adminChristopher Farai Charamba The Reader
As a student of history, I am always fascinated by the telling of historical African stories.
The continent has a rich past which hasn’t been fully explored not for a lack of knowledge, but as a means of subjugating Africa’s people and creating a narrative for them.
It is important for Africans of all creed and culture to share their experiences and those of their ancestors that are often passed down from one generation to the next through oral tradition.
Unfortunately, the tales that are passed down at the proverbial fireplace or under the tree are only told to a few and have the propensity to change every so often.
If I were to compile a list of the many versions I’ve heard of how it was my family ended up with its surname, I would have enough for a TV mini series.
What is important is for these stories to be captured on lasting platforms. Without this being done, then the history risks being distorted by another, which inadvertently becomes the official history of the person or people long after they are gone.
What we often find is that African history for long periods has been told from a Eurocentric perspective, which corrupts among other things, the emotion and authenticity of the people even when it seeks to show them in a positive light.
“Mama Namibia” by Mari Serebrov is a book that tells of the horrific Herero/Nama genocide on Namibians by the colonial Germans. It took place in the early 1900s and was responsible for the killing of 80 percent of the Herero people.
Serebrov, while not Herero or Namibian, wrote the book after being told the tale of Namibian Uazavara Katjivena’s Jahohora on whom the book is loosely based. This is a form of oral tradition finding its way to printed pages, more of which needs to take place.
In their book, Casper Erichsen and David Olusoga dubbed the genocide of the Herero and the Nama, “The Kaiser’s Holocaust” (which is the title of the book). It was the first genocide of the 20th century and arguably one of the worst though it receives little recognition. The Herero people of Namibia to this day are still fighting for reparations from the Germans.
The story in “Mama Namibia” is of 12-year old Jahohora who together with her family are forced to flee their homeland as the Germans under General Lothar von Trotha issue an extermination order against the Herero.
The Herero are forced into the desert with their cattle, where many die of hunger and thirst and some are killed on sight by the German forces.
Jahohora is separated from her family where they had sought refuge in a mountain and is forced to wander the desert in search of her kinsmen using whatever means she could to survive.
A novel that is based on true accounts, this story is important because it brings to light the horror and tragedy of the Herero genocide. It puts a human element that one can empathise with, rather than just being given statistics.
In sharing the story, the book also explains in relative detail the cultural norms and practices of the Herero people of that time. The author, while not of Herero descent (which one finds unfortunate), did carry out the necessary research that enriched the overall presentation of the story.
Such stories have an important place in the cannon of African literature but more of them need to be told by the Africans themselves. It is understandable that Uazavara Katjivena might not have been the writer that Serebrov is, however, there surely are Herero writers who could have found the words to bring such a novel to life.
In similar fashion that many Pan-Africanists like to use the mantra “African solutions to African problems”, we need more and more African literature by African writers. This is not to say there are no African writers, one just thinks there’s space for more.
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter