Germany Apologizes for Its Role in Slaughter of Herero & Nama People of Namibia

On Friday, Germany's government apologised for its part in the massacre of Namibia's Herero and Nama people more than a century ago, and for the first time called the atrocity genocide, as it promised to fund projects worth more than a billion euros.

Following a mutiny against colonial land grabs, German forces slaughtered 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama members in a 1904-1908 campaign that historians and the United Nations have long referred to as the first genocide of the twentieth century.

While Germany has already admitted to having "moral responsibility" for the massacres, it has resisted expressing an official apology in order to avoid compensation claims.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the events of the German colonial period should be named "without sparing or glossing over them" in a statement announcing an agreement with Namibia after more than five years of discussions.

“We will now also officially call these events what they were from today’s perspective: a genocide,” Maas said. “In light of Germany’s historical and moral responsibility, we will ask Namibia and the descendants of the victims for forgiveness."

He added that Germany has promised to pay 1.1 billion euros in restoration and development programmes that would directly benefit genocide survivors.

According to Namibian media on Thursday, the money would be used to fund infrastructure, healthcare, and training programmes over a 30-year period.

Following Britain and France, Germany was the third largest colonial power, having lost all of its colonial territory after World War I. For decades, however, its colonial history was overlooked as historians and politicians concentrated their attention on the legacy of Nazi crimes, notably the Holocaust.

In 2015, it began formal negotiations with Namibia over the issue and in 2018 it returned skulls and other remains of massacred tribespeople that were used in the colonial-era experiments to assert claims of European racial superiority.

It began formal negotiations with Namibia on the subject in 2015, and in 2018, it returned the skulls and other remains of slain tribespeople used in colonial-era experiments to assert claims of European racial superiority.