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From mid-June to early July 2026, Nandiuasora Mazeingo, chairperson of the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation (OGF), visited Germany to renew long-standing demands for justice for the genocide committed against the Ovaherero. Between 1904 and 1908, German colonial forces in what they called German South West Africa waged a war of extermination against the Ovaherero and Nama peoples of what is now Namibia, killing tens of thousands through massacres and forced expulsion into the desert.
In 2021, the German and Namibian governments issued a Joint Declaration addressing this history, with Germany agreeing to pay the Namibian government a fixed sum of 1.1 billion euro as gesture of reconciliation. However, representatives of the affected communities as well as NGOs strongly oppose the agreement.
German colonial crimes included the theft of culturally significant belongings, and during his stay, Mazeingo examined parts of the extensive collections of looted Ovaherero belongings held in Germany. He has also recently published an historical overview of the post-genocide struggle of the Ovaherero, which offers further background on many of the issues addressed in this interview.
What is your role at the OGF and how is the foundation embedded into the Ovaherero Traditional Authority (OTA)?
The Ovaherero Genocide Foundation is the technical arm of the Ovaherero governance structure, which is more than 160 years old. Founded in 1863, it predates the modern state of Namibia.
The Genocide Foundation is the advocacy platform for Ovaherero people. The genocide that was committed by the Germans against our community, against our nation, 120 years ago is the most defining feature of contemporary Ovaherero life. Today we are a marginal minority in the country of our forebears because of this genocide.
And it is because of that genocide that we are a transnational people. A people you don't find in just one space, but you find in Botswana, in South Africa, in Angola, in Zimbabwe. We are really a people all over the place, but largely with no sovereign voice because we are a minority.
And so we thought it fit and proper that there must be a platform that mobilizes society to know that there is this crime that was committed against us and that we are in our right to demand that wrong must be righted. We use the platform to advocate for justice, to build networks and alliances.
The German and Namibian governments negotiated about reparations bilaterally on a governmental level and agreed on a Joint Declaration (JD) in 2021. You oppose the JD. What is your main criticism?
We reject the Joint Declaration for many reasons, from process to content.
In 2006, we came to our parliament. We sponsored a motion that sought three things: Number one is that Germany must admit guilt to the crime of genocide. Number two is that Germany must pay reparations, because it is the settled penalty for genocide as a crime. And number three, that there must be an apology. And regarding the process, we as the people who were targeted, must be involved in that process, with our government facilitating our participation.
Germany must admit guilt to the crime of genocide, Germany must pay reparations, and there must be an apology.
And we also filed other lawsuits. It is all the progressive and successive work that we have done over the years that actually brought Germany to the table. And all along the Namibian government was saying, no, this is not our business. But when Germany came to the table to talk, the Namibian government, opportunistically I think, decided that they wanted to get involved because they could see the potential for money to flow into its coffers. And so it expropriated our struggle at the 11th hour.
So we were shut out of our own struggle. A struggle that we have carried all along by ourselves. At the last minute, we were told it's only Namibia that should speak. We rejected that for many reasons. One being that we are a transnational people, we don't belong to one country. There are members of this community who are just as much part of our community but who are not Namibians at all. They are Botswanan or South African citizens. They were born there because of the genocide.
The Ovaherero started to litigate against the Namibian government in 2023, arguing that incorporating descendant communities into the negotiations with Germany was insufficient. Do you believe there is a process with the Namibian government, which also represents the Ovaherero and Nama, that will meet your needs and demands?
Does a template exist? Yes, it exists and Germany is a master at it because it has invented it. Germany, when it sought to address the Nazi crimes against the Jews, the Shoa, engaged in a two-tracked process. It engaged the state of Israel to speak for those Jews who belonged to the state of Israel. The Jews outside of Israel organized themselves and later this is what came together as the Jewish Claims Conference. So, they were able to speak for themselves. There is a template how to engage both state and non-state actors. But a process that continues without us is flawed and the outcome of that process will be flawed.
Regarding the content of the Joint Declaration: How do you rate the admission of genocide in the Joint Declaration?
The content is a joke.
We were told that it is only a genocide from today's perspective. That is denial cloaked in diplomatic language. But it's also racist because you are saying at the time when you were killing my people there was no law or principle that forbade Germany to do that because we, the people who were targeted, were not civilized. We couldn't be claimants under the laws of civilized nations. We were savages. It is also racist to say you can't demand punishment based on the 1948 Genocide Convention, because the crime was committed before the convention was in place. But the crimes of the Nazis were also committed before that convention. It is a matter of saying that we are black Africans so we have to be spoken to through somebody else. And we have to be told we cannot be claimants or qualify under frameworks where others can be listened to.
It's racist to say you can't demand punishment based on the 1948 Genocide Convention, because the crime was committed before the convention was in place. But the crimes of the Nazis were also committed before that convention.
And then we talk about a payment of 1.1 billion euros by the German government, fixed over 30 years, for destroying two countries because we were two sovereign countries, governing ourselves. 80 percent of our population was wiped out. Of the land that was taken away, 70 percent remains with white people to this day. The cattle, all of it, is gone. Furthermore, there is the intergenerational trauma, the displacement of people who are stateless today and living in the shadows of other communities, and so much more. But apparently you can do away with that for just 1.1 billion euros.
How do you assess the fact that the Joint Declaration does not include an official acknowledgement of the genocide or formal reparations, and that the €1.1 billion is described only as a grant?
The grant is development aid and has nothing to do with us. The country knows that this is development aid, it's money that the Namibian government does not have any intention of giving to the Ovaherero and the Namas and the Damaras and others who were also affected., These 1.1 billion are not about our struggle. We should not confuse it with our claims, because our claims stand alone and they will continue to be there until they're settled.
What steps need to be taken to bring the Ovaherero and the Nama back to the negotiating table with both the Namibian and the German governments?
The ball is in their court. Our job number one, as children of the Ovaherero, is to make sure that we remain the vanguard of our struggle, which we inherited from our parents with the solemn responsibility to preserve and to carry through to its fulfillment. And if it so happens that we are unable to achieve it in our lifetimes, the responsibility will be transferred to our children so that the struggle can be taken forward. We've been fighting for 120 years and we are prepared for the long haul.
We want an unfettered apology, no qualifications of genocide from today's perspective and all this nonsense.
As to when what would happen: We are in the courts to sue the Namibian government. We will continue to look for ways how we can also start a lawsuit against Germany in Namibia. We were in the United States of America to bring claims against German businesses that had benefited from the genocide. We want to bring the church into the conversation. Missionaries were an important part of the thievery and looting of our society. We want the settler community in Namibia that sits on our land to be in the conversation too.
But we would also continue to mobilize German society and that is why we are doing the work that we are doing with the German socialist party Die Linke. We want to go to the German parliament and we are asking for three things through Die Linke. Number one is the unfettered recognition of the genocide. Secondly, we want an unfettered apology, without qualifications of genocide from today's perspective and all this nonsense. Lastly, we demand a comprehensive reparative justice framework and guarantees of non-reoccurrence as detailed in the UN Convention.
There is an exhibition by Forensic Architecture on view in Berlin from 7 June 2026 to 30 April 2027, which provides more insight into the genocides of the Ovaherero and the Nama. Do you think German society has to be educated more on this issue and become more vocal?
Absolutely. First, the German government needs to be honest and needs to stop hiding behind the Namibian government and bilateralism. They know about their criminality, they need to tell the truth. I know this is a history that is not much taught in schools here. It is also not taught in Namibia. But there is a serious responsibility on the shoulders of the Germans. We recognize and we commend that German society has moved from where it was. Today, this topic is better known than it was a few years ago. But as a society you need to do better and you need to ensure that as you do better as you transform, as you gradually get to the heart of the matter, you take your government along and you make sure that your politicians whom you elect to work for you really do work for you because ultimately they act in your name. When they continue to behave dishonorably as they have done under the Joint Declaration , then that is in your name. Everyone has to strive to do more because it was not just the government alone that plundered and colonized and stole from us, it was all of German society, individuals, business, churches, everybody participated in that looting, so the debt is a common debt.
Another part of the colonial past of Germany is the looting of cultural artifacts. During your current trip to Germany you visited the Weltkulturenmuseum in Frankfurt am Main and the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. What was the purpose of your visits there?
There is just so much that was taken from our communities. A few years ago, the conversation was about our ancestors who were beheaded and their ancestral remains sent to Germany. German soldiers forced our ancestors to scrape the skin off the heads of the dead with glass shards so their skulls could be sent to Germany.
We didn't know that behind those remains of our ancestors sat a mountain of materials looted from our communities. We didn’t know that as the German troops were hunting down our people from the battlefields of Waterberg across the sand fields of the Kalahari there were other waves of looters, taking whatever they had left behind in their retreat. At the World Cultures Museum in Frankfurt I was particularly interested in the Ovaherero collection. First I was examining if these were really our materials, because often these classifications or descriptions are given by those who stole it. It is highly probable that the artefacts could have been marked wrongly because they might have had inaccurate information.
I just wish that it is not seen as the responsibility of us, the victims, to find answers to their questions. But that Germans still recognize this as a burden that they carry too.
The intention was to confirm the veracity of these identities. Because eventually, these items need to be restituted. Restitution is not taking items from here and dumping them into the hands of a government that did not exist 100 years ago. That has been the sad shortcut that the German authorities have taken so far. There is this idea that apparently now there is a national government, and so this government can take whatever belongs to people or to communities under its jurisdiction. My mission is to establish: What of ours is here? How did it get here? Who brought it here? And who in my community actually would be the rightful owners of these items? That’s why I visited the World Cultures Museum, where I spent a day or so, and then I spent around two weeks in Berlin at the depots of the Ethnological Museum in Dahlem.
One of the key findings of my stay is that there are certain constellations of items in the holdings of the museums, such as kitchen utensils, cosmetics, clothing, a few knives and bows. But when we were targeted, part of the destruction was the targeting of spiritual and religious items. I was shocked that I have not seen any of those materials. So, it begs the question as to whether what we're seeing here is the complete picture of what was taken or whether there is still more digging that needs to happen. I'm inclined to go with the latter.
But Germans have to dig on their own as well.
Absolutely. I just wish that it is not seen as the responsibility of us, the victims, to find answers to their questions. But that Germans still recognize this as a burden that they carry too.
