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1904 (NPCC04), seemed to see the context of commemorating 1904 very differently from the Genocide Committee. At least in large part because of this difference, the aims of the two committees also developed very differently. Rather than treat the German-Herero war as a singular event in Namibian history, this group saw the opportunity to use these

commemorations as a device for bringing to light commonalities in Namibia’s history under various foreign administrations and thus to focus on nation-building. In addition, they wanted to avoid singling out perpetrators and victims, all in the expressed interests of bringing together the various ethnic groups in an effort towards national reconciliation in post-

Independence Namibia. In brief, as the NPCC04 saw its noble goal in national reconciliation and saw the Genocide Committee’s aims as narrow, politically unsavvy, and perhaps even self-serving. The Genocide Committee saw the NPCC04’s focus as a continuation of a silencing of Herero history and concerns.

A German NPCC04 committee member affiliated with the German section of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Namibia (ELCIN-DELK) explained to me that his church’s council started discussions early about how to approach the commemoration of 1904 without making the German community in Namibia feel attacked.

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I knew two or three years before the commemoration year of 100 years started, many groups in Germany started to think about what they would do. I didn’t want the German-speaking community here to be taken by surprise. …Sometimes one side of the story...and I know the German-speaking community here is very sensitive on this issue; they would feel attacked if something of the German history is discussed and they have the feeling that they are the culprits. … And so we started very early in the pastors’ conferences and the church council… by now there will be a lot of

discussions coming from Germany… TV people…and all wanted to know what is going on in 1904. And so my church council then decided that we should start an initiative to start some discussion round tables. First it was some German-speaking people who … German-speaking groups here. We had very open talk, what they thought would be necessary, will be possible and so a lot of talk of ideas came up. The one very much in favor to do something as the German-speaking population and others we said don’t touch this thing, it’s too complicated and …. And so we had a talk of some two or three meetings of the German-speaking community. And then very soon we said ‘we must try to get the Herero-speaking people on board.’

Germans start to talk together. And then I contacted Bishop Kameeta, who himself is also a Herero, asked him for advice, who one could contact and then we contacted some people from the Herero community. And we started to have some discussions just to find how the people think it should be commemorated. And some opted out, some stayed. And then at a very important stage we got contact to people among the Herero groups who came to me and said ‘we as Hereros are also meeting in

committees’ We are thinking what we want to have commemorated and whether we can’t put our heads together and find …and that was the idea I always had. That is where it comes from to start.

It is interesting that this man describes the initial momentum for planning for 2004 as coming from Germany, rather than the Church or the German-Namibian community it serves. It is then the Church, in support of the German-Namibian community, that attempted to formulate a program for 2004 to avoid merely reacting to someone else’s framing of 1904. Although he describes the initial outreach to and inclusion of interested Ovaherero as fairly successful, the church quickly chose sides within Herero debates about the framing of the commemorations, leading to the formation of the two committees.

And from there on we had two or three meetings and then it was very soon apparent that the Herero people were very divided. So we had the one group who said…it should be not an exclusive Herero thing; it should be part of the discussion [about] how to deal with the past. How it’s wrong, 1904, how that war [was part of the longer] liberation struggle. Ok, those people are more or less Swapo people and also Hereros. And we from the church decided we are the ones to be more inclusive and not exclusive. And then there was another group who said no, because the Hereros

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were the victims, we want our own thing. And we tried for three or four months to get those things together. But we weren’t successful… and then the two commemoration committees started. The one called the so-called “Bishop’s Committee.” I wasn’t quite happy about the name. On the other hand, it might have been a good idea because people knew the churches were involved… And then we tried, we did our thing as the ‘Bishop’s Committee” and the other committee was “the Genocide Committee.”

His remark about being known as the “Bishop’s Committee” illustrates his uncertainty about how he hopes Namibians perceive the role of his church, or how he imagines such an affiliation impacts the work of the commemorations. Indeed, in my

conversations with Ovaherero, the role of the Lutheran Church in this committee was widely acknowledged in addition to a less explicitly formed association with the government and Swapo. Certainly, the name “Bishop’s Committee” is reminiscent of another bishop’s committee focused on restorative justice: the South African Truth and Reconciliation

Committee led by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Church did, however, attempt to minimize their association with the committee by holding initial meetings outside of church spaces.

One of the sites this NPCC04 member described at which some interested parties in Namibia discussed the upcoming centenary was open meetings at the Namibisch-Deutschen Stiftung (Namibian-German Foundation; hereafter, NaDS).10 With the aim of furthering national reconciliation by promoting dialogue between Ovaherero and Germans (those in Namibia as well as Germany) around the remembrance of the German colonial past and 1904 in Namibia, NaDS began hosting meetings in 2002 at their offices in Windhoek. When I spoke with a NaDS representative in 2003 he described the meetings as quite informal with little consistency in attendance. By the beginning of 2003 more and more Hereros became involved and they pushed for a national committee to plan various programs for 2004 and they wanted the Namibian government involved. He described a gradual shift in the

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communities constituting attendees from the beginning towards the time of the formation of the NPCC04 in July. At the beginning, he said, attendees were almost all German-Namibian, which is not remarkable given that NaDS’s membership is largely German-Namibian. He noted that the number of White people at these meetings dwindled over time and towards the end, meetings mainly involved Ovaherero with two or three Germans present. In the middle of these series of meetings, this NaDS employee had felt some hope that these meetings might result in something productive for national reconciliation because of the mix of people showing up—all sorts of people from all sorts of occupations and positions. In the end, however, the Herero attendees formed the NPCC04 by issuing a press release and getting NBC (the “Namibian Broadcasting Corporation”) to cover the event.11 At a meeting with about 60 people in attendance the committee was constituted via nominations from the audience.

Briefly, the NPCC04 began as some members of the German-Namibian community, or those associated with it, tried to create a space for dialogue between German-Namibians and Ovaherero. The divisiveness among Ovaherero about how to commemorate 2004 required the Lutheran Church, as a representative of the German-Namibian community, to effectively choose a side based on its own desire to see these commemorations include as many Namibian communities as possible. Overall, an explicit interest in promoting national reconciliation among all the peoples of Namibia as well as a seeming concern about

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