Sidney Harring
Excerpted from: Sidney Harring, German Reparations to
the Herero Nation: an Assertion of Herero Nationhood in the Path of
Namibian Development? , 104 West Virginia Law Review 393-497, 393-398,
401-410 (Winter 2002) (132 Footnotes Omitted)
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl probably expected a pleasant and
uneventful visit to Namibia in September of 1995. Formerly the German
colony of South West Africa, the new nation of Namibia is visibly proud
of its German heritage, evident everywhere in its capital at Windhoek,
in stoutly built brick and stone colonial buildings. Germany, in turn,
is Namibia's largest provider of foreign aid and equally proud of its
role in Namibian development. However, while Kohl was visiting a German
community in Namibia, around three-hundred "members of the Herero
tribe led by Paramount Chief Kuaima Riruako marched on the German
embassy in Windhoek and handed in a petition for Kohl." As it turns
out, the Herero wanted to meet Kohl during his visit to Namibia.
However, Kohl refused and instead visited the coastal town of Swakopmund.
The petition was a demand for reparations resulting from the near
extermination of the Herero by the Germans during the Herero War of
1904-07. The war, although not well known in a world of far more deadly
wars, was among the twentieth century's bloodiest colonial wars, killing
at least sixty thousand of the eighty-thousand Herero and resulting in
the German seizure of all Herero lands and cattle. As a result, Central
Namibia was swept clean of black occupation, setting the stage for the
creation of the European agricultural economy that prevails today.
Herero Paramount Chief Kuaimi Riruako demanded reparations of $600
million (US). After delivering the petition, Riruako stated, "We
think we have a legitimate claim for reparations as a result of the war
and genocide committed against the Hereros by the German army." The
Herero Traditional Authority, he continued, was prepared to take its
case to the United Nations if Bonn rejected the claim. And, in a
surprising move, Chief Riruako, through the Chief Hosea Kutako
Foundation, recently filed a lawsuit against three German companies in
the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, asking for $2 billion
(U.S.) in reparations, asserting the companies were in a "brutal
alliance" with imperial Germany in the Herero War.
The Namibian government has opposed the Herero claim for reparations.
Heavily dependant on German aid, and dominated by the rival Ovambo
tribe, the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), the ruling
party, has taken the position that all Namibian tribes were victimized
by colonial exploitation, and therefore, no group in particular should
be singled out to receive reparation payments. But the Herero, now
numbering about 125,000, and the leading opposition tribe, have
persisted in pursuing their claim. It has served to define Herero
identity within Namibia, setting the Herero people apart.
In a modern Africa, with many different development regimes
competing, the Herero claim deserves careful analysis. A model of
"reparations" has an obvious historical root in the
colonization of Africa. In addition, a pattern of violent land seizures
in Zimbabwe underscores the need for effective land reform programs
that, in turn, are blocked throughout southern Africa by a lack of
funds. German reparations would allow the Herero, still a cattle herding
people, to repurchase a substantial portion of their "stolen"
lands and return their cattle to their traditional range. Ironically,
under the colonial law of conquest, the Herero cannot recover nor be
compensated for their "stolen" lands because the German
conquest of their lands provides a legal basis for German land
ownership. But their claim for reparations for genocide is based on
broader rights in international and natural law and therefore may
provide a better chance for success.
The Herero did not "invent" their demand for reparations.
Rather, it is derived entirely from their careful reading of modern
German history. Germany is making reparations to both individual Jews
and the State of Israel for acts of genocide inthe 1930s and 1940s,
scarcely thirty years after the Herero War. The Herero ask an obvious
question: what is the legal - or moral - distinction between German
genocide directed at Jews and German genocide directed at Africans?
Surely, in the modern world, a racial distinction cannot account for
this difference in policy. Or is the distinction based on some
meaningful difference between genocide in the Herero War and World War
Two? As it was simply put by Mburumba Kerina, a Herero activist, "(T)he
concerns of the Hereros must be seen in the same light as that of the
Jewish people."
The Herero claim for reparations is directly grounded in the
characterization of Germany's history as particularly violent and as a
former racist imperialist and colonial power, with a history of
acknowledging this violence by paying reparations. Indeed, there is
evidence that the virulent racism that promoted the holocaust not only
the characterized German colonization of Africa, but was also partially
formed there: the Germans began experiments with sterilization in the
name of the science of eugenics, the creation of a " master
race," in German South West Africa at the turn of the century.
Herero prisoners of war were the subjects of these experiments.
Similarly, Germany's sudden and late entry into the colonial enterprise
in Africa was prompted by its military victories in the Franco-Prussian
War, prompting further expansion of German authority through military
power. Consequently, the Herero seem to have a strong argument that they
too deserve reparations from Germany. However, before one can completely
understand the true nature of their claim for reparations, a closer look
at the Herero War is necessary.
. . .
Like most colonial histories, the colonial history of Namibia is
complex and still, from the standpoint of the black people who live
there, largely unwritten. The Herero War, an exception to this history,
has been the subject of a number of books, with scholars drawn to the
unique character of German colonial violence. Although a number of
meanings can be drawn from the war, the central outcome in terms of land
law is clear: Germany terminated by conquest all Herero land rights in
South West Africa, leaving the nation with no land at all. Herero lands
were then "sold" to settlers - ninety percent of them German -
on favorable terms, with long- term loans subsidized by the government.
These farms are now the heart of Namibian agriculture, occupying a wide
swath from Omaruru to Gobabis and the Botswana border, the entire
country to the west, north, and east of Windhoek.
. . .
The census of 1911 gives the Herero population in South West Africa
as 15,130, down from about 80,000 before the war. A few thousand
additional Herero, including Chief Samuel Maharero, had sought refuge in
western Bechuanaland (now Botswana). Perhaps a few hundred to a thousand
more had fled to Kaokoland, a remote area beyond the police line but
still in German South West Africa, and a few more escaped to Angola.
Thus, at most 20,000 Herero survived the war, possibly no more than
17,000, leaving at least 60,000 to 63,000 dead - seventy-five to eighty
percent of their pre-war population. Within Namibia, Herero cattle were
all lost and their herding culture was decimated. These remaining Herero
survived as refugees, living in absolute poverty in camps or near
mission stations. High death rates continued in the postwar years, as
the result of disease and starvation. Thus, the German act of genocide
against the Herero was striking and deliberate, intended both to free
their lands for white settlement and also to deter similar uprisings by
other Native tribes in South West Africa.
III. THE LEGAL BASIS OF THE CLAIM FOR HERERO REPARATIONS
The Herero claim for reparations began within the context of the next
ninety years of colonial history. Modern Namibia looks much the way the
Germans left it in 1915, when German rule suddenly ended. After a brief
period of British administration following the capture of South West
Africa in World War One, the colony was turned over, under the
provisions of a League of Nations class "c" mandate, to South
African administration. The British plans were for a well-ordered
agricultural colonial-settler state. German farmers were left on their
lands, including most of the Herero lands, the agricultural heartland,
with new, often very marginal, lands to the north and south opened up to
Boer settlers. South West Africa became a rich agricultural land,
heavily subsidized by the apartheid-era South African state.
The Herero, who joined the British forces in the invasion of South
West Africa, began a cultural renaissance under the South Africans. By
all sorts of means, including large-scale squatting and various
sharecropping agreements with white farmers, they regained their cattle
and re-occupied vast tracts of their former lands, albeit in the more
remote and undeveloped regions. This history is remarkable, given the
racist, and later apartheid-era policies of South Africa, but it sets
the political stage for the position of the Herero in modern Namibia and
for their claim for reparations.
This history is important because it structures the logic of Herero
reparations. The underlying issue is the forcible deprivation of their
lands which, in turn, means that there is no place to graze Herero
cattle, the center of their culture. However, no direct reparation for
land is likely because, historically, indigenous lands taken by European
settler societies have rarely been returned. Although the Herero often
talk about "land" in the context of reparations, the actual
demand for economic reparations is based on genocide and on the
merciless and systematic killing and starvation of the Herero during the
1904-07 war. This demand is grounded in the logic of reparations for
Jews and other peoples victimized by the Germans before and in World War
Two, analogizing the Herero War to German genocide against the Jews and
not to other African and Asian colonial wars.
It would be both a futile and dishonorable discourse to venture into
any kind of a comparative analysis of genocide - and such a discussion
is irrelevant for purposes of the Herero position. Genocide is genocide:
murdering an African tribe cannot be rotely compared to murdering a
European people, or a European nation. Nothing that the Herero say in
any way dismisses or diminishes the unique crimes that Germany committed
against Jews. Modern international law of reparations is dominated by
extensive Jewish claims for reparations against Germany and other
countries, but this is not the limit of reparations claims. Even in the
context of World War Two, reparations have been paid to others,
including $1.2 billion to Americans of Japanese descent for their
imprisonment and loss of their lands. Also reparations have been made in
a parallel settlement to Japanese Canadians, and a case is pending
against the Japanese for reparations for Korean "comfort
women," forced into prostitution by the Japanese army. Other
European claims, including that of the Romani people, raised by other
peoples subjected to mass extermination in concentration camps, have
failed. None of these claims for reparations compare to the Jewish
holocaust, but their success, nevertheless, represents important
advances in human rights law.
The Herero are very aware of these legally recognized reparation
claims and base their claim accordingly. Mburumba Kerina, a Herero
leader, commented on the forced sexual slavery of Herero women by
Germans. Comparing this to the case of the Japanese "comfort
women," Kerina explained, probably with more than a touch of irony:
"Hey, that's my grandmother - a comfort woman. . . If the Japanese
could pay for that, the Germans could." This careful attention to
the existing international law of reparations distinguishes the Herero
claim for reparations. The narrow discussion is a more general inquiry
into the appropriateness of reparations as a political and legal remedy
to the damage to various peoples caused by twentieth century colonial
wars. If these situations are reasonably analogous to existing
reparations claims, to dismiss them out of hand must turn on
considerations that can only be called racist. If these claims are well
grounded legally, then broader policy issues may be implicated and must
be heard.
There is no consistent legal basis for any of the modern reparations
regimes. The concept of reparations is rooted in natural law, the common
law, and international law; it is an equitable principle that the
beneficiary of an ill-gotten gain should make restitution, both as an
act of contrition and good will, but also simply to restore the victim
to some part of their previous life. As a political matter when related
to the specific context of war reparations, it is generally
"winners" who demand restitution from "losers." The
original post World War Two German reparations law, Law Number 59 on
Restitution of Property Stolen in the Course of the Aryanization of the
Economy, was adopted by the U.S. military government and imposed on
Germany in November, 1947. However, within the modern world, liberal
democracies have used the language of reparations in making voluntary
payments through various statutory regimes to their own indigenous or
minority populations. American and Canadian payments to Japanese
citizens as reparations for wartime injustice are the most extensive
example, although many payments to indigenous peoples are broadly of
this type. Although these Japanese reparation claims included complex
litigation strategies, these ultimately failed and the final reparations
settlements were political, voted by the U.S. Congress and the Canadian
Parliament.
The Jewish claims against Germany also avoided litigation and began
with ally-ordered regimes to return stolen Jewish property but proceeded
to a formal claim, filed on behalf of the State of Israel, as the lawful
representative of the Jewish people, with the German government. A
series of negotiations followed, with a final agreement resulting
through political processes, and voted on by the German Parliament. The
original reparations legislation has been revised and expanded several
times, with substantial opposition within Germany.
The legal basis of Herero reparations is rooted in both of these
traditions, although it lacks support from the Namibian government. The
Herero reparations claim has never been formally acted on by the German
government, but it was dismissed out of hand in a speech by Roman
Herzog, President of Germany. In a 1998 trip to Namibia, Herzog was
quoted as saying that "no international legislation existed at the
time under which ethnic minorities could get reparations." Herero
activist Mberumba Kerina countered by claiming that the Hague Convention
of 1899 outlawed "reprisals against civilians on the losing
side." In the same exchange, Herzog dismissed the idea of an
apology because too much time had passed to make sense - and also fired
his translator for misinterpreting his statements.
To the extent that this exchange begins to structure the Herero case
and the German response to it, several important issues emerge leaving
an unclear legal basis for their reparations claim. President Herzog
describes the legal basis for reparations differently than do the Herero.
Herzog put his response in the language of colonialism, with his clear
historical reference to the colonial domination of ethnic minorities
serving as a basis for reparations as supported by no
"international legislation at the time." Thus, for Herzog,
colonialism was "legal" in 1905 under international
legislation, therefore ending the discussion of Herero reparations.
This analysis, however, is not the basis of the Herero claim. Rather,
the Herero locate their claim in terms of the international laws of war
as defined in the Second Hague Convention of 1899, a convention at which
the Germans were represented and which binds the European powers as they
go about their "business" of civilized warfare, that is
warfare between signatory nations. Unless Germany seeks to argue, in the
twenty-first century, that there was, after 1899, one set of rules for
European nations conducting wars with each other and a completely
different set for those same nations conducting "colonial"
wars, or even more bluntly put, wars against "ethnic" peoples,
it is in an untenable moral position.
The Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War by Land was
signed on July 29, 1899 and took effect on September 4, 1900. Intended
to regulate modern warfare, the Convention contains a number of
provisions that, in their plain language, were apparently violated by
Germany in the Herero War. Article 4 requires that "prisoners of
war in the power of the hostile government . . . must be honorably
treated." Article 7 provides that "the government into whose
hands prisoners of war have fallen is bound to maintain them."
Article 23 states that "it is especially prohibited to kill or
wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;
to declare that no quarter will be given; to destroy or seize the
enemies property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively
demanded by the necessity of war." Finally, Article 46 states that
"family honors and rights, individual lives and private property .
. . must be respected."
It would follow that a systemic violation of that Convention, for
example, in an order to kill all the Herero and starve their women and
children, clearly a declaration that "no quarter will be
given," would be legally actionable under whatever regime of
international enforcement the Hague Convention recognizes, but for the
fact that the Herero were not represented at the Hague, and could not,
therefore, sign the convention. Thus, the issue is not the literal
application of the Hague Convention to the Herero War. Rather, it is the
Convention as a statement of international customary law. Importantly
for the Herero, their claim can be analagized to Jewish and Japanese
reparation claims, which are also not based on the Hague Convention, but
on more general principles of human rights.
This leaves unanswered President Herzog's defense: that colonialism
and, apparently, colonial genocide, was legal in 1905. Although his
position may literally be true, that, again, is not the issue. The
political and legal reasons for not opening up four hundred years of
colonialism to broad claims of reparations are clear, regardless of the
justice of the claims. Such a claim parallels other equally broad based
claims, most prominently in the growing discussion of reparations for
African slavery. There is a substantial literature - including in law
reviews - on these legal arguments. Representative John Conyers has
introduced a resolution into the House of Representatives requiring the
exploration of the issue of reparations for slavery in the United
States. A Pan-African Congress on Reparations was held in Nigeria in
1993 and claims of reparations underscore some of the discourse on the
rebuilding of African economies. Although these efforts have most often
been dismissed as politically impossible, existing legal doctrines of
equity and natural law, as well as the thirteenth and fourteenth
amendments of the U.S. Constitution, lend both moral and legal
credibility to the case for black reparations for both slavery,
primarily involving the tens of millions of overseas blacks, and for the
devastation of colonialism, primarily involving blacks still living on
the African continent.
However, it is important to see that the Herero claim is much more
narrowly framed than the above claims are. While in the long course of
human history there has clearly and unfortunately been an equally long
history of genocide, the law of reparations is much more limited. Modern
reparations claims, modeled after the Jewish claims against Germany, are
most often very specific. The Herero are aware of this, explaining the
precise basis for their claim as acts of genocide committed against
their nation by the German army, acting under specific orders in
carrying out German colonial policy in the Herero War of 1904-07. Thus,
the Herero nation is the injured party, acting on behalf of the 60,000
Herero dead in bringing the reparations claim. Although these people are
clearly the grandmothers and grandfathers of every living Herero person,
it is not their families who are making the claim. This formulation is
deliberately designed to be broadly analogous to the successful war
reparations claims resulting from German genocide in World War Two. The
Herero nation is asking for reparations from roughly the same position
as the State of Israel. Although, a "tribe" is not a
"state," modern tribes represent their people in world forums,
and nothing in the international law of reparations requires that the
aggrieved people be represented by a state.
This has two equally precise legal purposes. No legal claim for
reparations is likely to be entertained unless it is possible to set
damages. The "costs" of colonialism and slavery over four
hundred years are incalculable, and this is some barrier to these
claims. But courts, in tort cases, set the price of particular human
lives every day. The United States paid $1.2 billion to twenty thousand
Americans of Japanese ancestry for the loss of their property in World
War Two. The Herero have asked for $600 million (US) - $10,000 for each
human victim; nothing for their land, nothing for their cattle. It is
likely to be legally difficult, even in a culture with an elaborate oral
history, to prove who among the Herero was killed, how, and where in the
South West Africa of a hundred years ago. The nature of the Herero
claim, as a nation, however, renders this unnecessary.
One final distinction between the Herero claim and the World War Two
era claims also suggests itself: the Herero claim is at least thirty
years older. Common sense suggests that there must be some time limit on
reparations claims, although no law absolutely states what this might
be. The Herero claim is based on a twentieth century act of genocide and
grounded in similar claims arising from other twentieth century wars.
Modern South Africa permits native claims for restitution of land back
to the Native Land Act of 1913, a period roughly the same as the Herero
claim. Moreover, the apartheid-era policies of South Africa effectively
blocked raising a reparations claim until independence in 1990, and the
Herero raised their claim almost immediately thereafter. The United
States and Canada, recognizing the legal difficulties Indian nations had
in the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century in bringing land
claims, have not limited the time frame for Native American land
restitution claims, and one claim dating from 1795 is still being
litigated. For policy reasons, it makes no sense to limit reparations to
genocide to the actual victims: they are most often dead, and that is
precisely the nature of the evil of genocide. And, for the same reasons,
it also makes no sense to require that some modern state represent the
interests of a victimized people.
But, there are no formal legal rules governing the law of
reparations. The Herero have posed a political claim and are still
awaiting political action on the part of the German government. The
claim is not justiciable in Namibian courts. While there may ultimately
be recourse to the World Court, the Herero are aware that reparations
regimes operant in the world today are political and not legal. But,
these political actions have a common history of being moved by
extensive legal posturing, creating a powerful moral climate supporting
reparations, and shaping public opinion. This has been the main thrust
of the Herero effort at the present time; the dramatic confrontation of
Chancellor Kohl with the Herero chiefs and Truppenspieler attracted good
press around the world.
Note:. Anna Dean Carlson Professor of Sociology, School of Applied
Social Sciences, West Virginia University; Visiting Professor of Law,
West Virginia University; Professor of Law, City University of New York,
College of Law. This Article is dedicated to my colleague, former dean,
and professor, Carl Selinger, whose life and work reminds us that the
broadest concerns about human rights should inform the study and
practice of law. |