THE ECHO OF THE HANGING TREE: NAMIBIA UNHEALED

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:10]In the heart of Batani, roughly 130 kilometers south of Kitmas, stands a tree. To a passing stranger, it is just a piece of the dry landscape.

[00:00:24]But to the people here, it carries the weight of a dark, painful past.

[00:00:34]This is the hanging tree. It is a living monument to the suffering endured by the Nama people during the genocide committed under German colonial rule between 1904 and 1908.

[00:00:58]That was fun.

[00:01:13]M to the chief Frederick David.

[00:01:31]foreign.

[00:01:56]More than a century ago, tens of thousands of Oerero and Nama people were systematically hunted, driven from their ancestral lands with their kettle, and left to die of hunger and thirst in the scorching desert.

[00:02:14]They were punished for daring to resist colonial occupation.

[00:02:38]It is very sad once you think about the house conditions one should bear uh should have bear and you as as a person now today when do you uh struggle and it's cold windy even you become sick now that time there was nothing such as clothing if you have piece of a cloth that piece of cloth you would have maybe I in some sort of a way. And now to think about what happened at Chuck Island. Men were deheaded and the wives and the daughters would have could cook their men's skulls and clean their heads after cooking. Yeah.

[00:03:35]And uh there that there was guest chambers where women were being gassed and being raped.

[00:03:45]woman. Yeah. And Jordis and um being some of them not having even clothes on their body and endure that has weather conditions throughout we don't know maybe days or month or years and uh they would See how their husbands were being fed for the sharks.

[00:04:41]Shark Island. Whenever I come here, I get in a special in another mood. Yeah.

[00:04:46]In a sad mood actually. It's like I could hear the cries of our people here. So a lot of people died here. So people used to be taken from here to going work uh building the town but then brought back here and then they were living at the area down there where the camp was. It was terrible.

[00:05:07]Just imagine people didn't have houses.

[00:05:10]They were only living in these shacks.

[00:05:12]And imagine somebody from inland, used to the warm weather, come here to this changing weather, the cold weather, and then of course the cold water and the sea. And then of course they couldn't grow. They were not allowed even if if the land was proper. But this is the place part of our sad history of Namibia uh took place. And part of the this sad history is that they were also taking uh human body parts to be used as medical experiments in the north. So imagine that the heads will be chopped off and it was actually the women who were had to cook the heads and then remove the flesh from the heads. scrap of them. Sometimes the husband, the wife of the the husband, their husband said they would then try them and send them to Europe and uh for the experiments to prove that the black man is inferior to the white man and my opera.

[00:06:38]But the teacher master on her for the teach boy.

[00:07:47]The ones man, but for that.

[00:08:25]It's proven and of the black money.

[00:09:11]Yeah, conductor.

[00:09:31]And come boy.

[00:09:50]foreign.

[00:10:17]Yes.

[00:10:19]And that is why as human beings, as Nama people that were affected and which are full of wounds, hurt, pain, we really ask the German people to come forth and bring back what they have taken from us.

[00:11:04]But there is a growing fear that this crucial piece of identity is fading from the minds of the younger generation.

[00:11:13]You know when I talked about my my children about what they have been taught in history in the schools I get very little information and indication how much of Namibian history is been taught especially when some of the most schools are now more moving towards the Cambridge system you know there people are told about so-called world history and what is world history today it will be about Adolf Hitler and all that that is important for people also to know but there is very little space because it's a global education system. The Cambridge system is a global education system that does not accommodate uh the Namibian history. Therefore, I think we should create al our own alternative platforms through which Namibians and especially the younger generation can be educated about our history and and more historical books needs to be written.

[00:12:14]more people needs to be supported and be funded to write and document their history and different perspectives should be allowed around history because as I said history about is about different perspectives about what has happened in the past and it's by listening to the different perspectives that the reader can uh formulate a a joint position Heat. Heat.