NAMIBIAN PRESIDENT HAGE GEINGOB CRITICIZES FORMER HEAD OF GERMAN BUNDESTAG FOR HIS VIEWS ON CHINA
When Hage Gottfried Geingob was born in 1941, the Territory of Southwest Africa (T.S.A) was still under the administration of the self-governing British colony of South Africa.
T.S.A was a German colony from 1884 until 1915 when the UK snatched it away from Germany during the First World War. Instead of administering the former German colony directly, the UK transferred it to the local government of the self-governing British colony of South Africa. This peculiar administration of one colony by another colony was ratified by the League of Nations, which referred to it as “a trusteeship”.
The end of the Second World War ushered in the era of robust pro-independence agitation in colonies across the globe. That put European colonial powers on the back foot. The UK accepted the post-war situation, finally granting independence to India, Pakistan and Burma.
Fresh from being liberated from Nazi Germany, The Netherlands got busy, using its army to fight Indonesian insurgents in a failed bid to turn the tide of history and keep Indonesia as a colony. Not too faraway, France was engaged in its own struggle against history. Also free from Nazi German rule, the French fought to preserve the Vietnamese as subjects of their reconstituted colonial empire in Asia.
Down in Africa, apartheid South Africa (now a full fledged state) was refusing all entreaties from the United Nations to free T.S.A, which the locals were beginning to refer to as "Namibia". By 1960, those locals had formed the Southwest African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) to fight apartheid South Africa's military forces occupying their homeland. SWAPO promptly received generous amounts of weapons from the Soviet Union.
In 1964, Hage Geingob became a SWAPO representative at the United Nations. Two years later, his diplomatic activities on behalf of his people bore fruit. The UN officially revoked South Africa's "trusteeship of T.S.A". The anachronistic name “Territory of Southwest Africa” was ditched in favour of “Namibia” and South Africa was officially declared “an illegal occupier”.
None of that fazed the apartheid regime and the war between South Africa and SWAPO insurgents continued until 1989 when the final President of apartheid South Africa finally acknowledged the futility of carrying on the fight and gave up. Up until then, the apartheid South African Defences Forces had its hands full with the fight against the Angolan government; anti-apartheid South African guerrillas; Cuban expeditionary troops and SWAPO insurgents.
Upon independence on 21 March 1990, Namibia began to operate a constitution that acknowledged the reality of being a multilingual nation comprising several African ethnicities and a visible racial minority of people of German and Dutch-Afrikaner ancestry. And that did a lot in Namibia to ensure political stability and eliminate the kind of racial tensions one continues to see on a daily basis in post-apartheid South Africa.
Given its history, Namibia has some kind of special and yet complicated history with Germany. In Namibia, it is not that difficult to see the influence of Germany on architecture and culture. German is a recognized minority language in Namibia spoken by 32% of white Namibians. A small minority of black Namibians speak a pidgin version of German called Küchendeutsch.
SIDE BAR : English was adopted as official language of Namibia after independence in 1990. The rest are recognized as “national languages” including Dutch/Afrikaans spoken by 60% of Whites Namibians.
Anybody visiting Namibia for the first time might be surprised to see many German language signs for streets, shops, restaurants and services. This has a lot to do with the fact that the African country is a favourite tropical tourist destination for holidaying German citizens.
Over the years, Germany has grown its diplomatic relationship with Namibia. The federal government in Berlin has been compelled to apologise for the genocidal atrocities of the German East African colonial regime against the local Herero and Nama peoples between 1904 and 1908. This apology has been followed up with a commitment to pay €1.1 billion over 30 years to fund projects in communities that were impacted by the genocide.
After the demise of the USSR, it seemed for a while that Germany would remain the key foreign partner for Namibia. But this was not to be.
China's famous decision in 2002 to reinvigorate and renew its old ties with Africa has got many European countries and the United States worried. Likewise, Russia's growing attempt to refresh the ties that the defunct USSR had built on the continent in the 1960s to 1980s.
Germany has watched, half-jealous and half-alarmed, as the Namibian politicians began to turn away from them and prioritize relations with China and Russia (the successor-state to the defunct Soviet Union, a benefactor of the ruling SWAPO party).
A succession of German politicians have complained about Namibia's focus on China. The previous elected Presidents of Namibia, Samuel Njuoma (1990-2005) and Hifikepunye Pohamba (2005-2015), always pushed back, but did so behind closed doors.
Hage Gottfried Geingob, elected President in March 2015, decided to push back in a televised meeting with the visiting German politican Nobert Lammert, who was the head of the Bundestag from 2005 to 2017.
For his remarks about "too many Chinese people in Namibia", the CDU politician Lammert was blasted by the Namibian President who pointed out that many citizens of Germany are allowed to visit and stay his country without visas. He also pointed out that Germany does not treat Namibians similarly.
Namibians need visas to visit Germany. In addition to that, the President stated that Namibian citizens--including diplomatic passport holders---were being harassed by German immigration officials.
By the end of Geingob’s reproach on television, Herr Nobert Lammert was under no illusion that he had been very politely told to keep his unsolicited opinions to himself.
Here is a short video of President Geingob telling visiting German politician, Nobert Lammert, where to go with his unsolicited views on China:
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