Namibia Genocide
Along the coastline of Namibia runs the Namib desert, a 1,200 mile long strip of unwelcoming sand dunes and barren rock. Behind it is the central mountain plateau, and east of that the Kalahari desert. Namibia's scarcest commodity is water: this is a country of little rainfall, and the rivers don't always run. But the very sand of the Skeleton Coast is the dust of gemstones; uranium, tin and tungsten can be mined in the central Namib, and copper in the north; and in the south there are diamonds. Namibia also has gold, silver, lithium, and natural gas. For most of the region's history, only metal was of interest to the native tribes. These tribes lived and traded together more or less peacefully, each with their own particular way of living, wherever the land was fertile enough. The San were nomads, hunters and gatherers. The Damara hunted and worked copper. The Ovambo grew crops in the north, where there was more rain, but also worked in metal. The Nama and the Herero were livestock farmers, and they were the two main tribes in the 1840s when the Germans (first missionaries, then settlers, then soldiers) began arriving in South West Africa.
The following is a very interesting video
on the subject of the genocide in Namibia
- Today white Namibians are Afrikaners, while some are descended from German, Portuguese, or English immigrants. About 4,000 commercial land owners, mostly white people, own over 50% the arable land across the country despite a land reform process. While the area was known as South West Africa, white Namibians enjoyed a highly privileged position due to apartheid laws enforcing strict segregation. This left the whites holding all the marbles due to their privileged circumstances.
To this day the original people have yet to be compensated for lands or left with suitable means of sustaining themselves, what has changed exactly?
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