LOTS OF POSTS IGNORED BY BLOGGER.....
OR REMOVED ON THEIR WHIM!
ALL POSTS ARE AVAILABLE ON
MIDDLEBORO REVIEW AND SO ON
BLOGGER DOESN'T LIKE TRUTH OR FACTS!
BLOGGER DOESN'T LIKE FUND RAISERS AND DELETES
POSTS THAT INCLUDE FUNDRAISING THAT 'VIOLATES THEIR
UNDEFINED COMMUNITY STANDARDS SO ALL 'FUND RAISING'
IS DELETED - CONTRIBUTE AS YOU ARE INCLINED TO SUPPORT
IMPORTANT ISSUES! THESE ARE NOT SOLICITATIONS
Scott Ritter:
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Columbia U. President Who Angered Both Sides Resigns
Pro-Palestine student organizers at the university celebrated the departure of Minouche Shafik and vowed to keep up the pressure on the institution’s leadership to divest from Israel. Read here... _______________________________________________________________________________________
Is the Ukraine War
_______________________________________________________________________________________
2200 Wilson Blvd. Suite 102-231 Arlington, VA 22201 |
By Henning Melber, University of Pretoria | –
(The Conversation) – Germany was a significant – and often brutal – colonial power in Africa. But this colonial history is not told as often as that of other imperialist nations. A new book called The Long Shadow of German Colonialism: Amnesia, Denialism and Revisionism aims to bring the past into the light. It explores not just the history of German colonialism, but also how its legacy has played out in German society, politics and the media. We asked Henning Melber about his book.
Imperial Germany was a latecomer in the scramble for Africa. Shady deals marked the pseudo-legal entry point. South West Africa (today Namibia), Cameroon and Togo were euphemistically proclaimed to be possessions under “German protection” in 1884. East Africa (today’s Tanzania and parts of Rwanda and Burundi) followed in 1886.
German rule left a trail of destruction. The war against the Hehe people in east Africa (1890-1898) signalled what would come. It was the training ground for a generation of colonial German army officers. They would apply their merciless skills in other locations too. The mindset was one of extermination.
The war against the Ovaherero and Nama people in South West Africa (1904-1908) culminated in the first genocide of the 20th century. The warfare against the Maji Maji in east Africa (1905-1907) applied a scorched earth policy. In each case, the African fatalities amounted to an estimated 75,000.
“Punitive expeditions” were the order of the day in Cameroon and Togo too. The inhuman treatment included corporal punishment and executions, sexual abuse and forced labour as forms of “white violence”.
During a colonial rule of 30 years (1884-1914), Germans in the colonies numbered fewer than 50,000 – even at the peak of military deployment. But several hundred thousand Africans died as a direct consequence of German colonial violence.
After its defeat in the first world war (1914-1918), the German empire was declared unfit to colonise. In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles allocated Germany’s territories to allied states (Great Britain, France and others). The colonial cake was redistributed, so to speak.
This did not end a humiliated Germany’s colonial ambitions. In the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) colonial propaganda flourished. It took new turns under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime (1933-1945). Lebensraum (living space) as a colonial project shifted towards eastern Europe.
The Aryan obsession of being a master race culminated in the Holocaust as mass extermination of the Jewish people. But victims were also Sinti and Roma people and other groups (Africans, gays, communists). The Holocaust has overshadowed earlier German crimes against humanity of the colonial era.
After the second world war (1939-1945), German colonialism became a footnote in history. Repression turned into colonial amnesia. But, as Jewish German-US historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt suggested in 1951 already, German colonial rule was a precursor to the Nazi regime. Such claims are often discredited as antisemitism for downplaying the singularity of the Holocaust. Such gatekeeping prevents exploration of how German colonialism marked the beginning of a trajectory of mass violence.
Until the turn of the century, colonial relics such as monuments and names of buildings, places and streets were hardly questioned. Thanks to a new generation of scholars, local postcolonial agencies, and not least an active Afro-German community, public awareness is starting to change.
Various initiatives challenge colonial memory in the public sphere. The re-contextualisation of the Bremen elephant, a colonial monument, is a good example. What was once a tribute to fallen colonial German soldiers became an anticolonial monument memorialising the Namibian victims of the genocide. Colonial street names are today increasingly replaced with names of Africans resisting colonial rule.
Numerous skulls – including those of decapitated African leaders – were taken to Germany during colonialism. These were for pseudo scientific anthropological research that was obsessed with white and Aryan superiority. Descendants of the affected African communities are still in search of the remains of their ancestors and demand their restitution.
Similarly, cultural artefacts were looted. They have remained in the possession of German museums and private collections. Systematic provenance research to identify the origins of these objects has only just begun. Transactions such as the return of Benin bronzes in Germany remain a matter of negotiations.
The German government admitted, in 2015, that the war against the Ovaherero and Nama in today’s Namibia was tantamount to genocide. Since then, German-Namibian negotiations have been taking place, but Germany’s limited atonement is a matter of contestation and controversy.
The pain and exploitation of colonialism lives on in African societies today in many ways. I hope that the descendants of colonisers take away an awareness that we are products of a past that remains alive in the present. That decolonisation is also a personal matter. That we, as the offspring of colonisers, need to critically scrutinise our mindset, our attitudes, and should not assume that colonial relations had no effect on us.
Remorse and atonement require more than symbolic gestures and tokenism. In official relations with formerly colonised societies, uneven power relations continue. This borders on a perpetuation of colonial mindsets and supremacist hierarchies.
No former colonial power is willing to compensate in any significant way for its exploitation, atrocities and injustices. There are no meaningful material reparations as credible efforts of apology.
The colonial era is not a closed chapter in history. It remains an unresolved present. As the US novelist William Faulkner wrote:
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
—-
Bonus video added by Informed Comment:
Al Jazeera English: “Namibia: The Price of Genocide | People and Power”
In this gripping story, follow the dedicated veterinarians from the AWARE Foundation as they face one of their toughest challenges yet in Mana Pools National Park. When a distressed elephant exhibits unusual behavior, Dr. Lisa Marabini, the director of the foundation, leads her team in a mission to uncover and treat the source of his suffering. Their journey is filled with unexpected twists, testing their skills and determination. Join us to see how compassion and expertise come together in a remarkable effort to save this magnificent creature. Will they succeed against the odds? Watch to find out.
| |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
|
LOTS OF POSTS IGNORED BY BLOGGER..... OR REMOVED ON THEIR WHIM! ALL POSTS ARE AVAILABLE...
