On the information we choose to ignore

I thought of adding this into the previous post, but I think it needs a post of its own.

Friday I decided to join my dear friend Hazel (from Malawi days) to her lecture at Kings College. She's doing a Masters degree in Environment and Development at one of the country's (world's?) most prestigious colleges, and I was welcome to sit in (why didn't I do this earlier, again?). The lecture was about land rights in Southern Africa.

In two hours I learned how it was exactly that native farmers in Southern Africa were forced to give up the lands they had owned since the beginning of time to white farms, and were themselves confined to 'homelands' in just 6% (and some of the worst 6%) of South Africa's farming lands, besides being the overwhelming majority of the population. Sort of like a concentration camp with an open door policy. I learned how in Rhodesia (today's Zambia and Zimbabwe) the land was divided in a highly scientific way into five agricultural zones, rated by desirability from 1 (virtual Eden) to 5 (virtual hell. In future years, Western media will regularly report 'droughts' in your area following insufficient rainfall. This, however, will constitute an utter waste of column space, because it's going to happen seven of every eight years, and thus does not constitute news, or indeed, a "drought". Do not attempt to make a living of agriculture here, because you, your extended family, livestock, pets and the tse-tse flies that feed on you will probably die. Can I make myself any clearer?). Guess who got virtual Eden, and who got virtual hell.

As a side note I also learned about the German genocide of the Hereros people in Namibia in 1904. This was literally a side note, the professor only mentioned this in one sentence - but I got curious, and started digging. It turns out that a hundred thousand people were killed within a year (significantly more than the population of my own country at the time). Some died when their water wells were poisoned, others were chopped down with machine gun fire (field testing for the trenches of WWI?), and the rest were driven into the Kalahari desert to die of thirst.

Is it just me, or is this something I should have known about already? Even if I hadn't actually been there, celebrated Christmas there and nearly moved there? Quick poll - had anybody heard about this? It's ok though, because the German government apparently expressed regret in 2004, while rejecting any notion of paying damages, as "it would be unfair to Namibia's other groups to only compensate the Hereros". That I found to be a rather unfortunately worded statement that made me very worried to find out what else went on there. Or in other countries for that matter, I don't think the Germans were necessarily any worse than the other colonial powers.

I decided not to dig deeper. It was getting late in the afternoon, and I had a concert to go to.