GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

CHAPTER 19
How AFRICA BECAME
BLACK
NO MATTER HOW MUCH ONE HAS READ ABOUT AFRICA
beforehand, one's first impressions from actually being there are
overwhelming. On the streets of Windhoek, capital of newly independent
Namibia, I saw black Herero people, black Ovambos, whites, and Namas,
different again from both blacks and whites. They were no longer mere
pictures in a textbook, but living humans in front of me. Outside Windhoek,
the last of the formerly widespread Kalahari Bushmen were struggling
for survival. But what most surprised me in Namibia was a street
sign: one of downtown Windhoek's main roads was called Goering Street!
Surely, I thought, no country could be so dominated by unrepentant
Nazis as to name a street after the notorious Nazi Reichskommissar and
founder of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering! No, it turned out that the
street instead commemorated Hermann's father, Heinrich Goering, founding
Reichskommissar of the former German colony of South-West Africa,
which became Namibia. But Heinrich was also a problematic figure, for
his legacy included one of the most vicious attacks by European colonists
on Africans, Germany's 1904 war of extermination against the Hereros.
Today, while events in neighboring South Africa command more of the
world's attention, Namibia as well is struggling to deal with its colonial