Cruelty of german colonialism in Namibia 

(Southwest Africa)

Danilo Anton

In this article we describe the hard-to-believe extremes of cruelty carried out by the German colonists in Namibia during their 80 years of control of the country.

Namibia, as it was named after independence in 1990, is a Southwest African country facing the South American coasts of Uruguay and southern Brazil on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. Its territory is arid and very arid with low population density. The area is 824,000 km2 and has a little more than 2 million inhabitants.

The main ethnic groups of the country are the ovambos, that have controlled politically the country since its independence, the hereros, the san (bushmen), the himbas, the nama and the basters. All of them make up 90% of the population. It is estimated that the white minority amounts to approximately 6% of the total, and mestizos and mulattos 4%

As we pointed out at the outset, like other colonial conquests in Africa, the German colonization of South-West Africa was extremely cruel. The natives of Namibia suffered a veritable genocide on the part of the German authorities, were displaced, forced to change their religion and customs, enslaved and executed and in many cases their remains were transported to Germany for study and exhibition in museums. Now present Namibians want the skulls of their dead forebears to be returned from the German museums and universities..

Namibia, skulls of my people

From Aljazeera

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2017/05/namibia-skulls-people-170524084141641.html

Tribal people of Namibia claim that between 1904 and 1908 Germany perpetrated the first genocide of the 20th century in their country, the former Imperial German colony of South West Africa.

After colonists confiscated their land, the cattle-rearing Herero and Nama people rebelled and as a result were massacred by German troops. They were shot, hanged from trees, or forced into the desert where they starved to death.

Survivors were taken to work in concentration camps where many died. Women and girls were raped. An estimated 100,000 people were killed, leaving just 15,000 survivors.

Hundreds of skulls of Herero and Nama people who died taken to Germany for scientific racial experiments by the colonists. This film is a testimonial account of the descendants of the Herero victims and their ongoing struggle to reclaim their land, compensation and the return of their ancestors' skulls from Germany.