BOOK REVIEW: A haunting tale of dust, bones and genocide in Namibia
Decades before the Holocaust, German military forces, the Schutztruppe, committed a lesser-known genocide in what is now Namibia. Between 1904 and 1908, colonial soldiers imprisoned, abused and murdered tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people in the territory then known as South-West Africa.
Through battle, starvation and thirst in the desert, and through forced labour, malnutrition, sexual violence, medical experiments and disease in concentration camps, about 80,000 indigenous people were killed. The numbers are difficult to confirm, but this figure represents about 80% of the Herero people and 50% of the Nama. The goal of the army was to rid the colony of people viewed as expendable and thus gain access to their land...
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