• By Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro

Genocide Remembrance Day took place this year, the third time running for some descendants and the first for the Namibian government. This is amidst controversies, reservations and indeed disappointments. With some affected traditional leaders distancing themselves from it, as they have altogether shunned the day. Others who have been for the day, verged on boycotting it, only to decide on the eleventh hour to attend. 

The reason being their exclusion from the programme. Offering the government, which excluded them from the programme, the benefit of the doubt by attending. But their subjects were given no reason for their sudden U-turn. Even how their attendance panned out and was it of any usefulness for them, safe perhaps sparing the government any embarrassment of such a significant group of descendants shunning what it baptized inaugural Genocide Remembrance Day.

The U-turners were the chiefs of the Okandjoze Chiefs’ Assembly on Genocide (OCAG). As a descendant if given the opportunity, I would have advised the respected traditional leaders? To simply on this occasion, maintain their unseen and trust of their subjects by excusing themselves and their loyal benign people from the event, which was about them but turned against them. This by none other than the Namibian government - a johnny-come-lately and pretender for that matter. 

This is regarding the just demand of the descendants of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama, for restorative justice. The government decided to commemorate and observe Genocide Remembrance Day for the first time, instead of complementing and solidifying the sanctity of the day, turning a SACRED DAY that it is to descendants, and indeed their traditional overseers and guardians of the day, being about the near annihilation of their ancestors, just relegated and reduced it into one of its usual official fanfares and jamborees. 

Accentuating its indifference, disinterest and nonchalant attitude and lip service, if not hidden agenda to the cause of Genocide, Apology and Reparations. Highlighted these days by its intransigent, insensitive and arrogant acceptance of the joint declaration (JD).  Blatantly against the best wishes of the descendants.

Despite our continuous rejection of the whole process leading to the JD, which was flawed in many aspects, including the fact that many descendants, if not the majority, were never part of that process. But true to its usual haughtiness, insensitivity and lack of accountability coupled with disdain for descendants’ communities, the government went ahead with the negotiations around genocide, apology and reparations.

This led eventually to the JD, which we have been widely rejected. But it is still arrogantly pursuing its implementation. With the Cabinet of the previous administration, approving it in December 2024. The incumbent President, Her Excellency, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, cannot absolve herself from the doings of the previous administrations, having been part and parcel of them in various capacities. Lately and last as vice president as well as minister of international relations and ooperation. Thus, there is no way that she can claim that she has not been at the centre of the genocide negotiations. 

With the said inauguration of Genocide Remembrance Day recently, the new administration of NNN continued to show the same arrogance towards the affected communities. Ignoring descendants totally except for those who it perceives to be agreeable with it in its own agenda of always playing down the genocide, apology and reparations agenda of the descendants. Because this agenda has never been the government’s but intrinsically that of the descendants as the people the genocide was directly committed against their forebears by imperial Germany.

The government continuing to twist it pretending that it was against all Namibians, if not against itself. Meaning that the Namibian government, surrounding itself with some would-be members of the affected communities, with no mandate of their purported communities, has been pushing none other than its own agenda. The end result being the JD. 

One needs looking no further to see the continued attitude of the government and its leaders towards the broader issue of genocide, apology and reparations, and its entrenched arrogance to the descendants and affected communities, than to the process leading to the envisaged inauguration. In which missions were belatedly hurriedly dispatched to the regions ,apparently to canvass the input of traditional leaders.

Selectively so, for that matter, in that only those leaders, community, traditional leaders the government thinks are agreeable with its own agenda, were approached. Safe for trying to also involve other traditional leaders, just to placate and legitimize its mysterious self-centered agenda. 

As was reflected in the programme, no self-respecting descendant, could any way identify with. Because there was nothing for the descendants to identify with, except it’s terming per se: Genocide Remembrance Day.

It was the usual government/State political razzmatazz, which in the past, has rendered many an important historic days, like Africa Day, also observed last month, 25 May. Just for the government/State to indulge in dining and wining with its usual suspects, the selected few apparatuses. 

This is what the Namibian government has deliberately planned, engineered and destined, to condemn and doom Genocide Rememebrance Day. Because Genocide means absolutely nothing to it and its cohorts. With The President programmed the chief descendant, just like presidents have been made or been making themselves chief mourners at many an official funerals, relegating the descendants themselves to mere spectators at their own vigils and in their mourning. 

Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro is descendant of the survivors of Imperial Germany’s Genocide against the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama.