the concentration camps.
The rejoinder will also demonstrate that 1 April 1908 – that Muundjua purports to be the closure of concentration camps – is a fallacy.
Without bothering you with myriad archival sources, let me just refer you to a source I trust: “(T)he closing of the concentration camps on 28 May 1908” in Namibia and Germany: ‘Negotiating the Past’ (Koesler, 2015, pg 1).
Also note: In 1908 (28 May), the German colonial administration dissolved the concentration camps that had been erected by order of Berlin on 9 December 1904.
MAY WE ALL AGREE
Muundjua says the month of May was never mentioned in literature related to the concentration camps.
On the contrary, May is mentioned several times in documents at the national archive.
If you direct your search to the publication ‘Akte 456 des Zentralbureaus des Gouvernements von Deutsch-Südwestafrika’, you may find pages of interest.
The order to close concentration camps, starting on 27 January 1907 to coincide with birthday of the Kaiser, never materialised on the envisaged dates.
The orders to close the camps in 1908 were postponed several times because of technical and logistical constraints.
For example, the planned closure on 1 April 1908 was postponed first to 15 April and finally to 28 May, as noted in the national archives.
Furthermore, in anticipation of the imminent release of the prisoners, the colonial secretary Bernhard Dernburg addressed the Bundestag on 19 May 1908 on what he thought to be the relations between prisoners to be released and the new employers, including the role of the native commissioners in this regard.
This shows again that the month of May was mentioned in this regard several times.
The work of Gerhard Pool on Samuel Maharero referenced in the Muundjua article stopped at the original order of 18 January 1908, and did not conduct follow-up research to establish if it was implemented on that day or not.
SPECTRES OF THE PAST
Lest we forget, on 26 April 2016, in the National Assembly, I, on behalf of Swanu of Namibia, dared to challenge the spectres of our past.
The unanimous agreement reached in March 2020 by all political parties in parliament to designate 28 May as Genocide Remembrance Day was preceded by countrywide inclusive consultations with all the stakeholders.
On this basis, Muundjua, as then patron of the Ovaherero and Ovambanderu Genocide Foundation supported the foundation’s submission to the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, stating that 28 May “is a day that is common to especially the foremost affected communities – the Ovaherero and Nama people – who were incarcerated in those concentration camps, in which many of them succumbed”.
He is now abandoning this position?
If he continues on that trajectory, we are likely to witness further disunity and ruptures among the Ovaherero people, and also between the Ovaherero and Nama people.
WE WILL NOT FORGET
The other equally important days on the genocide timeline – including 12 January, 22 April, 12 June, 11 August, and 2 October – will still be commemorated at local level as has been the case over many years.
Therefore, they are not disturbed by the adoption of 28 May.
As per the parliamentary resolution, we now need to support amendments to school curricula to include genocide studies, and support the erection of monuments at genocide sites.
Advocacy to amend our Constitution, or at least the preamble, to include recognition of the genocide is imperative at this stage and should be embarked upon.
The government should approach the United Nations to grant this day observance status similar to the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Holocaust and the genocide Srebrenica.
We can only achieve reparatory justice if we proceed on the basis of a unified front between those advocating for Ovaherero and Nama genocide reparations.
– Usutuaije Maamberua is a member of the Namibian parliament.
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