“We write the peace together”, Artwork: Des-tejiendoMiradas/(Un-)Stitching Gazes
The project Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict has released the 6th and last episode of their podcast series “Confronting Hierarchies – A Podcast on (De)Coloniality, Peace & Conflict” on the Virtual Encyclopaedia. The overarching aim with the podcast series has been to question dominant narratives in dialogue with a diversity of voices within and beyond academia and critically engage with theories and research practices over the course of six episodes.
In this last episode "Confronting Genocide. German Colonialism and African Struggles for Justice" the hosts Viviana García Pinzón and Fabricio Rodríguez talk with transnational activist and poet, Jephta Nguherimo about his work for restorative justice and reparations for the German genocide against the OvaHerero and Nama peoples in today’s Namibia. Jephta is part the OvaHerero tribe and shares insights from decades of fighting for justice both through court rooms, art and poetry throughout the conversation. Together, they touch upon the historical trajectories of reparations, the bigger and smaller success, and everything there still is to fight for. The challenges are still many, and up until today only some people are invited to the table of negotiations, meanwhile German civil society’s awareness of the country’s colonial past remains small. Jeptha nevertheless continues to fight with optimism for what the future and new generations have to bring.
Jephta U. Nguherimo is a reparation activist, poet and a former professional labor negotiator of Herero-descent based in Washington D.C. Jephta Nguherimo has been instrumental in the reparation movement for the OvaHerero and Nama genocides, over the last three decades. He was the co-founder of the OvaHerero, Ovambanderu, and Nama Genocide Institute in the US. He organized conferences and other platforms that eventually forced the German government to confront and acknowledge the Genocide of 1904-08.
The episode was moderated by Abdul Karim Ibrahim from the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana.
It was prepared and recorded by Miriam Bartelmann and Martine Toppenberg Dahl.
The episode and the whole podcast can be listened to on the Virtual Encyclopaedia website, as well as on Spotify and Apple Podcast.
The Virtual Encyclopaedia "Rewriting Peace and Conflict" is is a product of the BMBF-funded project “Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict Studies”. It is a multimedia and open access platform about peace and conflict from postcolonial and decolonial perspectives. The encyclopedia offers an interdisciplinary collection of central theoretical and conceptual debates, empirical analyses and reflections on knowledge production. It presents a wide variety of voices; among them are academics from a variety of career levels, background and regions, as well as practitioners and activists. The ultimate goal of the platform is to promote dialogue and reflection by combining text, audio, video, and storytelling across different formats.
