In May 2024, Government Spokesperson, Hon. Emma Theofelus announced that from 2025, May 28th will be Genocide Remembrance Day and considered a public holiday.
This holiday is to commemorate the Herero and Namaqua Genocide, which was the massacre of approximately 50,000 – 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama between 1904 and 1907 by German military forces in German South West Africa (GSWA) – modern-day Namibia.
Germany formally colonised GSWA in 1884. Under German rule, many native groups were used as slave labour and had their land confiscated and their cattle stolen.
In January 1904, the Herero population carried out a large armed rebellion against German colonial rule. The German ruling forces were unprepared for the attack and approximately 123 German colonial settlers were killed by the Herero. Over the following months, the Herero were slowly overwhelmed by the more modern, well-equipped German force. By June 1904, the Herero forces had been cornered and an attempt was made to negotiate their surrender.
In August 1904, the Germans abandoned negotiations for surrender and attempted an aggressive encirclement tactic, surrounding the Herero at the Battle of Waterberg and killing between 3,000 – 5,000 Herero combatants. Yet, despite the brutal tactics of the Germans, most of the Herero managed to escape into the Omaheke desert.
The Schutztruppe ruthlessly pursued the thousands of Herero men, women and children who were attempting to cross the desert to reach to British Protectorate of Bechuanaland (modern-day Botswana). Thousands of Herero died from being shot, drinking water from poisoned wells, or thirst and starvation in the desert.
On 2 October 1904, the violence against the Herero escalated in an order: ‘Within the German borders, every male Herero, armed or unarmed […] will be shot to death. I will no longer take in women or children but will drive them back to their people or have them fired at. These are my words to the Herero people. [From] The great general of the mighty German Kaiser’ [Katharina von Hammerstein, ‘The Herero: Witnessing Germany’s “Other Genocide”’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 2016, 20:2, 267-286, 276].
In November 1904, the German government in Berlin overturned the inhumane execution order and instead commanded that the surviving members of the Herero population be incarcerated in concentration camps.
The remaining Herero who were incarcerated in the concentration camps were subjected to lethal conditions (with a mortality rate of 47-74%), and prisoners endured poor hygiene, little food, forced labour and medical experiments.
In 1905, the Nama people in the south also rose against German rule and engaged the colonisers in guerrilla warfare for the following two years. Any Nama that the Germans caught were executed or incarcerated in the same concentration camps as the Herero.
In total, by the end of the conflict in 1907, approximately 50,000 – 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama had been murdered by the German ruling forces.
The day is significant because the announcement of the closure of the concentration camps came on May 28th 1907. On May 28th 2021, Germany officially recognised and apologised for the genocide.
