"They speak to a narrative that has been excised from much of the national narratives of many of the Sadc countries. "The original names have to be restored," he said. Zenzile Khoisan, secretary of Khoisan First Nation Indigenous Status, an umbrella representative group, applauded Namibia's move as a first step but complained that it is not a signatory to the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. In his state of the nation address last year, South African president Jacob Zuma pledged that provisions would be made "for the recognition of the Khoisan communities, their leadership and structures". South Africa has 11 official languages but none is that of its original population. Similar controversies persist in Botswana and South Africa, where many streets continue to be renamed but debate has raged for years over the administrative capital, Pretoria.
#Namibia africa with pin on a map crack#
Changing a couple of names doesn't really crack it. They put up a magnificent challenge to the Germans but they are landless. Glyn added: "The Nama people I researched are still living in a ghetto.
Today there is still anger among indigenous communities who live in poverty and demand reparations from Germany, their shanty town homes contrasting with vast German-owned farms. I don't think the Namibian government is doing one-eighth of what it should to honour the dead." There is absolutely no evidence of what really happened there. Patricia Glyn, author of What Dawid Knew, based on her experiences with Khomani bushmen in the Kalahari, said: "I don't think a couple of name changes goes far enough, bearing in mind not one of the German concentration camps has so much as a sign and you can still go out in a buggy and find yourself driving over the bones of those who died. Some believe it remains a forgotten holocaust. Hundreds of the skulls remain in Germany, however. They were greeted at Namibia's international airport by warriors on horseback who let out battle cries.
In 2011, Germany sent back 20 of the Herero and Nama skulls that had been transported there for racial experiments. Authors David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen argued that the camps – with their "bureaucratisation of killing" – influenced the Nazis in the second world war. The Nama, a smaller ethnic group, lost half their population during what a recent book referred to in its title as The Kaiser's Holocaust. In 2004 Germany apologised for the colonial-era genocide that killed 65,000 Herero people through starvation and slave labour in concentration camps. A small German population still lives in the country.
Namibia was a German colony from 1884 to 1919, then administered by apartheid South Africa until 1990. Changing them is a slow process resisted by some communities and seen as a low priority by others with urgent needs. The move highlights the imprint of colonial mapmakers all over Africa where the names of streets, cities and regions are reminders of a traumatic past. The village of Schuckmannsburg in the former Caprivi region has been changed back to its original name, Lohonono. Namibian president Hifikepunye Pohamba also announced that Lüderitz, a harbour town, would now be called !Nami=Nüs, which means "embrace" in local Khoekhoegowab, a Khoisan language.
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