NTLA, Katjiua regroup after court refused to join Germany to genocide case

The legal adviser of the Nama Traditional Leaders Association (NTLA), Lucius Murorua, says he and his clients are studying the judgement in which a full bench of the High Court yesterday decided not to join the Federal Republic of Germany as a party in a case about the colonial-era genocide in Namibia.

Decisions about the judgement will be made once the court’s ruling has been studied, Murorua said.

“The NTLA is genuinely disappointed at this setback of a judgement. We will have to study the judgment carefully […] and, thereafter, make progressive decisions regarding the further prosecution of the case,” he said.

Ovaherero Traditional Authority paramount chief Mutjinde Katjiua says the court’s rulings were by large not favourable to the Ovaherero and Nama peoples.

He says the court concentrated its findings on procedural defects on the applicants’ parts, and some marginal texts of merits.

The merits of a pending application about the genocide are still to be decided, Katjiua notes.

“Our prayer to join Germany and the Council of Traditional Leaders was dismissed, but all other respondents will be joined in the main application,” he says.

He says the applicants will study the court ruling and then decide on the way forward.

“At this stage, be assured of our relentless pursuit to have Germany face justice for the genocide she has committed against our people, and pay reparations.

“We have been in trenches for 121 years. Therefore, a luta continua and victoria ascerta,” Katjiua says.

Political analyst Henning Melber says the ruling came as no surprise and anything else would have turned common international law and legal principles upside down.

He explains that he always assumed the case is about the symbolic meaning and not pursued in the belief that it would stand a real chance that Germany would be served with an order to appear in court.

“More importantly, the main case is a matter which is more meaningful and requires much closer scrutiny,” he adds.

German historian and Africanist Jürgen Zimmerer says the descendants of the victims of genocide not being able to sue the descendants of perpetrators in their own country shows the absurdity of the colonial situation.

“Germany is not taking its responsibility seriously. Meanwhile in Germany the government just passed a framework of memory which deliberately excluded the crimes and the victims of colonialism. It apparently sees Herero and Nama and other victims of colonial genocide as second-class victims,” Zimmerer comments.

In the judgement delivered yesterday, judge Beatrix de Jager decided not to join the Federal Republic of Germany as a respondent in the case in which the court is being asked to declare the 2021 joint declaration of Germany and Namibia on the 1904-08 Ovaherero and Nama genocide as unlawful.

De Jager, who wrote the court’s judgement, also turned down an application for the court to allow Namibian court documents in the matter to be served on Germany in Germany, which is outside the court’s jurisdiction.

However, De Jager ordered that 24 Namibian traditional authorities which are not among the applicants in the case be joined as parties to the matter.

Deputy judge president Hannelie Prinsloo and judge Orben Sibeya agreed with De Jager’s judgement.

In the case pending in the court, Landless People’s Movement (LPM) leader Bernadus Swartbooi, the Ovaherero Traditional Authority, 10 Nama traditional authorities and the LPM are asking the court to set aside former National Assembly speaker Peter Katjavivi’s decision to note the joint declaration in terms of a parliamentary rule.

The applicants are also asking the court to declare the joint declaration unlawful and to review and set it aside, based on it not having been ratified by the National Assembly, and to declare that the joint declaration is inconsistent with the Constitution, a 2006 National Assembly motion on the genocide, and international law.

In the joint declaration, the German government acknowledged its responsibility for events in Namibia from 1904 to 1908, during Germany’s colonial rule of the country, and declared that those events constituted a genocide from the current historical perspective.

The German government also agreed to make an amount of 1.1 billion euros (about N$21.9 billion) available to Namibia as development aid to implement projects as part of reconstruction and development projects over a period of 30 years.

Their main application against the speaker, the National Assembly, the president, the Cabinet, the attorney general and now also 24 other traditional authorities is continuing, and has been postponed to 11 March 2026.

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