So the Bundestag have once again refused to acknowledge that the systematic murders of four ethnic groups in Namibia between 1904 and 1908 wasn’t genocide.  Late last month, March 22, the German parliament debated a motion proposed by the Left party to officially recognise the genocide which took place in Namibia between 1904 and 1908. The Namibian confirmed that the motion has been overturned. It is not a coincidence that in a review of Sebastian Conrad’s book German Colonialism: A Short History, Richard J. Evans notes that evidence of this history can be seen in present-day Namibia: “If you go to Windhoek in Namibia, you can still pick up a copy of the Allgemeine Zeitung, a newspaper which caters for the remaining German-speaking residents of the town. … In Tanzania, you can stay in the lakeside town of Wiedhafen. If you’re a businessman wanting to bulk buy palm oil in Cameroon, the Woermann plantations are still the place to go. In eastern Ghana, German-style buildings that once belonged to the colony of Togo are now advertised as tourist attractions.” (London Review of Books)  German colonialism in Africa, obscured by the comparatively more substantial colonies of other European countries and numerically superior crimes of the Nazi genocide, occupies a diminished place in German national guilt.

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