Namibia has turned down Germany’s £9 million offer of reparations for colonial massacres, stating that it needs to be ‘revised’.
Namibia’s President Hage Geingob on Tuesday said reparations offered by Germany for mass killings in its then colony at the start of the twentieth century were ‘not acceptable’.
German occupiers in Namibia killed tens of thousands of indigenous Herero and Nama people in 1904-1908 massacres, which historians have called the first genocide of the 20th century.
In 2015, the two countries started negotiating an agreement that would combine an official apology by Germany as well as development aid.
Geingob on Tuesday was briefed by his government’s special envoy Zed Ngavirue on the status of negotiations.
The briefing took place ahead of a final round of talks for which a date has yet to be set.
‘The current offer for reparations made by the German government remains an outstanding issue and is not acceptable to the Namibian government,’ Geingob said in a statement after the briefing, adding that Ngavirue had been asked to ‘continue with negotiations for a revised offer’.
The sum of money offered in reparations was £9 million (€10 million), according to a report in DW.
The president also noted that Germany had declined to accept the term ‘reparations’, as that word was also avoided during the country’s negotiations with Israel after the Holocaust.
Ngavirue rejected Germany’s reference to reparations as ‘healing the wounds’ and said the terminology would be subject to further debate, according to the statement.
