Entangled history and politics: Negotiating the past between Namibia and Germany

Abstract

The relationship between Namibia and Germany is marked by intense exchanges about the meaning and the consequences of the colonial wars of the early twentieth century in the erstwhile German colony. This engages various state and civil society actors including groups from across the political spectrum in Germany, whereas in Namibia the debate concerns the descendants of the victims on the one hand and German-speaking Namibians on the other. The article explores this discursive situation and brings out a range of relationships and interactions to be understood as expressions of an entangled history that eschews attempts of appropriation on one side. The problem emerge most poignantly in terms the still ongoing exchanges around the denial of genocide in 1904-8 which, given that the framework of the debate is predicated to considerable measure on German history, inevitably points to the Holocaust. A further strand of acting out and negotiating historical responsibility concerns the...