The Emptied Vessels
May 28, 2021 4:03 PM Subscribe
Germany is formally recognizing as genocide the killing of tens of thousands of people from two ethnic groups in what is now Namibia in the early 20th century, the foreign ministry said on Friday, a major acknowledgment of colonial-era crimes. Germany is asking for forgiveness and establishing a fund worth more than a billion euros to support projects in the affected communities. [NYT; Archive]
Germany agrees to pay Namibia €1.1bn over historical Herero-Nama genocide [Grauniad]
Germany recognizes Herero and Nama genocide [Politico]
Related:
(Re)visions of genocide : narratives of genocide in Thomas Pynchon's V. and Gravity's Rainbow
Pynchon's Herero by David Seed
Thomas Pynchon Shows Us How White Writers Can Avoid Appropriation [Electric Literature]
Germany agrees to pay Namibia €1.1bn over historical Herero-Nama genocide [Grauniad]
Germany recognizes Herero and Nama genocide [Politico]
Related:
(Re)visions of genocide : narratives of genocide in Thomas Pynchon's V. and Gravity's Rainbow
Pynchon's Herero by David Seed
Thomas Pynchon Shows Us How White Writers Can Avoid Appropriation [Electric Literature]
I want to salute Thomas Pynchon and Jürgen Zimmerer, two brilliant people who in their different ways made the genocide of the Namibians harder to ignore.
posted by homerica at 6:39 PM on May 28, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by homerica at 6:39 PM on May 28, 2021 [8 favorites]
Namibia says German reparations for genocide insufficient [The World, PRI]
Germany has acknowledged its century-old genocide in Nambia. But, as Vekuii Herero — Paramount Chief of the Herero people — tells host Carol Hills, the apology and the reparations do not begin to atone for the massacre.
Found this perspective interesting.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:37 PM on May 28, 2021 [6 favorites]
Germany has acknowledged its century-old genocide in Nambia. But, as Vekuii Herero — Paramount Chief of the Herero people — tells host Carol Hills, the apology and the reparations do not begin to atone for the massacre.
Found this perspective interesting.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:37 PM on May 28, 2021 [6 favorites]
Many of the descendants of the Herero and Nama victims continue to reject structural aid and demand direct reparations from Germany. In a joint statement issued this week, the Ovaherero Traditional Authorities and Nama Traditional Leaders Association called the reconciliation agreement a “public relations coup by Germany and an act of betrayal by the Namibian government”.
This Guardian piece from a week ago puts the deal in more context/perspective.
posted by progosk at 10:11 PM on May 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
This Guardian piece from a week ago puts the deal in more context/perspective.
posted by progosk at 10:11 PM on May 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
I saw a play called We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884 - 1915 by Jackie Sibblies Drury. It was the first I'd ever heard of this event. The play is incredible (it starts out fun and light and ends...not). I'm glad that there is some movement toward reparations, and I am disappointed that it is not enough.
posted by rednikki at 12:23 AM on May 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by rednikki at 12:23 AM on May 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
I devoured V. its time -- not to mention The Crying of Lot 49 -- as a teenager and those first two novels blew me away. No one I knew had never heard of the Herero genocide before V. I never forgot it thereafter.
That Pynchon wrote V. before turning 25 -- not unlike Bob Dylan turning out Blonde on Blonde at roughly the same age -- was both humbling and inspiring. He is a fascinating figure.
That he has managed to live as private a life as any mysterious encyclopedic postmodern polymath novelist could and still appear in 3 episodes of The Simpsons is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius in its own right.
posted by y2karl at 6:48 AM on May 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
That Pynchon wrote V. before turning 25 -- not unlike Bob Dylan turning out Blonde on Blonde at roughly the same age -- was both humbling and inspiring. He is a fascinating figure.
That he has managed to live as private a life as any mysterious encyclopedic postmodern polymath novelist could and still appear in 3 episodes of The Simpsons is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius in its own right.
posted by y2karl at 6:48 AM on May 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
see also
When the first Dutch settlers annexed the Cape in 1652, they took to hunting Bushmen for sport, and over the following two centuries white Afrikaner settlers pushed north and west, killing Bushmen where they found them. From the early 1900s until the 1930s German settlers practised a similar form of ethnic cleansing (a term actually employed by the Teutonic administrators at the time) in the territory that is now Namibia. By the post 1945 era Bushmen only survived in significant numbers in the Kalahari region of central Botswana and eastern Namibia, where the almost complete lack of ground water made both white and black settlement unviable.
Khoisan peoples. Mohamed Adhikari examines the history of the San and persuasively presents the annihilation of Cape San society as genocide The Anatomy of a South African Genocide, - See also
posted by adamvasco at 8:05 AM on May 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
When the first Dutch settlers annexed the Cape in 1652, they took to hunting Bushmen for sport, and over the following two centuries white Afrikaner settlers pushed north and west, killing Bushmen where they found them. From the early 1900s until the 1930s German settlers practised a similar form of ethnic cleansing (a term actually employed by the Teutonic administrators at the time) in the territory that is now Namibia. By the post 1945 era Bushmen only survived in significant numbers in the Kalahari region of central Botswana and eastern Namibia, where the almost complete lack of ground water made both white and black settlement unviable.
Khoisan peoples. Mohamed Adhikari examines the history of the San and persuasively presents the annihilation of Cape San society as genocide The Anatomy of a South African Genocide, - See also
posted by adamvasco at 8:05 AM on May 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
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posted by maxwelton at 5:27 PM on May 28, 2021 [4 favorites]