“We mean reparations!”

medico: The world is changing at breakneck speed, one might think...

Maboss: You know, as much as we need to change with the changing world it should not change our principles: our being, our who we are, where we are coming from, and where we want to be. If I look around what is happening in this world – In Palestine, the changing political landscape in Europe – it seems that people are forgetting to be human. It seems like everyone forgets about fundamental human rights. Yet, those are the principles that should never change. We as people, we stand firm on our principles, be consistent in our message and our fight.

So you consistently reject the newly negotiated addendum of the Joint Declaration between the German and the Namibian government that even speaks of “atonement”?

Maboss: It's still risky because we don't know all the details. We must see the final approved document to properly analyse what it really means from a legal perspective. It matters whether you say, "We acknowledge genocide was committed," or "We start referencing either back then or now."

What we know for sure is that while before they called it "development aid", now it's called "atonement fund". A general pitfall regarding the Joint Declaration is where the money would finally end up. Whether it would be called development aid, atonement or reparations, who will benefit from that money? Let me give you an example. You will depend on big corporations if you say: 'We want to build a school or a clinic in Bethanie, ' which is in the Namibian South. These will be either foreign corporates or corporates from the North of Namibia. As a colonial legacy, we do not have this capacity in the South. So, at the end of the day, corporates will execute and implement those projects and profit from the money. Whether there would any money be left to use the school at all would remain equally questionable.

Sima: Changing the wording to "atonement" is, again, playing with semantics. The addendum, negotiated for over a year, contains nothing fundamentally new because the violations of international law remain entrenched in the document. It has not been negotiated with the affected communities as obligatory under international and Namibian law. The fact remains: The Joint Declaration is a special project between two governments, just like all special projects between Namibia and Germany in the past. Special projects have never changed anything since independence, apart from offering some relief that will make it look as if the subject has been addressed when nothing has been addressed.

In the case of the Ovaherero people, the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation conservatively calculated a sum of 18 billion euros for reparations. What would meaningful reparations be for the Nama people?

Maboss: While there are different things which you can quantify you cannot quantify everything. If you have lost life, it's infinite. You killed my mother, you took her land. We can quantify the value of that land and what I could have done out of this asset. You can pay reparations for the land. But you could give me even two billion. It will never bring my mother back. When it is about lives, one has to see: what is it that you can give, how can you put the descendants in a certain position for them to be able to be happy and have a dignified lives? And that's something for generations to come.

Germany one way or the other must pay reparations. Other peoples are also rising. The issue of reparations will come. Even though Europe and the Western world, who caused these atrocities, these killings of our people, stand together and do what they are doing now within the International Court of Justice: They are ignoring every little principle that they put on paper. They are the ones that will not be charged. That will stay in impunity.

In Germany, right wing movements are gaining power. Does this change anything for you?

Maboss: With the rising conservatism in Germany, and especially after the war in Gaza, one has observed how decolonial spaces, especially at university and cultural sectors have been either “cancelled” or completely closed down, mostly using antisemitism as an excuse. It is clear that Germany still sees itself as the model European Nation with a white German culture that no one dare challenge.

Sima: The performance of the Green Party after the last elections brought a lot of hope for the decolonial movement in Germany. Civil society in Germany is at a crossroads where it needs to heighten its responsibility to confront Germany’s colonial past and its lasting manifestations in domestic and foreign policies. At the same time, former German colonies need to build strategic alliances amongst themselves, in support of our universal struggle for justice. But I think Africa is rising. There is some movement in the right direction.

Europe remains shy of all justice while the entire African continent carries the scars of a brutal colonial period which has displaced Africans in various forms, and upon which Europe and much of the Western World has been built. Even though various parts of the continent have experienced colonialism in unique ways, the project of dispossessing and dehumanising Africans was the same, carried out through racist ideologies. Therefore, as Africans, we owe solidarity amongst ourselves. No fight against the wrongs of the colonialism can be fought in isolation. This is why we bring our cause to the African Union level.

You chose the African Union (AU) as the platform for struggles on reparations. What is your goal?

Sima: The AU provides a space where African citizens and civil society can make themselves heard. Although the fundamental human rights of Africans are being violated by African States, these states, including Namibia, have a responsibility towards their African citizens. As a signatory to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights and its various mechanisms, Namibia too must be held accountable for violating the rights of the Nama and Ovaherero people. Therefore, the AU is the adequate platform to reach out into Africa and form strategic alliances with likeminded civil society organisations, universities, researches and government institutions which realise the importance of claiming reparations from the Global North.

So, there is hope in this distressing times and shaken world order?

Maboss: Yes, there is hope. Look, this is just for us and for what we have lost. But The more people are coming out in Africa and around Africa, people are talking about reparations, people in the Caribbean are talking about it and elsewhere in the world. The best way is to form different kinds of coalition from this perspective and to put these so-called superpowers under pressure to pay for the injustices for what they have done. And not only to pay: to repair!

Whatever you do politically in Europe right now – whether you go left, you go centre, you go right – we will remain consistent in our principles, full force and full of resistance. Wherever you guys go politically, we will fight.

The interview was conducted by Julia Manek

Transcription und ddition: Rebekka Schäfer