Racial Capitalism and Genocide in Namibia

Genocide lies at the heart of colonialism and imperialism, from the destruction of indigenous peoples in the Americas to the Khoe in South Africa and the Herero and Nama in Namibia. The genocide committed in Namibia between 1904 and 1908 was not an isolated atrocity. It was the violent foundation of the country’s racial-capitalist order.

The genocide was not driven solely by racial hatred. It was a capitalist project designed to seize land, confiscate cattle, destroy indigenous economies and create a landless labour force for German settler capitalism. The systems that followed – land dispossession, migrant and contract labour, apartheid, Bantustans, commercial farming, mining and today’s extractive economy – were built on that foundation.

Racial capitalism placed race at the centre of economic hierarchy. Forced labour and concentration camps created Namibia’s first black proletariat, while settler wealth depended on dispossession and the exploitation of cheap black labour. South African apartheid did not create this system; it inherited and expanded it. Political independence in 1990 changed political leadership but left much of the underlying economic structure intact.