Monday, April 03, 2006
Botswana Film Festival
Before embarking on this trip, I understood that basically, colonial history is often characterized by horrific and inexplicable acts. But I do not always know the details. Unfortunately, my history classes didn't prepare me well to understand African history and I have lacked facts about the time period. I can recite battles from world war two, but I don't always know where an African country is geographically (how embarrassing!). But these details are valuable. They can set the places I visit within a historical framework. Unfortunately, aside from the Lonely Planet summary in the guidebook, "King Leopolds Ghost" (which explained Congo's history) and the few casual historians that I have encountered, facts and details have rarely been available.
Maybe it is because the historical record is so sinister. Stories of oppression, forced labor and racial brutality are not recorded by the colonial powers. Even oral histories of Africans fade with the passing of time, with each generation the wounds of history heal. But seeing one film at the Gaborone Human Rights festival really opened my eyes and understanding of Namibian history. "Namibia and the Second Reich" narrated the story of the systematic genocide of the Herero people of Namibia by the German Second Reich in the first decades of the twentieth century.
The film itself was a History Channel style narration of the episode with dramatic reenactments and historical archive photographs. It was in the style of a war documentary... and this form of documentary always manages to bore me into changing the channel. However, having just visited Namibia, I was riveted. In Namibia, the wounds of the apartheid era are very obvious: the division of neighborhoods, the economic inequality between races and even the rage of some Namibians toward unjustified and justified enemies. But the wounds of the colonial era have all but healed: the consensus about the Germans is that they were fantastic colonialists (even the most avid nationalist freedom fighter that I spoke with attested to this). German tourists today find Namibia a favorite vacation spot in Africa.
The film relayed a forgotten past, one that seems buried by the magnitude of other atrocities that happened in the twentieth century. It told the story of the genocide of the Herero, a semi-nomadic people of the Kalahari region. In the early 1900's the colonial government made a decision to quell a rebellion by the Herero, who spoke up against the forced labor practices of the colonialists. They sought the help of the national government. The rebellion was heatedly debated in the halls of the Second Reich in Berlin. The newspapers screamed for protection to be sent down to save the lives of German colonists from the brutal hands of the savages.
In Germany, mass hysteria seemed to be interpreting an event that in reality, may have been manageable. The actual rebellion, according to local German representatives was localized and small. But Berlin decided to send down a special commander to systematically eradicate the entire tribe in retaliation. As the ships of cavalry German soldiers arrived, they were instructed to drive the Herero off their land. They were forced to walk east, east to the Kalahari desert, the largest desert on earth. Once they reached the edge of the desert, the Herero seemed to have little choice but to escape into the harsh desert. With little food and water, most of them died.
In the coming months, thousands of survivors were rounded up by the German cavalry into cattle carts and transported by train to Swakopmund, a port city along the Skeleton Coast. There, the commanders of the Second Reich ordered the building of the first concentration camps in history, within the city as well as on an island off the coast...
A searing comparison arises to events of thirty years later. The chief commanders in charge of the camps were later sanctioned to build and operate similar camps during the second world war. The methods they had perfected on the last remaining survivors of the Herero were used to commit later atrocities in Auschwitz and other camps.
The most forceful message of the movie was how little sympathetic awareness the genocide provoked back on the European continent. German military visitors to the camps in Namibia posed in photographs next to the 'savages' with apparent satisfaction. The pictures were kept in family albums because they weren't thought shameful. Who could care about a tribe in the Kalahari?
I admit that I had never heard of the Herero or the genocide before seeing this movie. But I have to wonder, in how many places that I have visited has there been a back story like this? History from the western perspective has a way of categorizing such events pretty low in the order of significance. I just wish I could know more about the places that I am traveling through.
Before embarking on this trip, I understood that basically, colonial history is often characterized by horrific and inexplicable acts. But I do not always know the details. Unfortunately, my history classes didn't prepare me well to understand African history and I have lacked facts about the time period. I can recite battles from world war two, but I don't always know where an African country is geographically (how embarrassing!). But these details are valuable. They can set the places I visit within a historical framework. Unfortunately, aside from the Lonely Planet summary in the guidebook, "King Leopolds Ghost" (which explained Congo's history) and the few casual historians that I have encountered, facts and details have rarely been available.
Maybe it is because the historical record is so sinister. Stories of oppression, forced labor and racial brutality are not recorded by the colonial powers. Even oral histories of Africans fade with the passing of time, with each generation the wounds of history heal. But seeing one film at the Gaborone Human Rights festival really opened my eyes and understanding of Namibian history. "Namibia and the Second Reich" narrated the story of the systematic genocide of the Herero people of Namibia by the German Second Reich in the first decades of the twentieth century.
The film itself was a History Channel style narration of the episode with dramatic reenactments and historical archive photographs. It was in the style of a war documentary... and this form of documentary always manages to bore me into changing the channel. However, having just visited Namibia, I was riveted. In Namibia, the wounds of the apartheid era are very obvious: the division of neighborhoods, the economic inequality between races and even the rage of some Namibians toward unjustified and justified enemies. But the wounds of the colonial era have all but healed: the consensus about the Germans is that they were fantastic colonialists (even the most avid nationalist freedom fighter that I spoke with attested to this). German tourists today find Namibia a favorite vacation spot in Africa.
The film relayed a forgotten past, one that seems buried by the magnitude of other atrocities that happened in the twentieth century. It told the story of the genocide of the Herero, a semi-nomadic people of the Kalahari region. In the early 1900's the colonial government made a decision to quell a rebellion by the Herero, who spoke up against the forced labor practices of the colonialists. They sought the help of the national government. The rebellion was heatedly debated in the halls of the Second Reich in Berlin. The newspapers screamed for protection to be sent down to save the lives of German colonists from the brutal hands of the savages.
In Germany, mass hysteria seemed to be interpreting an event that in reality, may have been manageable. The actual rebellion, according to local German representatives was localized and small. But Berlin decided to send down a special commander to systematically eradicate the entire tribe in retaliation. As the ships of cavalry German soldiers arrived, they were instructed to drive the Herero off their land. They were forced to walk east, east to the Kalahari desert, the largest desert on earth. Once they reached the edge of the desert, the Herero seemed to have little choice but to escape into the harsh desert. With little food and water, most of them died.
In the coming months, thousands of survivors were rounded up by the German cavalry into cattle carts and transported by train to Swakopmund, a port city along the Skeleton Coast. There, the commanders of the Second Reich ordered the building of the first concentration camps in history, within the city as well as on an island off the coast...
A searing comparison arises to events of thirty years later. The chief commanders in charge of the camps were later sanctioned to build and operate similar camps during the second world war. The methods they had perfected on the last remaining survivors of the Herero were used to commit later atrocities in Auschwitz and other camps.
The most forceful message of the movie was how little sympathetic awareness the genocide provoked back on the European continent. German military visitors to the camps in Namibia posed in photographs next to the 'savages' with apparent satisfaction. The pictures were kept in family albums because they weren't thought shameful. Who could care about a tribe in the Kalahari?
I admit that I had never heard of the Herero or the genocide before seeing this movie. But I have to wonder, in how many places that I have visited has there been a back story like this? History from the western perspective has a way of categorizing such events pretty low in the order of significance. I just wish I could know more about the places that I am traveling through.
1 Comments:
In your writing, Tuuli, you seem to strangely bring forth the attitude of my past accepted "as is": "these people did not HAVE the same value as you and I, because they were not developed like us." These kind of attitudes must be updated and challenged. For God's sake, we think of us being for human rights for all people. This is FOR ALL PEOPLE.
It is good that you write as a young woman does. I need to update my attitude of baby boomer. Thanks for your help. Shame on me.
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It is good that you write as a young woman does. I need to update my attitude of baby boomer. Thanks for your help. Shame on me.
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