Motivating Statement for Genocide Remembrance Day Motion Tabled by Cde Hon UsutuaijeMaamberua President of SWANU of Namibia on Tuesday, 26 April 2016
1.INTRODUCTION
Honorable Speaker, Members of the National Assembly thank you all for this opportunity accorded to me to motivate the motion on Genocide Remembrance Day. This is an emotion loaded moment because the topic and issues we are dealing with today have the saddest and most unparalleled experience in Namibia and Africa and indeed in the world in terms of chronology.
There is a Nigerian proverb of the Yoruba people which states that: “If you go to a place that no-one has ever been to before; you will see what no man has ever seen before.” During the period 1904-08 the place where both the victorious and the vanquished and even the visitor, have all been to, that place, that no-one has ever been to before - is none other than OvaHerero and Nama Genocides.
The purpose of this motion is for the National Assembly to discus and debate and through a Standing Committee of Parliament to consult the affected communities and the relevant authorities so as to determine and to cause the enactment or declaration of a Genocide Remembrance (Memorial) Day. A Genocide Remembrance Day is an important occasion to remember the lives that were lost, to show solidarity with the descendants of the victims and unite to ensure genocide never happens again – in Namibia, Africa or elsewhere.
The commemorations of this nature shall be, and remain an important factor in the context of building anational identity as the country keeps trying to break through the trauma of the 1904-1908 genocide. Subsequently, public remembrance of the atrocities ought to be regarded as a duty and one of the main elements on the road to reconciliation, justice, restitution, and equity.
Specifically the relevance of this debate is justifiable with regard to two things:
One, The enactment or declaration of a Genocide Remembrance Day will constitute an invaluable super-brick to the construction and sustainability of the now proverbial Namibian House propounded by His Excellency Dr Hage Geingob, President of the Republic of Namibia. It will cement unity among our people as it would solidify genocide memory in the national psyche as compared to the current disjointed tribally-based remembrance activities happening variously over the country and mostly attended only by specific communities
Two, ten years ago this house passed a unanimous vote in support of the Genocide and Reparation Motion tabled before it by the Late Paramount Chief KuaimaRiruako. Thus, it only augers well for this house and the Namibian nation at large to give a practical application of the seriousness we accord to the genocidal act committed against our people by declaring a genocide memorial day for this country and its people!
2.WHAT IS GENOCIDE?
Honourable members, we need to remind ourselves of the heinous experience called genocide.
Ian Olwoch (2009) describes Genocide as that place that exists at the final limit of destructive human experience.Raphael Lemkin, a Polish born lawyer of Jewish descent, coined the word “Genocide” in 1943 and used the term to signify the “systematic, carefully planned and coordinated destruction of an ethnic group or nation” setting it aside from the simplistic mayhem of “mass murder.” I wish to believe that we in this house consider genocide not just a war crime but a crime against humanity itself and that the immorality of genocide should not be confused with the amorality of war.
Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, a French critic, journalist and novelist aptly described the irony of life when he said “Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose”. [The more things change the more they stay the same.] In this regard, genocides regardless the era when and the geographical location where they had been committed have had constant variables, conventionally nine (9) of them:
1. Pretext2. Classification3. Symbolization4. Dehumanization, 5. Organization6. Polarization, 7. Preparation, 8. Extermination and 9.Denial.
For the purpose of the motion our interest is in the final stage of genocide, namely, DENIAL.It is indeed the surest indicator of the potential for further genocidal massacres.
All through history the perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. This is what those who studied and researched genocide warnedagainst “When you see a snake slither with so much grace and swagger, there are many internal limbs at work, invisible to the eyes of the average beholder”.
In Namibia the colonisers have erected the Windhoek High School, the Alte Feste Museum, “The Reiter”, “ChristusKirche” and very beautiful and aromatic gardens being a desperate attempt for that environment to look innocent, holy, humane and sober. “The Reiter”, facing Berlin, symbolizes the victor’s aggression.
How do we then portray the innocence of the vanquished/”Les Miserables” (The Wretched of the Earth - as discribed by Franz Fanon)? Where are the weeping graves of the concentration camps inmates?
Fellow Members, twenty-six years after independence andstill no memorialization in the form of a Genocide Remembrance Day reminding us and the world about the Genocide committed on our soil. Why? We should not be seen to deny our own history. Ironically latter genocides are annually remembered in respective countries such as:
- Armenian 1915 Genocide on each April 24th.
- Jewish Holocaust 1933-1945 - The liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January is the date observed by many European countries including Germany.
- Rwanda 1994 Genocide on each April 7th.
Let us agree now on the need for that Day to render the many internal limbs in the snake visible for us and the world to see what had had happened at OrumboruaKatjombondi, on the Shark Island, in the SwakopmundConcentartion camp and all camps of internment.
What an irony that this very first genocide of the twentieth century, the crucial antecedent to Nazi mass murderthat paved the way for the prototypical mass slaughter of that century – the Jewish Holocaust- is still not being memorialized in Namibia!
A scholar by the name ....Madley remarked the following:
“The genocide in Namibia created the German word Konzentrationslager (concentration camp) and the twentieth century’s first death camp. Like Nazi mass murder, the Namibian genocides were premised upon ideas like Lebensraum ( living space), annihilation war (Vernichtungskrieg), and German racial supremacy. “
In this respect, it was aptly shown that individual Nazis were also linked to colonial Namibia. Hermann Goering, who built the first Nazi concentration camps, was the son of the first governor of colonial Namibia. Eugen Fischer, who influenced Hitler and ran the institute that supported Joseph Mengele’s medical “research” at Auschwitz, conducted racial studies in the colony, hence, the remains of Namibians in Germany.And Ritter von Epp, godfather of the Nazi party and Nazi governor of Bavaria from 1933–1945, led German troops against the Herero during the genocide.
3. OBJECTIVES OF MEMORIALIZATION OF GENOCIDE
Comrade Speaker, how does Namibia explain to itself, to the descendants of the genocide victims, to the youth, to the ancestors, to future generations, to the directly or indirectly affected communities, to Namibians at large, to Africa to the International community, and to its own conscious - that to-date it is not memorializing the genocide by way of a special day to remember, honour, and respect the victims of the Ovaherero and Nama genocides?
In this regard I move this motion in an attempt to help the nation commit to honouring and remembering those of their numbers who perished during the genocides carried out on Namibian soil.
The overall objectives of the proposed enactment of a Genocide Remembrance Day are, inter alia, to:
• Recognize that the Ovaherero and Nama genocide was the first tragically defining episode of the twentieth century, a crisis for European civilization and a universal catastrophe for humanity;
• Provide a national mark of respect for all victims of Germany's persecution and demonstrateunderstanding with all those who still suffer its consequences;
• Raise awareness and understanding of the events of the Genocide as a continuingissue of fundamental importance for all humanity;
• Ensure that the horrendous crimes, racism and victimization that occurred during theOvaherero and Nama genocides are neither forgotten nor repeated, whether in Namibia, Africa or elsewhere;
• Restate the continuing need for vigilance in light of the troubling repetition of humantragedies in the world today;
• Provide a national focus for educating subsequent generations about the Ovaherero and Nama genocides and the continued relevance of the lessons that are learned from them;
4. PROPOSED POSSIBLE GENOCIDE REMEMBRANCE DAY
Honourables Members, assuming that the motion tabled seeking the enactment of a Genocide Remembrance Day enjoys the undivided unanimity imbued in a resolute patriotic national spirit, it is fitting that we reach a consensus on the most suitable date to be chosen as the national Genocide Remembrance Day.
In the spirit of ONE NAMIBIA ONE NATION it is proposed that the date of May 28th be the national Genocide Remembrance Day. Reason being that Official and formal closure to the Ovaherero and Nama Genocide Episode was effected on 28 May 1908 when all concentration camps in Namibia were ordered to close.
I trust the choice of this date lives up to the letter and spirit of oneness as no one would feel left out because the historical significance of this day is national in character and content. But obviously the final and most amicable dateif it is not the one proposed will emerge via the consultations.
5. CONCLUSION
Therefore,Honourable Speaker, Fellow Members this my motivation of the motion today is a patriotic call for all those who have seen or heard of that place, the place at the limit of human experience, NAMA AND OVAHERERO GENOCIDES, to tell the truth, to inform, to teach, to learn, to reveal the truth and to display it for posterity of our unitary State Namibia and its future generations, BY OBSERVING WITHOUT FAIL ANNUALLY a Genocide Remembrance Day (s)
Let the World and Germany hear us speak in unison as we say: Never, Never and Never Ever Again.
I therefore move that a Standing Committee of Parliament be mandated to carry this process forward towards the realization of a Genocide Remembrance Day.
I so move, Honourable Speaker
Thank You Namibia
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