Namibia: Ozombuzovindimba - Second Unity Test?

28 October 2011
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Today, as has become an established tradition since 2004, the centenary commemoration of the Extermination Order against the Ovaherero and Ovambanderu people by General Lothar von Trotha, then Imperial Germany forces' Commander in the then Deutsch Südwest Afrika, members of these communities, fellow comrades in the quest for reparations, sympathisers and other Namibian patriots, shall be converging on Ozombuzovindimba, about 20 kilometres east of the settlement of Otjinene.

The 107th anniversary of the Extermination this year is not only intrinsically an auspicious and historic moment in an epoch, the epoch of the 107th anniversary of the Ovaherero-Ovambanderu-Nama genocide, and the attendant struggle for recognition by the current government of the Federal Republic of Germany to accept and admit to its inhuman colonial escapades in the then German South West Africa. More than anything else, it also places on the German government a heavy moral and political responsibility to make the necessary amends, thus paving the way for genuine and honest reconciliation, in the year of the repatriation of the skulls, a matter directly associated with the genocide and extermination orders against the Namibian people. Thus the commemoration of the 2nd of October 1904 Extermination Order against the Ovaherero-Ovambanderu cannot have any more significance, relevance and focus than on its 107th commemoration. Needless to say that this year, the commemoration assumes a different meaning if not dimension if the grassroots sentiments are anything to go by.

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