I am very honoured to have been invited to this year’s event entitled Namibian Heritage Celebration 2025. I must say that the programme, which you have drawn up speaks not only of Namibia’s rich cultural traditions, but also of a lot of work, which you as a team have put into this year’s event with songs, poetry, dance, fashion, and the cultural presentation of the Uatunua, which we have just witnessed Isn’t it remarkable that in the Namibian-German context, a doll is not just a child’s toy but simultaneously a symbol of disenfranchising a people, of cultural alienation, of colonial subjugation, violence, and genocide? I was present when the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) returned 23 “objects” – as they call them – from the collection of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin to the National Museum of Namibia in June 2022 – Uatunua was part of this.During the handing-over ceremony, the then SPK-President Prof. Hermann Parzinger emphasized that in Namibia there were no comparable “pieces” of this early historical period. He expressed his hope that the permanent return could help us in Namibia to reconstruct our history.During my four years here in Germany, I have seen numerous “pieces” and “objects” as they say and we are very much aware that they are no longer in Namibia but in Germany because of looting and violence already during the early colonial period. It has taken a long time and direct intervention and exchange of knowledge from Namibian professionals for the German side to develop an understanding that these are not mere “objects”, “pieces”, or “works of art”, but heritage, which represent customs, oral traditions, cultural practices and forms of knowledge which define us as a nation .. Read More
