Namibia is not done asking Germany to pay for the Herero and Nama genocide
Namibia’s Attorney General Festus Katuna Mbandeka renewed the call this week, saying the country is still pushing Germany for real reparations over the genocide of the Herero and Nama people between 1904 and 1908. German colonial forces killed an estimated 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama, wiping out roughly 80 percent of the Herero population and half the Nama population at the time. Survivors were forced into concentration camps where thousands died from starvation, disease and forced labor.
Germany has already done the easy part. In 2021 it formally recognized the killings as genocide and issued an apology. What it has not done is pay reparations. Instead Berlin offered 1.1 billion euros in development aid spread over 30 years, money it specifically refused to call compensation. Many Herero and Nama descendants were never consulted on that deal, and they have rejected it ever since.
Mbandeka made clear that recognition and an apology were only the first steps. No amount of money replaces lost lives, but he says reparations and deeper acknowledgment of the genocide’s lasting damage are still owed.
Over a hundred years later, the apology came easy. The payment still has not.
Should an apology without real compensation count as justice, or is it just a cheaper way to close the conversation.