Book on 1904 Herero war criticises white Namibians of German descent

THE memories of the 1904 uprising against German imperial rule led by the Herero people are remembered very differently by Herero and German-speaking communities, new research reveals.

The resistance war, which culminated in the Battle of the Waterberg exactly 106 years ago on August 11 1904, is still very much alive in the oral history of Herero communities in the Okakarara communal area, while among German speakers it is still justified as a necessary event to ‘build the colony’ for prosperity, author Larissa Förster claims.She is an ethnologist attached to the University of Cologne, Germany, and she launched her book ‘Postkoloniale Erinnerungslandschaften’ (Postcolonial Memory Landscapes), written in German, in Windhoek recently. Förster had lived for several months at Okakarara and on a commercial farm in 2003 and 2004, doing field research to complete a doctorate on the topic.Her book – published last month – summarises her findings and conclusions that many white Namibians of German descent were told by their grandparents and parents more about the military successes of the erstwhile colonial ‘Schutztruppe’ forces trying to suppress the uprising led by Chief Samuel Maharero than the human tragedy that had nearly wiped out the whole ethnic Herero group.’The people I interviewed in the communal areas told me about the suffering of their ancestors, where the women and children also suffered tremendously escaping through the waterless Omaheke region to reach the safety of Botswana,’ Förster writes. ‘Children were lost and raised by other families when found after their mothers died. I was shown water pans (erindi) where important battles took place and informed about the heroic fights of Herero warriors a century ago by their grandchildren of today.’As such, both the German and the Herero speakers were thus praising the heroic fights and battles of their own people. However, the Germans had done this as colonial masters in war records to justify colonisation and their alleged superiority to the indigenous people. The Herero people remember the uprising as the most central and painful event that their community ever experienced. ‘Many of those areas or landscapes with trees or water pans are still identified, like a horizontally grown tree where German troops used to rest and unsaddle their horses,’ Förster told the audience during the launch. These places still can be visited, touched and identified and have kept war details of a century ago very much alive among Herero speakers. Although some efforts had been made by German speakers to hold joint commemorations of the 1904 war before Independence in 1990, and the centenary event at Ohamakari in 2004 was a chance to truly reconcile and to exchange the different memories between the former foes, this never happened.The demand by Herero- and Nama-speaking communities for the return from Germany of about 50 skulls of their ancestors who were war prisoners during 1904-1908 was a new chance, the author concludes. The skulls were found in boxes in the archive of a university in Berlin.

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