60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

colonialism and genocide 85
that the Bantus would have the right to live and die according to
their own fashion is absurd. It is true for peoples as well as for individuals
that their existence is only justifi ed if they contribute to
general progressive development. There is no proof that national
independence, national property and political organization among
the tribes of Southwest Africa would be an advantage for the evolution
of humankind in general or the German people in particular
(Rohrbach 1907: 285 ff .)
These ideas, which are typical for European colonialism in Africa, are
defi nitely genocidal. They do not promote the physical extermination
of the Africans but they postulate the destruction of the African
societies and identities as such. This statement fi ts with Raphael Lemkin’s
original concept of genocide.
When Lemkin defi ned his neologism ‘genocide’ for the fi rst time, he
emphasised that the term does not exclusively describe the immediate
destruction of an ethnic or a religious group. Rather, he understood
genocides as processes and distinguished between two phases, ‘one
destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other,
imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor’. And Lemkin
specifi ed that this imposition ‘may be made upon the oppressed population
which is allowed to remain, or upon the territory alone, after
removal of the population and the colonization [my emphasis] of the
area by the oppressor’s own nationals’ (Lemkin 1944: 79). It is obvious
that the phenomenon of colonisation played a central role in Lemkin’s
thinking. Consequently, his broad defi nition of genocide comprises
the systematic ‘disintegration of the political and social institutions, of
culture, language, national feelings, religion and the economic existence’
(ibid.) of a targeted group.
However, Lemkin did not consider assimilation or cultural change
stimulated by intergroup contact to be automatically genocidal. But
he regarded it as genocidal if the colonisers intended to destroy entire
ways of life and tried to ensure that the colonised had no appreciable
collective life at all. For Lemkin, genocide aff ected all aspects
of group life. Therefore, he diff erentiated between several techniques
of group destruction: political (cessation of self-government and destruction
of political institutions), social (annihilation of national leadership,
attack on legal system) cultural (ban on the use of language),
economic (destruction of the foundation of economic existence), biological
(decreasing the birth rate), physical (mass murder, endangering
of health), religious (disruption of religious infl uence, destruction
of religious leadership) and moral (creation of an atmosphere of moral
debasement) (Lemkin 1944: 82-90).