Tomorrow, May 28, is Namibia’s Genocide Remembrance Day. 🇳🇦🇩🇪
Tonight — on the eve of remembrance —
In Namibia and across the world, we stand alongside the Herero and Nama peoples to honor the memory of what was taken – not just lives, but entire worlds. Families. Sacred fires. Songs that were never sung again.
History tried to erase their voices. But the ancestors never stopped calling.
There is a moment in Mama Namibia that I return to again and again. An old woman tells the young Jahohora what she must do:
“Someone must live to tell our story.”
Memory is an act of resistance. Today especially, it is.
This is a day of “rusted sands and salted tears” – and it is also a day of extraordinary resilience. The Herero and Nama people are still here. Their descendants are alive. Their story has not been silenced.
May their legacy never be forgotten.
If you want to know their story – Mama Namibia is where it begins.
PHOTO: Paramount Herero Chief Samuel Maharero was one of the few to survive the desert death march, escaping to what was then the British Bechuanaland Protectorate (modern-day Botswana). He sought several times to return to the home of his ancestors. It was allowed only in death, when he was buried alongside his ancestors in Okahandja.