About 1000 people marched through the streets of Johannesburg on March 19 to protest against war in all its forms. Organized by the Gauteng Anti-War Coalition, the demonstration was part of a global day of action on the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq with simultaneous demonstrations around the world. The marchers protested the continued occupation of Iraq and Palestine and the farce of US-engineered democracy in Iraq. They also pointed to the immediate responsibility of South Africans, given the estimated deployment of 10.000 South African mercenaries in Iraq.

U.N. peacekeeping troops in Ivory Coast are severely overstretched and militia groups are mobilizing across the country, creating a real danger of a fresh outbreak of war in the world's top cocoa grower, the United Nations said on Wednesday. "There is a very real danger that events may spin out of control with incalculable consequences for the people of Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and the subregion as a whole," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report to the Security Council.

UPEACE Africa Programme and the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) are pleased to announce the release of a new publication entitled "Directory of Peace Studies in Africa 2004". The directory is a result of a continental-wide survey conducted over the past two years targeting established institutions in Africa. Included is feedback from participating institutions on existing programmes in the field of peace studies in terms of teaching, research and community service.

The Breaking the Wall of Silence Movement (BWS) was established by former detainees, relatives and concerned Namibians in February 1996, after previous sporadic attempts made by groups and individuals failed to yield a consistent impact in addressing the plight of the ex-detainees after Namibia's independence in 1990. The BWS was formed to resume, pursue and drive to its final resolution, the unanswered gross human rights violations committed by the SWAPO Liberation Movement against its own innocent cadres in especially Lubango, Angola and Zambia, while in exile (1960 - 1989). Click on the link below to read about BWS and some of the statements they have made about events and issues in Namibia.

Zimbabwe, according to Chris Alden, faces multiple crises - legitimacy as the postcolonial consensus crumbles, expectations stemming from the failure of the economy and polity, and confidence in the impartiality of the institutions of the state. All of these aspects can be seen as a crisis of security. The state is increasingly repressive as it is centralised but undermined to defend the elite and its clients/ supporters simultaneously. Many see this as illogical, but it marks the ultimate if narrow realpolitik form of security where the state re-defines itself as the only element of society that needs security. It parallels the transition of the state from settler forms to the immediate (and popular) post colonial nationalist path to the incorporation of neo-patrimonial elements as an emerging economic and power bloc uses naked power as its only form of survival.

Traditionally the idea of ‘security’ has been associated with the national state, agreements between different militaries and different politicians - and it has been a male arena. What are the implications for security and identity when weak nation states are increasingly unable to make policy as power shifts to global social formations and policy is formulated through global networks and markets led by transnational corporations, multilateral financial and trading institutions, and (to some extent the ‘Aid’ and NGO community) rather than territorially-based states?

Whilst there have been sometimes successful resistance and democratisation struggles within southern Africa, this has been halting and liable to reversal. Often it has been formalistic with little empowerment of the population. Recent resistance has arisen to stabilisation programmes in which Southern regimes under pressure from Northern financial institutions and growing balance of payments constraints introduced policies abandoning service provider functions that led to breakdown of social services. Priorities moved from fulfilling popular demands to the removal of market barriers. The upshot of states losing their distributive capacity means state-society relations become highly confrontational. ‘Good governance’ breaks down under the effects of neo-liberalism leading to the disappearance of consensus, political centralisation, peripheralisation of certain groups and generalised repression.

One form of resistance is regionalisation. It is however, contradictory, as both part of and a reaction to globalisation. As the Cold War world system of two antagonistic blocs ended, security has certainly become regionalised. Economically this is reflected by TNCs dominating regional economies as the new basis of international relations.

The President of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee (linking 480 NGOs), Brian Raftopoulos, sees the fight for democracy as part of the struggle for an alternative political dispensation in Africa between two uninviting positions. ‘On the one hand there is a global superpower, espousing liberal democratic values, but policing an economic agenda producing widespread global impoverishment; on the other hand this system of global inequalities is breeding an authoritarian nationalism in countries like Zimbabwe, that demands uncritical solidarity, and in which there is no place for national state accountability. Solidarity seems to mean little more than a defensive reaction to broader geo-political concerns. While it may provide some short- term solace to regimes facing a national crisis of legitimacy, it is a grossly inadequate basis for imagining alternative futures. The real need to build up co-ordinated African positions on global inequalities has also to be based on the democratic accountability of African nation states themselves’.

There are other relevant polarities. There is a gap in perception between how Northerners/Westerners perceive their own models and practice of development, human rights etc and how others in the world perceive it - one might call this a subset of perceptions of globalisation. Western oil and strategic interests find greater stability in backing corrupt and oligarchic regimes, than in pursuing human rights. This gap is probably most advanced in the Muslim/ Arab world and has ready-made foci in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute - and now the Iraq post-conflict impacts on Iran, Syria and Lebanon. But it provides anywhere a breeding ground for the authoritarian nationalism alluded to by Raftopoulos.

Other polarities include: a polarity of 'recent history versus recent amnesia'. For many Zimbabweans alive today, the colonial and settler periods are very much part of their life experience and the forcible conquest of their lands is only three generations back - very recent in most understandings of history. By contrast, most British and other European peoples have only a sketchy idea of what went on under colonial rule and its implications today in terms of 'failed' or collapsing states, skewed and inappropriate economies and state structures, manipulation of ethnic identities and authoritarian nationalism.

Within the structures of colonialism there is/was a specific intensity amongst regions/ areas/ countries that involuntarily received large numbers of settlers, especially when combined with systems of land expropriation, racial domination and imposed division - apartheid being the supreme example. But as happened in South Africa and Zimbabwe there were also the creation of diversified economies geared to settler needs, but capable of being operated by newly- decolonising (black) elites. Such elites inherited powerful centralised state apparatuses, although little political or economic power. The parallels between the way Smith and Mugabe have used this kind of state – similar to the apartheid ‘national security state’ - are oft remarked on.

The ‘national security’ strategy of the ZANU-PF elite has led to economic collapse, severe repression, flight and severe economic consequences for the region, but as yet there has been no concerted regional reaction to this in terms of security. This in turn relates to national elites being unable to formulate a path directed to human security, and largely because of their lack of engagement with and mistrust of new social forces (which of course are not themselves necessarily united or coherent).

The other states in the region, particularly South Africa, hesitate between a closed form of regional security and of opening up to world economic forces for increased and supposedly more effective linkages with the global economy. South Africa pushes a process where integrated manufacturing becomes the basis for a regional industrial strategy - an integral part of supply chains for globally competitive manufacturing processes. South Africa knows that for this to occur outside investment is crucial and highly dependent on improvements in governance which the NEPAD programme (an uneasy mix of pan-African idealism and neo-liberalism) seeks to bring about. However this whole process is marked by contradiction which does nothing to lessen conflict and insecurity in Zimbabwe and the region.

South Africa insists on 'quiet diplomacy' for regional solidarity reasons, not wishing to jump at the behest of former colonial masters. It also points to misconceptions about the extent of its power as the 'regional hegemon' saying it cannot unilaterally reorder the region. Rather it vaunts a united regional approach based on avoiding confrontation and promoting multilateralism.

Historically, divisions inside SADC had to be overcome as well as in Pretoria’s internal foreign policy discussions. Additionally, in Pretoria’s view while South Africa has necessary leverage over Zimbabwe in areas of finance, energy and oil to effect change, the economies are too closely linked to impose sanctions. It at least initially believed that its model of negotiated settlement and compromise was transferable to Zimbabwe. It also knows that it is vulnerable on the land question. Both the ANC and ZANU-PF see themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the anti-colonial struggle with any other parties being seen as tainted by association with the previous regime(s). For this reason it and other southern Africa states have been only too ready to accept ZANU-PF’s policies in some way as a Pan Africanist and anti-imperialist position in the face of global inequalities and British neo-colonialism.

Strangely, and contrary to the support given to the ANC in exile, Pretoria foreign policy has never provided support for human rights groups and other opposition forces within societies whose governments are undemocratic and/or human rights violators. This suggests reliance on notions of the legitimacy of heads of state and of sovereignty, both of which are formalistic concepts even if they are key AU positions. Taken with the support for ‘a just world order’ which means equity amongst nations there is no concern for more far-reaching restructuring of power to embrace human security concerns.

Mugabe’s charge is that the UK is attempting to recolonise Zimbabwe acts to disguise structural rather than conspiratorial processes in the world economy. It does this on behalf of a new power bloc inside Zimbabwe clinging on to power in the face of global inequalities, popular pressure from new and old social movements, but using a Cold War rhetoric that has similar although different resonances with both African and Third World elites and with landless and frustrated African and other third world populations. The contradiction of the policy of this power bloc is that it is unable to create resistance to globalisation precisely because it does not engage with its own population. Some in the Zimbabwe nationalist spectrum might well disagree given that some allege that the ‘war veterans’ are a popular social movement.

How do we shift the monopoly on security from the military, and build a framework of human security addressing the concerns of those without power, the oppressed, and those adversely affected by the current disorder, poverty, environmental degradation and human rights abuse?

How does an alternative perspective able to suggest regional, national and local policies - based on globalisation from below in order to transform the South and overcome the global organisation of inequality - get constructed? Increasingly, world and regional social fora have attempted to come up with answers involving global civil society and non-governmental organisations (not to confuse the two) stressing international humanitarian values and citizenship to counter nationhood, ‘civilisation blocs’ or geo-economic units.

Such values would include peace, promotion of human rights, and concepts of the common good as the building blocks for security, reciprocity and multilateral power centres. It would also demand that domestic security concerns need to pay greater attention to violence against women and children ignored by state agencies. It may not seem obvious when there seem more immediate concerns, but the fight against repression in Zimbabwe illustrates much of this, and involves what values postcolonial states and regions should have, their road to development, democracy and overcoming of colonial and apartheid structures, all of which pose human security dilemmas.

* Steve Kibble is Africa/ Yemen Advocacy Coordinator at the Catholic Institute of International Relations (CIIR)

* Please send comments to

This is how the local newspaper, The Sunday Tribune, describes the confrontation that took place this past Saturday, 19 March 2005, between the police and the Bisaser road residents: “Amid burning car and tractor tires and flaming, lice-infested mattresses, Durban police battled for more than four hours yesterday to disperse a crowd of about 750 protesting shack dwellers who had barricaded a major arterial route into Durban.” The chief issue is that land promised for the development of housing is suddenly being dug up to be developed for business use. Amongst the secondary issues (sanitation, water, electricity, health) is the question of the Bisaser road dump – which has stayed open as part of the World Bank carbon trading scam which is giving people nearby cancer.

Kenyan authorities must take immediate action to halt numerous human rights violations committed against suspects detained during recent "anti-terrorism" operations, Amnesty International said this week. In a new report presented at a news conference in Nairobi, the organisation gave details of extensive violations including arbitrary arrest, incommunicado detention without charge, torture and harassment of family members. The human rights violations occurred during "anti-terrorism" operations conducted since the 2002 bombing of a hotel near Mombasa that killed 15 people.

Human rights activists have called on the Zanzibari police to adhere to professional ethics and respect human rights after the Tanzanian government deployed extra policemen to the semi-autonomous island on Monday. "We are asking the police to be careful in the execution of the operation," said Jilde Mambo, a legal adviser with the Zanzibar Legal Services Centre, a human rights NGO.

Three months after the resumption of fighting between Lendu and Hema militias in Ituri, a district in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a vivid picture of human-rights violations is emerging. UN observers and NGOs believe the militias' objective is to change the ethnic composition of Djugu, a territory to the north of Ituri's main town, Bunia.

The Mozambican government intends to transform the fight against HIV/AIDS into "a national emergency", declares the government's five year programme, which is now before the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic. The current HIV prevalence is estimated at 14.9 per cent among adults aged between 15 and 49. There are thought to be 1.4 million HIV-positive Mozambicans, 60 per cent of whom are women.

The largest genocide for many years, some 700,000 people a year for the last three years, is being carried out by Robert Mugabe’s government against its citizens. It continues to remain unnamed and thus ignored by the international community.

The ravage of a 40% plus HIV/AIDS infection rate exploits the enormous difficulties most Zimbabweans already face in that ‘failed state’. At the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz, Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, called for an end to genocide. “It is, above all, a day to remember not only the victims of past horrors, whom the world abandoned, but also the potential victims of present and future ones. A day to look them in the eye, and say: “you, at least, we must not fail”.

Not a word about Zimbabwe. Not by any authority. Not by South Africa, SADC, the African Union or the UN. Yet, Kofi Annan quoted the old chestnut, “ Truly it has been said: “all that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing”.

In Zimbabwe, HIV/AIDS has turned to a form of genocide as economic, political and electoral policies have devastated the economy and made it hard for people to care for their families and to find and to buy food. In 2002, it is estimated that some 700,000 Zimbabweans, all recently infected with HIV/AIDS, died rapidly as they could not look after themselves. Their normal life expectancy should have been for another ten to fifteen productive years. That is, 700,000 of the 1 million who died that year died of HIV/AIDS related illnesses in the early years of HIV infection.

The same pattern continues in Zimbabwe except that more Zimbabweans now live outside that county and so, together with the massive death rates internally, there are fewer to kill by official neglect of economy and of human rights. Nonetheless, it remains the largest genocide for decades worldwide.

With the resumption of the Gacaca trials on March 10 2005, African Rights has released the sixth report in the series on the history of the genocide in the 12 original pilot sectors. This series was formulated with the aim of providing a background against which the results of the trials can be measured and can exist as a shared point of reference for all residents. Already published during the earlier phases of gacaca are the reports on Gishamvu, Nyarugunga, Nkomero, Nyange and Kindama sectors.

This particular report looks at Gahini sector, which at the time of the genocide was in Rukara commune in Kibungo province. With the redrawing of the administrative boundaries, Gahini now lies in Rukara district in Umutara province. As with all other previous reports, this one is based on the collective testimonies of prisoners, survivors and local people who witnessed the unfolding of the genocide.

Among the key perpetrators implicated in this region is Jean-Baptiste Mpambara, at the time bourgmestre of Rukara. He is currently detained in Arusha. French and Kinyarwanda copies of this report will soon be available. Contact [email protected] for more information or a copy of the report.

The Angolan government should put an immediate end to the climate of impunity and terror that exists in the diamond rich Lundas provinces in north-eastern Angola and restore human dignity and the socio-economic integration of local people. For their part, diamond mining companies should respect human rights and prevent acts that violate people's rights and freedoms on the part of the security companies which are contracted to them.

These are some of the recommendations contained in a report 'Lundas – The stones of death: Angola's deadly diamonds', which details human rights abuses in the Lunda provinces of Angola. The report says the entire area constitutes diamond bearing reserve zones, of which tens of thousands of hectares have been granted in mining concessions. It shows how the concessions limit the free circulation of people.

“In practice, villages located in the diamond concession zones are forbidden. Populations of villages that fall within a concession zone are uprooted and forced to relocate to other areas, without any support from the authorities or from the concessionaires, and the land that the people traditionally worked and which belongs them is stolen without any compensation."

The report was conducted by Rafael Marques, freelance journalist , and Rui Falcão de Campos, a lawyer.

* Compiled from the report by Pambazuka News.

The Arab League must make peace in Darfur an urgent priority as it begins its Summit in Algiers, the Darfur Consortium, an umbrella group of primarily Africa-based civil society organizations, said this week. Support from Arab League States for the African Union mission in Darfur and prosecution of those responsible for atrocities in Darfur is critical to the attainment of peace.

The International Criminal Court, established in 2002 as the world's first permanent war crimes court, held its first judicial proceedings on Tuesday, with a pre-trial hearing on abuses committed in Congo. The Hague-based court - backed by almost 100 countries but fiercely opposed by the Unites States - was set up as the first permanent global criminal court to try individuals for genocide, war crimes and massive human rights abuses.

Civil wars and human rights abuses forced three million people - over 8,000 per day - to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere within their countries in 2004, according to a report released by the Global IDP Project of the Norwegian Refugee Council. The total number of IDPs is estimated at 25 million in some 50 countries across all continents, making this one of the world's largest - and most neglected - vulnerable groups.

After a decade of civil war between government forces and islamist extremist groups, violence in Algeria has decreased significantly over the past few years. Between 1992 and 2002, fighting and attacks targeting the civil population forced large numbers of Algerians to flee rural areas and find security in nearby urban centres. The actual number of people displaced during the civil war is difficult to assess given the information void that has pervaded the conflict in Algeria since its onset.

The 20th century had been termed the “century of genocides”. In 2004 the first of a series of these turned a hundred years. It reminded us of a history of mass violence directed against specifically defined population groups, which had to a certain extent its origins and roots in the violent expansion of European colonialism. The German empire played a particularly prominent (though by no means exclusive) role during this era of violently imposed foreign domination. 2005 reminds of another such event, when the mass killing in then “German East Africa” (the oppression of the so-called “Maji-Maji rebellion”) turns a century. It can be assumed that this dark chapter in the history of what is euphemistically called “North-South relations” is even less noticed in public debate than the first of its kind a year earlier.

One might assume that it would be part of an established common understanding that what started in early 1904 in the German colonial territory called South West Africa was by standards applicable today a genocide. This, at least, is the conclusion presented by the “Whitaker Report”, adopted as an official document by a United Nations body. It lists the German colonial war of 1904 to 1907 as the first genocide of the 20th century. The most striking phenomenon in dealing with the events a hundred years later is therefore, that in public perception as well as scholarly and political discourse the views still differ fundamentally.

For large parts of collective memory in Germany this chapter is either closed or even forgotten. In contrast to this widespread amnesia or indifference the trauma lives on among parts of the Namibian population. It keeps the generations of descendants to the victims in demand for recognition of and compensation for the crimes committed. As the selectivity of the (non) commemorations during 2004 showed, the legacy and its treatment remain a battlefield. It provided a forum for often uncompromising exchanges on how to come to terms with the past in the present.

In August 2002, the Herero Paramount Chief commented upon the private claims for reparations from the German government and a few German companies, which upon his instructionswere initiated at a US-American Court during late 2001. While doing so, he declared the land question in Namibia to be solely a Herero issue. A spokesperson for the Coordinating Committee for the First Official Commemoration of the Ovaherero Genocide stated two years later that genocide was in Namibia only committed towards the Herero.

Such monopolising claims are tantamount to blatant denial of the sacrifices made by other communities like the Nama. It also makes a mockery of the suffering of the Damara and San. To all these – today even more marginalized – groups this exclusion adds insult to injury and is certainly not conducive to concerted efforts of those to whom justice had been denied for generations. At the same time, it implicitly and ironically also undermines the legitimacy of the Herero case, which otherwise ought to be undisputed and beyond any doubt relevant for coming to terms with the past.

Members of the group tend to brush aside the concern expressed over such monopolisation of the victim status. Instead, accusations of racism and Eurocentrism come in handy to dismiss any discourse on how best an advocacy might be pursued in the interest of more than just one among those groups. The claims to genuine identity and corresponding victim status create an aura of exclusivity and consequently a we-they divide with the rest of the world. This competitive way of pursuing the case prevents any meaningful dialogue. The motives of those, who in such reductionist way seek the recognition so far denied to them, might be perfectly understandable. They want to pursue and achieve in their own view only historical justice. But this prevents wider coalitions and seems to happen at the expense of others, who remain outside of any public interest and are therefore denied recognition as victims.

The Namibian government did address the matter in a different but even less constructive perspective. It kept a demonstratively low profile on the general issue. No government-sponsored initiative took upon itself to prepare any coordinated event to commemorate the dark chapter (and by doing so flag the recognition of the primary resistance during these days as an early part of nation building).

The only official act honoured the centenary with the issuing of a special stamp on Independence Day on 21st March 2004. In the declared spirit of national reconciliation it did not single out any particular group. Instead, the motive chosen was a white dove. This symbolic vagueness denied victims any degree of visibility and confined them to absolute anonymity. At the same time, such evasive symbolism saved the descendants of the perpetrators from any confrontational challenge to deal with the legacy. Namibia’s government also explicitly distanced itself from the initiative by a group of Herero to seek reparations from Germany.

The President and other senior government officials did not follow an invitation to attend the ceremonies in Okahandja, which marked the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Herero war against German colonial occupation in January 2004. Hifikepunye Pohamba, successor to Sam Nujoma as Head of State, however, did attend the ceremony commemorating the battles in the Waterberg plateau area in mid-August 2004. It remains speculation to what extent this might have been necessitated by the fact that the German Minister for Economic Cooperation, representing the biggest single donor country was one of the main speakers. When the Herero gathered for their annual meeting end of August at the graves of their ancestors, government officials attended the commemoration of the beginning of the armed struggle by Swapo elsewhere. The parallel activities illustrated the contrasting traditions of resistance in a case, where – differently from neighbouring Zimbabwe – the first chimurenga related mainly to other local groups than the second one.

The Namibian government seemed to be almost in silent agreement with those among the German-speaking minority in Namibia and those representing the official position of the German government by treating the centenary almost as a non-issue. The German ambassador to Namibia on occasion of the commemoration ceremony in January 2004 (which in contrast to Namibian government officials he actually did attend) reiterated his government’s position by explaining: “It would not be justified to compensate one specific ethnic group for their suffering during the colonial times, as this could reinforce ethnic tensions and thus undermine the policy of national reconciliation which we fully support.” This sounds sensible but serves as a convenient excuse for no compensation of the descendants who suffered most from direct oppression, defeat and subsequent exploitation and subjugation through the German colonial authorities.

There would be an obvious justification for affirmative action related preferential treatment with regard to a redistribution of the land taken under German colonialism. It should benefit as a priority these communities, who were robbed of their land as a prelude and aftermath to the genocide. But the land issue is treated as if the historical connotations would not offer a direct frame of reference as to who should be entitled to claims and compensated accordingly. This benefits the government’s main clientele living in or coming from the densely populated former Owamboland (north of the zone of direct German occupation), but neither Herero nor Nama, Damara and least of all the San.

In what might be termed a pact among elites, the German government has chosen to opt for the more convenient avenue of playing along with such biased official Namibian policy. Germany’s Foreign Minister had stated as late as 2003 that no apology will be offered, which might be considered of relevance for compensation. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder during his first official visits to African countries in January 2004 – at a time when the genocide turned a century – skipped the former colony and thereby simply ignored the historical part of German-Namibian relations at the centre of the debate in 2004.

The German position took a surprising turn from the previous official denial during a year in which as a positive experience an unexpected number of local, regional and national NGO initiatives raised the issue in Germany by means of lectures, seminars, exhibitions and related public events and hence created some unofficial but visible discourse over the unfinished business.

The Minister for Economic Cooperation attended the ceremonies in August 2004 remembering the biggest military clashes between Herero and Germans taking place a hundred years earlier. In an emotional speech she admitted on behalf of her government guilt and remorse. She stated that the German colonial war a hundred years earlier would qualify from today’s perspective as genocide. Asked for an apology (the word did not appear in the text she read out), she expressed the understanding that her whole speech was an apology. This provoked harsh criticism back in Germany mainly by members of the opposition parties, who accused the Minister for risking an expensive bill for being carried away. There remains, however, so far a lack of visible subsequent consequences, which would indicate that this has resulted indeed in a direct change of policy towards the issues of compensation with any budgetary implications.

Interesting is the fact that the treatment of the historical issue (intentionally or not) remains confined to the colonial chapter. It avoids any references to the subsequent developments in Germany. After all, to reflect upon genocidal atrocities is more than dealing with guilt and remorse (though this in itself would be a perfectly legitimate and sufficient motive to do so). In the Namibian case, this links up with the more specifically German trajectory. The question is, if and to what extent the colonial genocide paved the way for the particular concept of final solution and extinction of the enemy, culminating in the war crimes and the holocaust in the 1940s.

In a colonial situation as it prevailed in Namibia in the early 20th century, the denial of human value to the “uncivilised natives” is predicated in the structurally racist set-up of colonialism. This is even more the case when the aim of colonial rule is not simply control and exploitation of the country, its resources and inhabitants, but rather, settlement by members of the colonising society. The inherent racism of settler colonialism has worked to lower the threshold of mass killings in appalling ways in many cases. The parole “exterminate the brutes” is a simple illustration of this. In Namibia, the ideology and strategy of the genocidal practices applied require us to explore the degree of a specifically German case within the wide range of colonial atrocities and mass violence elsewhere. As evidence shows, there existed continuities in accounts and novels read by a mass readership, in military practice as well as in the activities of specific persons, and in doctrines and routines of warfare that link strategic ideas of decisive battles to the concept of final solution and extinction of the enemy, which came into full effect under the Nazi regime.

Such an approach within a wider context implies the journey into the belly of the beast - “the horror”, as visualised by Mister Kurtz with his last words on his deathbed in Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness”. It was inspired at the end of the 19th century by the excessive atrocities of colonial oppression in the Congo. Such interrogation requires accepting in principle the possibility of a connecting line that might exist in the history of violent expansionism. It demands an exploration, if and to what extent there are more than simply accidental coincidences between the colonial genocide in then “German South West Africa” and the holocaust unfolding “back home” in Germany over thirty years later. Depending on the outcome of such explorations, we need to readjust not only our minds, but also our historical understanding. Maybe the potentially scary implications of such insights are a contributing factor to the fierce resistance among large parts of the German public, to (re) open the chapter and have another look.

More than this: If the Germans would have the courage and honesty to embark upon such an exploratory mission - what should then prevent other former colonial powers to deal with their past in a similar self-critical way? Maybe this dimension is another forceful factor which explains even more so than the possible monetary implications (in terms of reparations) at stake for the German public purse to accept such responsibilities.

There might well exist complicity among the powerful, supported by a fraternity of a core group of European states with a similarly dubious imperialist historical track record. Such complicity, unfortunately, is not met by determined solidarity among the wretched of the earth. As victims they ought to challenge the continued injustices by their concerted and unified efforts to counteract the ignorance and arrogance of those in power on such issues collectively, instead of falling prey (once again) to the old system of divide and rule.

* Dr. Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden and Vice-President of the European Network of Genocide Scholars (ENoGS) established at this Conference. This is a shorter and modified version of a presentation to the panel on “Genocide, Memory and Identity” at the Conference “Genocides: Forms, Causes and Consequences. The Namibian War (1904-08) in historical perspective” organised at the Haus der Kulturen in Berlin/Germany from 13 to 15 January 2005.

* Please send comments to

Three years after the end of Angola's brutal civil war, the Angolan government is failing to care for the country's huge population of returning displaced persons, Human Rights Watch has said in a new report. Hundreds of thousands of recently returned refugees, internally displaced persons and former combatants face daunting challenges in reintegrating into Angolan society, with little government assistance.

Eastern Congo is suffering the world's worst current humanitarian crisis, with a death toll outstripping that in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, according to a top UN official. United Nations emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said on Wednesday that over the last six years the toll in the DRC amounted to "one tsunami every six months" - a reference to the December disaster which left about 300,000 people dead or missing in Asia. "In terms of the human lives lost ... this is the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today and it is beyond belief that the world is not paying more attention," he told a news conference. Egeland was speaking during a visit to Geneva for talks with UN and other relief workers on improving the global humanitarian aid system.