Silence is the key word of two similar but different gestures: the German recognition that “it was genocide” at the beginning of the last century in Namibia, under the banner of ruthless colonization, and the admission of Emmanuel Macron on the “responsibility French “in the Tutsi genocide that took place twenty-seven years ago in Rwanda.
The silence has finally been broken, because the government of Berlin – with an intervention by the Foreign Minister Heiko Maas – has asked the descendants of the victims of the Herero and Namas for forgiveness for the atrocities suffered. And about what happened in 1994 in Rwanda (when France found itself on the side of a genocidal regime and armed the Hutu militias responsible for the continuing massacres that bloodied the African country in 1994) silence has prevailed too long. Until last Thursday.
But there is another silence impossible to fill with voices: millions of men, women and children – both in Namibia and in Rwanda, if you will – who, borrowing the words spoken by the French president in Kigali on May 27, “I am no longer here to tell about this interminable eclipse of humanity”. It is from here that we must start again. To give a voice to those who no longer have it, the words of others are not enough, even those of the rulers of the earth. The process of reviewing past faults is certainly appropriate, but it risks not being sufficient.
In the case of the legacy of colonialism (despite errors and deviations, often catastrophic, of the post-colonial leadership) to prevail must be a truly different policy of combating inequalities which becomes a “method” of world governance. The lesson of the pandemic – of what has not been done or can be done – is fundamental in this sense. On the other hand, in the case of alliances, or protections, geo-political interests cannot fail to be limited by collective responsibility, whatever the cost: a collective responsibility that can have tools whose revitalization is now possible. This is as far as the global scenario is concerned. Coming to specific situations, gestures must be accompanied by actions and actions must be carefully judged.
The € 1.1 billion “reconstruction and development” financial program for Namibia, announced by Germany on the occasion of the “apology” for the atrocities of colonization, must be tested to be truly useful.. We hope you do. Without settling for rhetoric. It must also be said that it is essential that the reconciliation processes be as thorough as possible (“a stroke of the pen is not enough”, writes Daniel Pelz on DGerman wave) and involve culture, education, orientation of collective sensitivity. Because, as WG Sebald wrote for example in the “Rings of Saturn” about the Belgian colonization of the Congo, “the agony of an entire people was so excruciating as to overshadow all the biblical stories of passion”. And in Namibia it was the same. Let’s never forget it.
May 30, 2021 (change May 30, 2021 | 21:12)
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