Why Namibia Must Acknowledge Damara and San Genocide Victims

AS NAMIBIA marked its second Genocide Remembrance Day on 28 May, remembrance events were held countrywide – from Lüderitz and Shark Island to Swakopmund, Okakarara, Otjinene and beyond.

Political leaders, traditional authorities, scholars and community representatives reflected on one of the darkest chapters in our history: the genocide committed by German colonial forces between 1904 and 1908.

Most speeches and articles rightly focused on the suffering of the Nama and Ovaherero communities, the primary targets of general Lothar von Trotha’s extermination campaign.

Yet an uncomfortable truth remains largely absent from our public narrative: Damara and San people also suffered greatly and are too often invisible in discussions of genocide, memory, apology and reparations.

The historical record leaves little doubt that the German colonial war did not occur in neatly separated ethnic compartments.

Damara and San people lived, worked and travelled among the Nama and Ovaherero communities.

They were caught up in military campaigns, forced removals, imprisonment, starvation, forced labour and concentration camps.