Traditional authority addresses reparation concerns

Germany might end up paying billions of dollars to Namibia over the 20th-century genocide if Windhoek and the Ovaherero Traditional Authority's demands succeed in its reparations efforts. Legalbrief reports that the genocide was a campaign of racial extermination and collective punishment that the German Empire undertook in German South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) against the Herero, Nama and San people. The Namibian reports that the government has proposed that the German Government pays $30bn, while the traditional authority plans to submit a claim for $60bn This after the Ovaherero Traditional Authority's secretary-general, Mutjinde Katjiua warned that it would double its demands if government continued to exclude it from the negotiations. Paramount chief Vekuii Rukoro said the German Government is in cahoots’ with the Namibian Government to neutralise ‘genuine’ reparation demands and marginalise the Ovaherero people. Rukoro said they would exhaust all possible legal means at their disposal, ‘but if we fail, we know where our land is’.

Full report in The Namibian