A white lawmaker is trying to reconcile whites and blacks in Namibia by asking whites to apologise for their part in decades of racist colonial rule.
Paul Smit, the deputy minister of agriculture, told journalists on Monday he was launching a ”transformation of the heart of the nation for real reconciliation” which would culminate on May 1 with public apologies by white citizens.
Smit was speaking at a meeting with President Sam Nujoma and church, trade union and business leaders.
Nujoma has agreed to be part the event as a ”unifying figure”.
Recent comments by Nujoma’s warning white farmers that if they did not share their land with impoverished, landless blacks that the country might face a situation similar to the one in Zimbabwe have fanned racial tensions here.
In neighbouring Zimbabwe the government has seized the majority of white commercial farms as part of their controversial land reform programme.
The idea was to correct colonial-era injustices by redistributing the land to poor blacks, but the process has been chaotic and accompanied by state-sanctioned violence.
In Namibia most of the wealth remains in the hands of the country’s white population who make up less than 10% of the population of 1,5-million.
Smit suggested the following apology: ”We are asking for forgiveness. Sorry for the mistakes of the past even if we were not part of it. On behalf of our ancestors and forefathers we have to ask for forgiveness.”
Namibia was ruled by Germany for more than 100 years before South Africa took control during World War I and ruled the population along the same racial divisions of its own apartheid system till the country won independence in 1990. – Sapa-AP