Johann Wadepul or not and with him or without him at this juncture the German Foreign Minister’s recent international diplomatic itinerary, which included a visit to Namibia’s southern neighbour of South Africa, but excluded Namibia herself, would have made no difference whether Namibia was included in it or not.
As the saying goes you reap what you sow.
It would not have been necessary for Wadepul to come to Namibia. For what? One cannot but ask.
Wadepul’s visit to South Africa went unnoticed especially to the descendants there.
This could have been different if the descendants in South Africa and their government were and have been an integral part of the so-called negotiations that since 2015 have been going on between Namibia and Germany.
Ideally by now, given coordination and the requisite diplomatic mobilisation, Germany ’s intransigence regarding the reparations demand of the descendants, Germany should have been a pariah State.
Meaning wherever and whenever any of her government officials landed, be it in Namibia, Botswana and/or South Africa, they would receive a hostile reception.
But this is and has not been the case because the descendants in Botswana and South Africa have, by deliberately design by the German government, and its Namibian counterpart, been kept at bay and in the dark from the demand for reparations.
Which has been kept exclusively an issue, for that matter, between only the two governments as state actors.
Despite the fact that this matter is essentially not between the two state-actors but between the Ovaherero and Nama wherever they may find themselves, and the German government.
Bi-National Commissions of Cooperation exist between Botswana and South Africa.
Which and where ordinarily the demand of the descendants from all three countries, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa, should have been on the agenda.
But by deliberate omission and non-commission, this demand has been kept off the agenda of the two bi-national commissions.
From the perspective of the Ovaherero and Nama reparations movement there has been no ambivalence that the GENOCIDE committed was committed against all forebears.
Hence the cause for restorative justice is indivisible.
Reparations as much if and when realised one day.
Thus, there must and should be no difference, discrimination and/or divisibility between Namibia, Botswana and South African descendants.
Giving rise to the concern currently by fellow descendants in Namibia of Namibia having been excluded from the recent visit of the German Foreign Minister.
If all countries and their descendants have from the word go been engaged in this cause in an coordinated way, such question would not have arisen.
As when Wadepul, or any German government’s and or state official finds herself/himself in South Africa, Botswana or Namibia, descendants and their respective governments would have raised and confronted whoever with their demand.
But as it has turned out, for reasons only the Namibian government knows, it has kept the matter to itself.
Excluding in the process not only the descendants in Botswana and South Africa, but also their respective governments.
But this isolationism is coming to an end sooner than the Namibian government would and could imagine.
As restorative justice, following the United Nations General Assembly historic resolution on the Transatlantic Slavery is destined.
No longer to be dealt with on a bilateral basis, like Namibia has been doing with disastrous outcomes like the neo-colonial Joint Declaration (JD).
Meaning that any country’s framework shall henceforth be subjected to African continental if not international standards, principles and guidelines of what true reparations are and represent.
Similarly, negotiations which have been going on between Namibia and Germany, must now be submitted to review by this framework.
If both the Namibian government and its German counterpart thought they would get away with murder with the Joint Declaration (JD), chickens are eventually coming home to roost.
In this context, whether Wadepul was in Namibia or not during his recent visit it is immaterial.
Because the descendants, especially in Namibia, are now resolute and determined that they shall no longer allow their Namibian government, and its German counterpart, to take their cause for granted as has been the case all along.
By lobbying for and submitting their cause and making it part and parcel of the ongoing and revitalised initiative for restorative justice for all African People and People of African Descent in the Diaspora.
The cause for restorative justice, and as much the cause of the Ovaherero and Nama for reparations for the GENOCIDE committed by Imperial Germany, is now moving in a direction that the descendants are and cannot keep running to both the Namibian government and its German colonial master.
But the other way around with the two governments compelled in all earnest to sit around the table with the descendants.
Not only the descendants from Namibia as has been the case.
But all descendants including the Batswana of Namibian descent and likewise South Africans of Namibian origin.
At a platform no longer dictated to by Germany.
But this can only happen if all descendants in unison are resolute and determined to use this window of opportunity.
Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro is a descendant of the survivors of the Ovaherero, Ovambanderu and Nama genocide, veteran and freelance journalist and reparations advocate and adherent of restorative justice.
