For our event on colonial continuities in “green” hydrogen production on September 25, 2025, Sima Luipert provided us a video message.
Sima Luipert is a 4th generation descendent of the Nama genocide. With a post graduate MA in Development Studies, and having practised in the development sector for more than 30 years, has led her to understand the deeper roots of the different layers of poverty among the Nama people. This journey has navigated her to the 1st Genocide of the 20th century, which took place in the then German South West Africa, currently known as Namibia. Currently serving as the International Relations Patron of the Nama Traditional Leaders Association Technical Committee on Genocide, and focal person for legal instruments to demand reparations from Germany. She also serves as International Council Member of Minority Rights Group International, an international non-governmental organization which campaigns worldwide to ensure that disadvantaged minorities and indigenous peoples can make their voices heard. Luipert lives and works as Director for Development Planning in the Hardap Regional Council in southern Namibia.
Yes. Good afternoon. My name is Sima Luipert.
I am an advisor to the Nama Traditional Leaders Association, advising them on issues of genocide
and and reparations. I want to thank the hosts for inviting me to say something about
green hydrogen production in Namibia. But I want to talk a little bit
here about how hydrogen production, the way it is being implemented
and and plays itself out, how it, how it perpetuates colonial injustices.
In 1884, the German colonization and the subsequent genocide devastated Nama people’s
political and social structures and left many of these traditional communities faced with
cultural erasia. Shortly after his arrival in Great Namaqualand on the 1st of May 1883, Adolf
Lüderitz’s company signed a fraudulent treaty with the Nama leader Joseph Frederiks transferring land
rights to Lüderitz. This so-called Meilenschwindel laid the foundation for the following
colonization of indigenous territories by the German Empire. More similar treaties
followed which gave German settlers and a lot of the German businesses access to exploit
resources from the ancestral Namaland. The the area around Lüderitz was later transferred to
the, at the height of the genocide actually, was later transferred to the
German Southwest Africa Company, also known as the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft
für Südwestafrika and these included rights to explore and to exploit the territory for mining
activities. So really the legal framework for land dispossession of Nama people by German colonizers
was based on a series of colonial decrees that were issued by German authorities. And notable
amongst these were the 1905 land expropriation measures which allowed for the confiscation
of indigenous land as state property. In 1907, settler ordinances and indigenous land seizures
which declared large portions of indigenous land as state land and restricted Nama and Herero
access. And then there was also the 1913 landlord law which further consolidated land confiscations,
permanently you know restricting indigenous land ownership. Following the extermination from 1904
onwards against the Nama and the Herero people, about 50% and more of the entire Nama people died
during that period. I think to a large extent the Nama people were never really able to recover
from this great loss of it’s members to such an extent that it now forms an ethnic minority in
Namibia. Efforts to rebuild after independence and after the genocide and the departure of German
colonizers were hindered by the establishment of native reserves which forcefully removed
indigenous communities from their territories during the British control and also following
occupation by South African apartheid regime. After Namibian independence, the Nama leaders
sort of tried to start you know restoring their people’s dignity and the culture and the heritage
through the Nama Traditional Leaders Association. And I think what is also important to
mention is following the diamond rush, in which Germany and German companies and
German banks played a very critical role, parts of the then Great Namaqualand were declared
as as the Sperrgebiet or a diamond restricted area, and it was declared as such by the German
colonizers, accompanied by the forced and violent displacement and genocide of Nama people. And so
since 1908 this area has been accessible only with special permits for tourism and economic
activity but not to the public. In 2008 without proper consultations taking place,
the same area was converted into a national park now called the Tsau //Khaeb National
Park because of its unique biodiversity. And so because of this historical context, the
Hyphen project in Namibia builds on and equally I believe perpetuates historical injustices
and and this raises very very serious concerns. Ammonia will be produced on this land which
was violently taken from people, and and and which led to generations of dispossession and
and marginalization. I think to a large extent also in a way the project legitimizes the original
illegal transfer of ancestral Nama land and it also permanently probably permanently erases
any prospect for addressing the generational injustice that is being perpetuated on the Nama
people. It continues a legacy of extraction that has systematically and systemically excluded
and impoverished Nama communities. And I think, you know when we think about these projects and
when we think about hydrogen production, these are factors that are not even being considered at all.
And I think proceeding without addressing these concerns would be to participate in yet another
chapter of exploitation and annihilation, leaving the Nama people without their rightful access to
the benefits derived from their ancestral lands. Just as they have never benefited in any, in
any meaningful or useful ways. They have never benefited from the diamond industry. And it is
on that, you know on this same land, that we are now talking about a new different industry which
is the hydrogen industry. But we are not talking about land dispossession and the historical facts
around how this land was was dispossessed. And so when you talk to a lot of people who actually know
this historical background, people are asking “But how do we, as descendants of people who suffered
from German colonialism, how do we benefit from this?” That discussion is not on the table at
all. So yeah, I think um Hyphen, you know, needs to be in close, in close discussion with with Nama
communities and and the leaders of these of these communities. And there needs to be a sense of
justice because you cannot continue inheriting injustice from generation to generation. I think
this is, I think also international conventions that are ratified by both Germany and Namibia
recognize the right of indigenous people to self-determination which consists of the right
to freely determine and pursue their economic, social and cultural development. And also
the concept of free prior informed consent, that is a human rights norm that is grounded
in the fundamental rights to self-determination and these are guaranteed by several instruments,
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic
Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination. And I think we also need to remember that in 2007, the United Nations
General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People,
making specific mention of free prior informed consent as a pre-erequisite for any activity that
affects indigenous communities. And I think these obligations on the part of states also applies to
Namibia. And we know how Germany is investing um is investing in this hydrogen production. That
Germany has a keen interest in this hydrogen um that ammonia be exported to to Germany.
So there are economic interests here, German economic interests. There are also
German political interests because of the genocide. Germany does not want to refer to it
as genocide and talks about some sort of special relationship with with Namibia, forgetting
that it has committed a genocide on what is today Namibia. And so Germany has an obligation to
ensure that there is free prior informed consent, to ensure that historical injustices are not
being perpetuated. Yeah, I think I shall, I shall stop there, just by concluding that
the legal framework for land dispossession of Nama people by German colonizers was based
on a series of colonial decrees that were issued by German authorities. And notable amongst these
were the 1907 and 1913 settler ordinance and the landlord land law of 1913 which passed indigenous
Nama ancestral land and made it state property and then no justice, no justice has been achieved
from this huge loss of the Nama people. So the the, I think it’s really important that our
government, the green hydrogen council and Hyphen, they need, they need to take into
consideration due diligence measures and ensuring the Hyphen project respects the right
of Nama people specifically with with relation to the Tsau //Khaeb National Park and that such
structural adjustments are made to ensure that historical injustices are not being perpetuated.
Thank you. That’s my contribution. Thank you.