On a visit to Tanzania on November 1, 2023, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier apologized for the first time for the Maji Maji massacre and other colonial crimes committed by Germany in eastern Africa in what was then German East Africa, a colony comprised of Burundi, Rwanda (Ruanda-Urundi), mainland Tanzania (Tanganyika), and a small region in modern-day Mozambique known as the Kionga Triangle. The Maji Maji rebellion led to the murder of over 300,000 Africans at the hand of German forces in 1905, in Tanganyika .
President Steinmeier vowed to raise awareness of the atrocities in his country, in a step towards “communal healing” of the bloody past. “I would like to ask for forgiveness for what Germans did to your ancestors here,” Steinmeier said during a visit to the Maji Maji Museum in the southern Tanzanian city of Songea. “What happened here is our shared history, the history of your ancestors and the history of our ancestors in Germany.” “I want to assure you that we Germans will search with you for answers to the unanswered questions that give you no peace.”
A few years back, we shared how the German people we met did not even know that Germany had African colonies! or that Germany committed the very first genocide of the 20th century on African soil! What do they think was the place of Otto Von Bismark in the 1884 Berlin Conference? (Most are Unaware of Germany’s Colonial Past and the First Genocide of the 20th Century). This to say that Germans suffer from amnesia when it comes to Africa, so the German president is vowing to make it known.
We appreciate the German President’s formal apology. However, it needs to be followed by actions, and cannot be just another empty “sorry” meant to appease us so we close our eyes to future atrocities committed in the name of cooperation. Clear actions need to follow: return of remains, return of lands, opening of archives, a clear “here is what we will do to right the wrongs,…” a clear correction and inclusion in the history textbooks, and above all a clear “respect for those killed, and for those living today,” reparations, and so much more. We are tired of empty sorry!
Excerpts below are from the BBC.
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The German president has expressed “shame” for the colonial atrocities his country inflicted on Tanzania.
German forces killed almost 300,000 people during the Maji Maji rebellion in the early 1900s, one of the bloodiest anti-colonial uprisings.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was speaking at a museum in Songea, where the uprising took place.
“I would like to ask for forgiveness for what Germans did to your ancestors here,” he said.
“What happened here is our shared history, the history of your ancestors and the history of our ancestors in Germany.”
The Maji Maji rebellion was triggered by a German policy designed to force the indigenous population to grow cotton for export. Tanzania, then known as Tanganyika, was a part of German East Africa, which also consisted of modern-day Rwanda, Burundi and parts of Mozambique.
President Steinmeier said he hoped Tanzania and Germany could work towards “communal processing” of the past. He promised to “take these stories with me to Germany, so that more people in my country will know about them.” Germany has, until recently, had “colonial amnesia”, according to Jürgen Zimmerer, a history professor at the University of Hamburg. “The brutality and the racism of this colonial empire was not understood in the German public.”
As part of the three-day visit, the president met the descendants of one of the Maji Maji leaders, Chief Songea Mbano, who was among those executed in 1906. He is now considered a national hero in Tanzania and President Steinmeier told the family the German authorities would try to find his remains.
Thousands of human remains were brought from German colonies – partly as “trophies” but also for racist research.
… On Tuesday, after meeting President Samia Suluhu Hassan in Dar es Salaam, he [President Steinmeier] promised that Germany would co-operate with Tanzania for the “repatriation of cultural property“.
Tanzania historian Mohamed Said welcomed the president’s apology but told the BBC it did not go far enough. “They decided to set farms on fire so people would run out of food and be unable to fight. This is unacceptable, in today’s world they would be taken to court,” he said.
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African Heritage 