What is the Price of African Lives?

Mcbride, Alex.2020

At the end of the 19th century, the German empire, looking for its share in the colonization run, extended its domain to the African continent. One of the countries colonized by Germany was Namibia, in southwest Africa, which had two majority ethnic groups: Herero e Nama. When the Germans arrived, they expropriated land and took hold of their cattle, putting them in a situation of extreme poverty and slavery. All this exploitation lasted 31 years, from 1844 to 1915, and 65,000 of the approximately 80,000 Herero ethnicities who lived in the area at the time were killed, in addition to at least 10,000 of the approximately 20,000 Nama.

Where there is oppression, there is resistance, and it was not different in Namibia. In 1904, occurred a Herero uprising, so Germany appointed Lothar von Trotha to contain the movement. The African ethnicity lost the battles, the ones who survived were sent to the Omaheke desert, in east Namibia, where most of them died of seed and hunger. After the massive deaths of the Herero ethnicity, it was the time of the Nama ethnicity to fight against colonialism. Just as Herero, Nama was defeated by brutality and extermination.

Another German colony was Rwanda, a country in the central African region, with two predominant ethnic groups: Tutsis and Hutus. Historically, the Hutu ethnicity is the majority, being around 85% of the population. As a German colony and under Belgium’s domain - after the first world war - both ethnicities suffered repression, slavery, and forced work.

Even though Tutsis are the minority, they used to concentrate power, for example, its monarchy that lasted from the Belgian domain until 1959, close to the country's independence. It is important to note that Hutu ethnicity was responsible for the fall of the Tutsi monarchy. Many of them were exiled in adjacent countries, like Uganda and Burundi. Some of those exiled created the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which made a series of armed attacks in Hutus Rwanda.

On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying the then presidents of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana, and Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, both Hutus, was shot down. Hutu’s extremists accused the Tutsis of the incident, beginning a massacre against the Tutsis and Hutus that did not agree with the systematic murder that was happening, totalizing 800 thousand people dead between April and June of 1994. The international community pressed the United Nations, but nothing happened.

After the death of 10 Belgium soldiers, the European country decided to leave the country. Some analysts affirm that France was “blind” for the undeniable signs that a violent clash between the two ethnic groups would occur, considering that France had peacekeeping troops in the country. More than this, the Rwandan state has already accused France of having direct links to the massacre.

On May 28, the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said: " In light of Germany's historical and moral responsibility, we will ask Namibia and the descendants of the victims for forgiveness. “ In other words, Germany recognized that its acts characterize a genocide, that is, systematic deaths of a particular ethnic group. For many reasons, like racism, eurocentrism, ethnocentrism, Germany brutally killed thousands of Herero and Nama. The German state was built under immense piles of corpses of various African ethnicities.

Germany will support Namibia with 1.1 billion euros. Approximately 90 thousand People cost a little bit more than 1 billion euros. Furthermore, there is something that money cannot build: a culture. Besides the genocide, there is the ethnocide, which occurs when a culture of an ethnic group, with all its resistance symbols and belonging elements, is destroyed. They erase the past of a People, forcing their culture to establish their power.

To the West, Emmanuel Macron, President of France and the first in his office, in ten years, to visit Rwanda, said, about the genocide in the country, “Standing here today, with humility and respect, by your side, I have come to recognize our responsibilities," and admitted the "suffering it inflicted on the Rwandan people by too long valuing silence over the examination of the truth." But, he adds, France "was not an accomplice". As seen, it was a discourse without guarantee of shares by the French State.

The roles of France and Germany in the cases in question are different, with different responsibilities. But, even with the criticisms about the compensation, they are crucial for the awareness of the world population about the African continent, holding those responsible for European imperialism accountable. There have been attempts to erase the past, but the marks of racism and massacre have endured and exposed human beings asking for justice in the light of truth.

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