60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

colonialism and genocide 87
Of particular interest to Lemkin was the murder of the Herero during
the colonial war in Namibia, 1904-08. He was not well informed about
the cultural, socio-economic and political conditions that determined
the life of the Herero. He simply described them in a stereotypical
manner as cattle breeders and ‘ancestor worshipers’ (Lemkin 1950b: 2).
With regard to his analysis of the colonial war between the Herero
and the German colonial troops, Lemkin’s sources are rather one-dimensional:
he relied almost completely on British reports and sources
published during or after World War I, which aimed at the disqualifi
cation of Germany as a responsible and competent coloniser. Although
the European powers had agreed before 1914 that their colonial
possessions should remain unaff ected in case of war, the victorious
Allies decided to seize German overseas territories all the same.
This procedure was justifi ed with the argument that the Germans
were, unlike the British and French, not able to advance the peoples
with whom they were entrusted.
Lemkin shared this view without reservation. He stated that the cruelty
and excesses of violence by German offi cials and soldiers in the
colonies were not least the result of a wrong system of rule:
In the German colonies no attempt was made to respect native
tribal customs or to invest the chiefs with their former dignity
and authority. The chiefs were deprived of their privileges and the
only authority permitted them was that delegated to them by the
German offi cials, such authority being solely used for the purpose
of recruiting forced labour (Lemkin 1950a: 18).
The system of ‘indirect rule’ as practised by the British colonial administrations
would have been much more humane and could have
prevented such outrages, Lemkin believed.
Although Raphael Lemkin has never directly called the murder of
the Herero genocide, there can be no doubt that he regarded his
concept of genocide as perfectly applicable to the events of 1904-08.
His assessment of the German colonial war in Namibia features the
crucial criteria for his defi nition of genocide: ‘After the rebellion and
von Trotha’s proclamation, the decimation of the Hereros by gunfi
re, hanging, starvation, forced labor and fl ogging was augmented by
prostitution and the separation of families, with a consequent lowering
of the birthrate’ (Lemkin 1950b: 16).
Until recently, the way in which the Herero dealt with the far-reaching
consequences of the genocide has not been adequately addressed.