The German head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, asked for “forgiveness” on Wednesday November 1 for the abuses committed by his country’s colonial forces in Tanzania, during a visit to Songea, site of a Maji massacre -Maji in the early 20th century. “I bow to the victims of German colonial rule. And as German president, I would like to ask for forgiveness for what the Germans did to your ancestors here,” he declared, according to the text of a speech released by his services in Germany.

Between 1905 and 1907, German colonial troops massacred between 200,000 and 300,000 representatives of the Maji-Maji after an uprising by the latter, according to estimates provided by historians. The German president spoke of the fate of chief Songea Mbano, a leader of the rebellion at the time, hanged and beheaded by the Germans with 66 of his fighters. “Anyone in Germany who knows more about German colonial history must be horrified by the scale of the cruelty” with which the country acted, he continued.

A long-hidden responsibility

” I am ashamed ! I am ashamed of what the German colonial soldiers did to your ancestors,” he said in front of the descendants of Chief Songea, according to the text of the speech. The visit to Tanzania of the head of state, whose function is essentially honorary in Germany but who has a role of moral guarantor of the country, comes at the same time as that of King Charles III to Kenya, who also condemned colonial abuses from his country, the United Kingdom. The German colonial empire, smaller than those of the French or the British, extended over several African countries, including Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon. It ceased to exist after the First World War.

For a long time, this responsibility was obscured by the world wars and the Holocaust in the 20th century, but over the last two decades the country has nevertheless begun to remember its colonial past, which has led it to make restitutions: he notably returned bones of members of the Herero and Nama tribes in Namibia, colonized from 1884 to 1915, where he admitted in May 2021 to having committed “genocide”.

“We (…) must face this history so that we can build a better future together,” said Frank-Walter Steinmeier. This is also why I came here to Songea: to take these stories with me to Germany, so that more people in my country can learn about them. What happened here is our shared history – the history of your ancestors and the history of our ancestors in Germany. »