Germany rejects reparation payments to former colonies

The German government says it will not make any reparation payments to Germany’s former colonies, since there was no international criminal law at the time of colonial-era atrocities.

The former colonies include Namibia, where the 1904-08 Herero and Nama genocide claimed the lives of an estimated 100 000 victims.

The German government’s stance was reported by the newspaper Tagesspiegel, in connection with a parliamentary question from the Green party.

The newspaper reports that the German government says the concept of reparations is not applicable in the context of Germany’s colonial past, hence it is determined to avoid the term “reparations”, presumably to prevent legal claims of incalculable amounts.

Namibia and Germany in 2021 concluded a joint declaration in which Germany acknowledged that what happened in the German colony of Namibia was a genocide “in today’s perspective”.

In terms of the declaration, Germany was set to apologise through its president for atrocities in Namibia and was to give Namibia 1.1 billion euros for reconstruction and reconciliation.

The funds would be disbursed over a period of 30 years and be aimed at development projects to help the descendants of genocide victims.

Germany maintains the money was expressly intended as a “gesture of recognition” and not as reparations – to possibly prevent further legal claims.

A Green party member of the German Bundestag, Awet Tesfaiesus, has argued that the German government’s approach to certain policies or historical issues reproduces colonial hierarchies.

Colonial hierarchies are described as systems of social, political and economic power established during the colonial era that ranked people based on race, ethnicity and class.

“It cannot be our aim to hide behind formal legal arguments, especially not in a republic whose constitution places inviolable human dignity at the center of its statehood,” Tesfaiesus told the Tagesspiegel.

Political analyst Henning Melber told The Namibian that Germany’s clarification that there will be no reparations for colonial crimes committed confirms that the negotiated amount of 1.1 billion euros remains a fixed amount and not open for any further negotiations.

German historian Jürgen Zimmerer says Germany for a long time had complete amnesia when it came to the topic of colonialism.

“The new German minister of culture wants to exclude German colonial memory from official German memorial culture, which should include only Nazi injustice and East German, that is, communist injustice. So we have quite a backlash there,” he said.

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