The End Of Colonialism In Africa

THE 1950's The 1950's was a time of accelerated political change. At the end of the Second World War there were only three independent countries in Africa:

• Liberia, which had been founded by freed slaves and declared itself independent in 1847.
• Ethiopia, which was an ancient territory, had never been colonized by a European power despite the attempts of the Italians in the 1880's and 1930's
• and Egypt, which had achieved independence in 1922.In 1951

Libya was granted independence from Hitler's former ally, war-weary Italy. Egypt renounced its historic control over Sudan. Britain had little choice then but to grant full independence to Sudan in 1956. In the same year, Morocco and Tunisia became independent of France.

Leaders of Indian Nationalism, Ghandi and Nehru, 1948.

INFLUENCES: INDIA: The country which made the biggest impact on African nationalists was India which was led to independence by Mahatma Gandhi in 1947. His confident doctrine of nonviolence, and his track record battling racial prejudice in South Africa made him a hugely influential model among African nationalists. He was assassinated in January 1948.

1945 Pan-African Congress , Chorlton Town Hall in Manchester England.

PAN-AFRICANS: Already in 1945 at the 5th Pan African Congress in Manchester, UK, there were a number of delegates who were later to bring their countries to independence. These included Hastings Banda (later President of Malawi), Kwame Nkrumah (later President of Ghana), Obafemi Awolowo (later Premier of the South West Region Nigeria) and Jomo Kenyatta (later President of Kenya).

But nobody could have predicted that within fifteen years of the meeting in Manchester, the vast majority of African countries would be independent. In the early 1950's, Julius Nyerere estimated that complete independence would not happen until the 1980's.

AFRICA & USA & SOVIET UNION: On the world stage America wanted an end to colonialism for reasons of free trade (easy access to African markets which had previously bought from Europe) and political influence. The Soviet Union wanted an end to colonialism and capitalism for reasons of ideology and to increase its sphere of influence.

While African nationalists took a pragmatic view of soviet style communism, the British government was concerned about the Soviet influence on Africa. And where African nationalists met with resistance or persecution from Europe, many welcomed the support and interest of the Soviet Union.

AFRICA & USA & SOVIET UNION: "…generally speaking, it is the detribalised native who responds best to communism, as he misses the narrow confines of tribal life and a leader on whom to bestow loyalty. This gives the Rand, with its inflow of immigrant labour, its special importance in the diffusion of communism in Africa…

Communism has made the least progress where the influence of Islam is strongest. Though in the past year the communist picture has been one of retrogression on some fronts, there are signs of increased interest in anti-colonialism from Moscow." --British Foreign and Colonial Office, Notes on the Aims, Strategy and Procedure of the Communists in Africa, 1 May 1950.

(source: BBC)

THE WIND OF CHANGE (the end of colonialism in africa) 1

An Exhibition Has Uncomfortable Echoes Of The French Colonial 'Human Zoos'

On Monday 2 May 2011, Charles Forsdick and David Murphy reported in the UK Guardian, "France must acknowledge its colonial past: An exhibition of the cultures of France's overseas territories has uncomfortable echoes of colonial 'human zoos": In 1931, the surrealists declared "Do not go to the Colonial Exhibition", and called on the French to boycott that vast display of imperialist propaganda in the east of Paris. The Exposition coloniale of 1931 placed the various peoples of France's empire on display in one of the final and perhaps the most significant examples of "human zoos", those ethnic exhibitions that accompanied the imperial projects of the mid-to-late 19th century.

Eighty years later, a year-long celebration of France's overseas territories (la France d'outre-mer) includes a month-long Jardin en outre-mer – which opened on 8 April – at which spectators can "visit" the cultures of these far-flung corners of the republic. Inexplicably, this garden is located in the Jardin d'Acclimatation , a site inextricably connected to the phenomenon of the human zoo, which has led scholars and activists to declare "We will not go to the Jardin d'Acclimatation".

The lack of sensitivity on the part of the organisers is remarkable, for the Jardin d'acclimatation was the major French site for the exhibition of "savages", starting in 1877 with a group of Nubians. In 1892, an exhibition of Amerindians from Guyana resulted in the death of many of the "exhibited". In total, 34 groups of "savages" or "freaks" were shown in these ethnic exhibitions. The last such exhibit was from New Caledonia in 1931, and among those exhibited were members of the family of the World Cup-winning footballer Christian Karembeu, who relates the story in his recent book, Kanak.

The decision to make 2011 the "year of the outre-mers" was taken by Nicolas Sarkozy in response to the 2009 crisis which saw widespread social protests in Guadeloupe and other overseas territories. Some of the events planned as part of the celebrations indicate a sensitive and informed approach to the culture of overseas France. Unfortunately, though, the scandal surrounding the exhibition at the Jardin d'acclimatation constitutes yet another reminder of the spectral and often undetected presence of the colonial past in France.

In the many articles spawned by the recent introduction of legislation in France outlawing the wearing of the burqa or niqab, for instance, many commentators failed to recognise that the forcible removal of the veil inevitably triggers other historical precedents and associated memories, not least those of women violently unveiled during the Algerian war of independence in the name of a "civilising mission" that deployed the promise of emancipation as an alibi for the retention of colonial rule. To borrow Henry Rousso's term describing the Vichy period, colonialism truly is "a past that has not passed".

Controversial legislation in 2005 attempted state intervention in memorial practices, imposing most notably an obligation on educators to teach the "positive role of the French presence overseas". The "year of the outre-mers" provides further evidence of these history wars regarding the colonial past. Christiane Taubira, MP for French Guyana and sponsor of the 2001 Taubira law recognising the slave trade and slavery as "crimes against humanity", has protested against the exhibition, but in response the minister for overseas territories, Marie-Luce Penchard, answered that "2011 must not serve as an occasion to reinterpret history."

The collective that has come together to declare "We will not go to the Jardin d'acclimatation" argues, on the contrary, that it is dangerous to ignore the past. We are not asking for repentance or refusing to imagine the future. Rather we are convinced that the valorisation of the cultural diversity of the overseas territories must include the knowledge of this past. It is possible for the problematic past of the Jardin d'acclimatation to be transcended by the events planned by the organisers, but only if that past is first acknowledged and not simply ignored.

Pressure from the "We will not go" collective has led the minister, on the very eve of the opening of the Jardin en outre-mer, to invite members of the collective to produce a report on the phenomenon of the human zoo in order to foster greater public awareness of this dark phase of French history. This may be a victory of sorts, but the memory wars show no sign of abating. In France, there is still no museum of colonisation, nor of the worlds born of slavery and colonisation. All that Sarkozy promises as his cultural legacy is the first national museum of French history, due to open in 2015. To reassert national narratives of the past at a time when there is increasing recognition of the transnational nature of history and memory seems profoundly retrograde. It is evident that colonialism and its afterlives will play little, if any, role in Sarkozy's plans. (source: UK Guardian)

1931 - Visit to the Exposition Coloniale

The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus

From Salon Magazine on 9 January 2007, "Venus abused: In the early 1800s, Westerners leered at Saartjie Bartmaan's curvy body and exotic skin. But do we gawk any less today?" by Marisa Meltzer:

The life story of Saartjie Baartman, the African slave who was displayed in Europe in the early 19th century, contains so many layers of oppression to sort through that author Rachel Holmes begins by trying to untangle her name. In “African Queen: the Real Life of the Hottentot Venus,” Holmes concedes that Saartjie (pronounced “Saar-key,” meaning “little Sara”) might not even be the name she was born with, calling the -tjie diminutive suffix a “racist speech act.” Colonialist roots and all, it “was her name in life as she lived it.”

Baartman was born into the Eastern Cape Khoisan, the indigenous herding tribe that once populated part of South Africa. As a teenager, she was orphaned after her father and fianci were both murdered in a colonial war, and sold to a trader, Pieter Willem Cesars. He took her to Cape Town, where she worked for his brother as a nursemaid. Around 1810, once the family started experiencing economic difficulties, they looked to Baartman as their next source of income, figuring that in Europe, where curiosity about the Dark Continent ran rampant, “a pretty maidservant with notable buttocks and a spotty giraffe skin were a winning combination on which to stake their future.”

They settled in late Georgian London, where freak shows touting “the ne plus ultra of hideousness” or “the greatest deformity in the world” lined Piccadilly. As Holmes points out, England was transitioning from a sentimental primitivism — the noble savage — to the popular Victorian notion of ethnology. With the slave trade being abolished just a few years before and the black population of London at about 20,000, their challenge was to make the investment — Baartman — conform to stereotypes and yet also seem like a novelty. They marketed her as a kind of “scantily clad totem goddess,” the Hottentot Venus, sex incarnate. Hottentots, what European traders called the native Khoisan for the clicking sound of their language, “signified all that was strange, disturbing, alien, and possibly, sexually deviant.”

She was objectified in the most literal sense, put on display in front of gaping crowds six days a week, doing suggestive “native” dancing and playing African instruments. Her costume was a flesh-colored silk sheath deliberately cut like a second skin, with copious jewelry at the seams to conceal the fact that she wasn’t technically naked. They also fashioned her a kind of female codpiece, “the effect of its soft folds, fur fringes, and pendulous extensions was to imply that its purpose was to modestly conceal the supposedly elongated labia of a Hottentot woman” — a subject of great interest and speculation among the gawking masses. She became an instant sensation, a subject of countless life drawings (many of which are included in the book), editorials and political cartoons. The London Morning Post wrote, of her body, that “her contour and formation certainly surpass any thing [sic] of the kind ever seen in Europe, or perhaps ever produced on Earth.”

Holmes is so clearly besotted with her subject that her writing can tend toward the florid when describing her (“to behold the figure of Venus, or to hear her name was to be prompted to think about lust, or love”). Baartman physically exists in the story — the narrative is entirely devoted to her — and yet, since she was unable to read or write, very little exists in her own voice. As her story progresses, that absence becomes more and more notable. But perhaps that’s Holmes’ point: As a slave and as a woman, Baartman never did have any kind of agency in her own life. “Economically, sexually, and racially,” Holmes writes, “she was unfree.”

Her supposed liberation at the hands of abolitionists, who initiated a lawsuit to win her freedom, feels like further commodification from a party interested not in her ultimate well-being, but in drumming up publicity for their own cause. It did earn her a contract, read to her twice in Afrikaans, that covered standard demands like medical treatment, warmer clothes, profit sharing and the promise that she would eventually be sent home. “She was not seen as a sympathetic victim,” writes Holmes, who tries unsuccessfully at this point to sell Baartman as a cunning businesswoman who had “outmaneuvered her managers and made herself attractive to eligible bachelors as a woman of means.”

And while there are a few years in England where she managed to escape the probing public — she was rumored to have gotten married or had a baby, though there is no record of either — the arguably most grim period of her life came after this so-called freedom. In 1814, she and Cesars moved to Paris at the end of the Napoleonic era, where she was examined for three days by scientists at the Museum of Natural History, developed an addiction to alcohol, and, at some point, became a prostitute. She died in Paris of either a respiratory disease or syphilis — the records aren’t clear — at the age of 26. Her death didn’t bring her any dignity, either; her body was cast and dissected and became the property of the Museum of Natural History. Her brain and genitals were kept in bell jars just outside one creepy scientist’s private chambers.

Holmes devotes the last chapter to Nelson Mandela’s campaign to have Baartman’s remains returned to South Africa. It’s a reverent coda to the book, but Holmes’ own take on Baartman’s legacy might have made a more compelling end to her story. Holmes never deviates from narrating the story, which she does capably, but her reluctance to write about why she’s so moved by Baartman’s life is ultimately our loss. It never moves beyond a hagiography, and therefore doesn’t really add anything new or particularly timely. We’re left to speculate about Holmes’ motives — her bio says she divides her time between London and Cape Town, and the book is steeped in feminist theory, take your pick — but we’re left with no explanation of why she felt so drawn to this project.

She does hint at a post-Baartman world, briefly quoting Josephine Baker — “When it comes to blacks, the imagination of white folks is something else” — and she mentions the popularity of the bustle among fashionable Victorians. Holmes imagines Baartman would have laughed at buttock augmentation, the fastest-growing cosmetic surgery in the U.S. and U.K. But what does she have to say about Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls” or Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious”? Now we can scoff at the clueless Valley Girls in the intro to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s asstastic “Baby Got Back” (“I mean, her butt, is just so big. I can’t believe it’s just so round, it’s like, out there, I mean — gross. Look! She’s just so … black!”), but does it mean that we’ve come a long way? In the simultaneous lasciviousness and curiosity we’ve lavished on Jennifer Lopez’s posterior, have we never stopped searching for that scantily clad totem goddess after all? We can pat ourselves on the back and feel disgusted by the story, and yet what made people leer at Baartman has the same effect on us today. (source: Salon Magazine )

HOTTENTOT VENUS (the story of Saartjie Baartman) by Monica Clarke, Storyteller

500 Nations - Part 2

500 Nations is an eight part documentary on the Native Americans of North and Central America. It documents from pre-Columbian to the end of the 19th century. Much of the information comes from text, eyewitnesses, pictorials, and computer graphics. The series was hosted by Kevin Costner, and directed by Jack Leustig. It included the voice talents of narrator Gregory Harrison, Eric Schweig, Wes Studi, Edward James Olmos, and Patrick Stewart. "500 Nations tries to crystallize the sweeping events that reshaped North America- one of the largest and most pivotal stories in human history - a story we feel is widely unknown. Often painful, sometimes shocking, but in the end it is simply about understanding." Kevin Costner

500 Nations - Part 2

Exodus Black Colonization and Promised Lands

Yale History Professor David Davis explores the movement to colonize American blacks in Africa and many African-American leaders' advocacy of "returning to Africa." He argues that this must be understood in reference to the biblical Exodus from Egypt and within the context of the voluntary or involuntary "removal/freeing" of such oppressed groups as Jews, Huguenots, and others. But white demands for black colonization, whatever the motives, had the psychological effect of expatriating and "deporting" a people who played an integral part in creating America. Presented by the UC Berkeley Graduate Council. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism presents"

Exodus Black Colonization and Promised Lands

The Diamond Empire: Oppenheimer family's cartel

The Diamond Empire: Oppenheimer family's cartel, Artificial scarcity (1994)

Apology for a colonial brute

MAKAU MUTUA of the Daily Nation reviewed Tim Jeal's book Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer, writes I am surprised that I managed to complete reading the biography Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer without decomposing from revulsion.

Anyone who knows anything about African colonial history cannot fail to be provoked by one of the most relentless and carefully researched works on Henry Morton Stanley, the 19th century journalist-adventurer whose early claim to fame was locating David Livingstone, perhaps the most famous European adventurer, in the belly of Africa.

But if there is any consolation in my labour, it is that the book says more about the West and Tim Jeal than it does of Africa. It is a work that will be despised by many Africans but almost certainly lauded in the West.For a work from a writer who claims objectivity, the book is a concerted, even emotional, defense of the chilling life of a man many Africans would rather forget.

RECAST HISTORY

From the outset, Jeal embarks on a journey of redemption and salvation in which the writer seeks to recast history through the interpretation of a life lived in blood, racial hatred and ignominy. It is all about the white European conquest of Africa. Africans are themselves only accoutrements in this large European narrative of history.A typical example of this obsession with the feats of the so-called discoverers of Africa is the uninterrogated assertion that Stanley was the “first man in history to have followed that great river [the Congo River] 1,800 miles from the heart of the continent.” One finds it inconceivable that Africans themselves had never attempted and accomplished such a feat.

But perhaps to Jeal and his fellow Westerners, Africans do not count as “men.” To Jeal, before Stanley and Livingstone, “apart from the apparently inaccessible central and sub-Saharan Africa, the only significant parts of the planet left unexplored were the equally daunting polar regions, along with northern Greenland and the north-east and north-west passages.”

The allusion is clear: only beasts – or sub-humans – can live in such remote and inhospitable regions.

Even in his narration of Stanley’s early life, Jeal makes implausible apologies for a sad and unforgiving childhood. From his illegitimate, abusive and abandoned childhood, it should be clear that Stanley suffered life-long traumas that shaped his identity for the rest of his life.

Several of these include his proclivity for brutality and sadism, his penchant for outright misrepresentations and impossible exaggerations about his identity, paternity and achievements.

Not to mention his obvious racial self-hatred and desire to be classified as either English and later as an American rather than the Welshman that he was.

But rather than use the inhumanity of British society to explain why Stanley later became a pathological brute – including his racial animus toward American blacks during the Civil War – Jeal instead excuses and minimises these distortions of character.

STRUGGLES MIGHTILY

Henry Morton Stanley was gay?

Jeal struggles mightily to explain away or diminish Stanley’s every perceived character flaw or failure. One curious instance is Jeal’s attempt to swat away arguments that Stanley may have been gay or at least bisexual.

He perceives homosexuality as a problem that must be explained away or discounted. Elsewhere, Jeal states, rather incredulously, that Stanley was not a racist.

This despite the fact that Stanley had murdered in cold blood or flogged mercilessly many Africans who were in servitude to him on his expeditions. What Jeal misses over and over again is the permission that Europeans like Stanley gave themselves as the arbiters over the life and death of many an African.

Particularly troubling in Stanley is Jeal’s failure to situate Stanley, Livingstone and other early European explorers as the pathways to the colonisation and exploitation of Africa by Europe.

In Stanley’s case, apart from his connivance with Arab and European enslavers of Africans, it is impossible to separate him from the brutal fate of the Congo.

It was his work that led King Leopold II of Belgium to the Congo and the utter devastation of the region and its people. It was Stanley who set the example, stage and tone for the brutalities and pogroms of the Belgians in the Congo.

Any attempt that sidesteps or apologises for this inescapable connection between Stanley and colonialism is an inexcusable nod at crimes against humanity.

Jeal makes passing references to what he calls the predicament of Stanley and other early colonialists in Africa. He fails to situate the Stanley expeditions in their right historical context.

Here were hordes of uninvited and invading Europeans on the African continent.

If anything, Jeal proceeds as though the Europeans have a more superior moral claim to Africa than Africans themselves. That is why he tells the story of Stanley from the colonialist’s viewpoint, and treats Africans as fodder in the larger European mission of civilisation of the native.

LITTLE REFLECTION

There is surprisingly little reflection in Jeal’s Stanley about the fate of Africa and the role that the early European adventurists played in its construction.

At the very least, this is either an attempt at amnesia or simply bad scholarship on the part of a supposedly respected author. Since Stanley represents the point of cultural contact – and civilisational clash – between Africa and the West, it behoves the author to deliberate on the meaning of that encounter and its historical meaning.

Rather than lament that some writers now unfairly demonise Stanley – whom Jeal would have us believe was a saintly explorer – the author should have set aside any personal agendas and let history speak for itself. Instead, Jeal writes a political book in defence of a historical monster.

I do not deny that there is a place in scholarship for the reinterpretation of history, particularly of notable figures and their roles. But authors have to be careful that they are not so possessed with the desire to defend their icons that they lose sight of the moral purpose of scholarship.

The evidence of history, including in Stanley’s own words, is so overwhelming that a complete rewrite of the narrative – which is what Jeal attempts – is not convincing. Nothing is served – except the agenda of European exceptionalism – when a writer of repute resorts to such an untenable project.

Nor can racists, particularly of the harsh imperial hue of the brutal 19th century, be easily humanised. If Jeal’s attempt was the resurrection of a humane Stanley, then I must judge him a complete failure.

Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Chair of the Kenya Human Rights Commission

Namibian Skulls to be Returned from Germany

In the Namibian article entitled, "Ovaherero Skulls And The German Genocide Challenge," Bob Kandetu writes, WORD is around that May 28 2011 will mark the repatriation of the skulls of Namibians from Germany, which were exported during the German-Ovaherero wars in Namibia.

The mood is at best sombre among the Ovaherero and somewhat reminiscent of a day in 1923, when the remains of the watershed Ovaherero King Samuel Maharero were awaited from Botswana by train.

Ovaherero men had spent days frequenting the Okahandja train station. When the train stopped, Hosea Kutako signalled in loud voice. ‘Omuhona Uavaza’. A sea of men stood at attention and when the coffin was drawn from the train by men in uniform, hundreds broke down and cried profusely as if in despair. Then thousands escorted the coffin to the Otjiserandu Commando. They were boxed in by hundreds of horse riders. It was a day filled with mourning and reflection for the Ovaherero of Namibia.

It is hard to imagine what will happen on that day when the skulls will arrive from Germany, but there won’t be celebrations. Recently Utjiua Muinjangue reported in her speech during the Swakopmund commemoration of the Orumbo Rua Katjombondi. She spoke of her visit to Germany and reported having seen one of the Ovaherero skulls in the archives of the Albert-Ludwig University in Freiburg. The number 744 was inscribed onto the skull and the accompanying envelope contained a note with the words: Swakopmund: Süd-West Afrika. Muinjangue paused with a hoarse voice; the audience was in deep reflection and their mood was telling.

The Ovaherero await the repatriation of the skulls with mixed feelings. They are guardedly happy that this is happening yet they battle with this pent-up rage too. These skulls were taken from Namibia, Swakopmund to be specific. During the war between the Ovaherero and Germans, men were hanged at Orumbo, their heads were removed and their wives forced to clean these heads so that they can be shipped to Germany for laboratory explorations. Those women who declined the instructions were executed on the spot and their bodies buried in the same graves as their beheaded husbands.

These are the skulls that will be repatriated from Germany and it is no joke that there is rage in the hearts of the Ovaherero men and women at the prospect of receiving these skulls back from Germany. And I intend to mount a campaign for these skulls to be buried in the Orumbo rua Katjombondi in Swakopmund from where they originated, with a fitting ceremony.

Germans packing African skulls to be sent to Germany

Colonialism was armed robbery and even more; it left behind more devastation than benefits for the subjects, the victims of colonialism. The Ovaherero never declared war on the Germans, in fact they could not, because they had no capacity to travel to Germany and declare war on the German throne. They were found in the only dwelling place they had and knew. After the extermination order and its manifestations, eighty per cent of the Ovaherero had fallen and were destroyed. Their properties were reduced to rubble, their wealth expropriated. They reported to a government they did not know and could never have wished for. This gave rise to the thought of John Updike who once said: “The world itself is stolen wealth… all property is theft and those who have stolen most of it, make the laws for the rest of us”.

Traditional Nama-Herero Grave

The Ovaherero of Namibia have all the right to charge the German government with genocide and the German government must shoulder the responsibility. No amount of academic discourse will do the trick. (source: The Namibian, 5 April 2011)

Namibia - Genocide and Germany's Second Reich

the genocide

Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha: "'I wipe out rebellious tribes with streams of blood and streams of money."

The German Emperor replaced Major Leutwein with another commander, this time a man notorious for brutality who had already fiercely suppressed African resistance to German colonisation in East Africa. Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha said, 'I wipe out rebellious tribes with streams of blood and streams of money. Only following this cleansing can something new emerge'. Von Trotha brought with him to German South West Africa 10,000 heavily-armed men and a plan for war.

Central figure Lothar von Trotha with members of his German colonial forces in Keetmanshoop during the Herero uprising of 1904 (Read more:at the Daily Mail )

Under his command, the German troops slowly drove the Herero warriors to a position where they could be hemmed in by attack on three sides. The fourth side offered escape; but only into the killing wastes of the Kalahari desert. The German soldiers were paid well to pursue the Herero into this treacherous wilderness. They were also ordered to poison the few water-holes there. Others set up guard posts along a 150-mile border: any Herero trying to get back was killed.

Kalahari Desert

On October 2, 1904, von Trotha issued his order to exterminate the Herero from the region. 'All the Herero must leave the land. If they refuse, then I will force them to do it with the big guns. Any Herero found within German borders, with or without a gun, will be shot. No prisoners will be taken. This is my decision for the Herero people'.

Herero people being hanged by the German Second Reich

After the Herero uprising had been systematically put down, by shooting or enforced slow death in the desert from starvation, thirst and disease (the fate of many women and children), those who still lived were rounded up, banned from owning land or cattle, and sent into labour camps to be the slaves of German settlers. Many more Herero died in the camps, of overwork, starvation and disease.

By 1907, in the face of criticism both at home and abroad, von Trotha's orders had been cancelled and he himself recalled, but it was too late for the crushed Herero. Before the uprising, the tribe numbered 80,000; after it, only 15,000 remained.

During the period of colonisation and oppression, many women were used as sex slaves. (This had not been von Trotha's intention. 'To receive women and children, most of them ill, is a serious danger to the German troops. And to feed them is an impossibility. I find it appropriate that the nation perishes instead of infecting our soldiers.')

In the Herero work camps there were numerous children born to these abused women, and a man called Eugen Fischer, who was interested in genetics, came to the camps to study them; he carried out medical experiments on them as well.

He decided that each mixed-race child was physically and mentally inferior to its German father (a conclusion for which there was and is no respectable scientific foundation whatever) and wrote a book promoting his ideas: 'The Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene'. Adolf Hitler read it while he was in prison in 1923, and cited it in his own infamous pursuit of 'racial purity'.

The Nama suffered at the hands of the colonists too. After the defeat of the Herero the Nama also rebelled, but von Trotha and his troops quickly routed them.

On April 22 1905 Lothar von Trotha sent his clear message to the Nama: they should surrender. 'The Nama who chooses not to surrender and lets himself be seen in the German area will be shot, until all are exterminated. Those who, at the start of the rebellion, committed murder against whites or have commanded that whites be murdered have, by law, forfeited their lives.

The story of the first genocide of the 20th century; the Namibian genocide. A hundred years ago the German army – many of whom were inspired by racial theories that were to form the bedrock of later Nazi racial thinking, exterminated 75% of the Herero, and 50% of the Nama

As for the few not defeated, it will fare with them as it fared with the Herero, who in their blindness also believed that they could make successful war against the powerful German Emperor and the great German people. I ask you, where are the Herero today?' During the Nama uprising, half the tribe (over 10,000) were killed; the 9,000 or so left were confined in concentration camps.

(source: P E A C E P L E D G E U N I O N 1 Peace Passage London N7 0BT, Britain.)

Namibia - Genocide and the second Reich

BBC's Nazi Documentary . A hundred years ago, three quarters of the Herero people of the German colony of Namibia were killed, many in concentration camps. Today, the descendants of the survivors are seeking reparations from the German government. This film tells for the first time this forgotten story and its links to German racial theories.