In the dispute over the return of African cultural assets from European collections, the former German colony has been in the limelight since a unique German-Namibian pilot project was implemented.

At the end of May, twenty-three objects from the Berlin Ethnological Museum floated into Windhoek and triggered a media hype on site.

Shortly thereafter, Hermann Parzinger, head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), and Lars-Christian Koch, collection director at the Humboldt Forum, jetted to Windhoek to accompany the handover.

Nobody knew how much dust this trip would unleash.

Robber pistols could even be read in the respected German media.

The press conference took place at the Independence Museum, a bronze tower in the shape of a coffee pot built by North Korean architects.

There they met in a hall that would have done any splatter movie credit: severed heads on the wall, looming armies, pictures and sculptures of the suffering bodies of dark-skinned resistance fighters shaking cages and bars.

The monstrous Independence Museum is the solid government claim of the former liberation organization SWAPO, which has dominated the country since 1990.

And now demands massive reparations from Germany.

"The German offer is an insult," exclaims journalist Kelvin Chiringa.

"I expect a sincere apology from the Germans for 100,000 murdered Namas and Hereros.

Steinmeier should speak in Parliament!”

Jewelry, a knife, a featureless doll with a white face

In 2021, the Bundestag decided to recognize the genocide, and the Federal Foreign Office negotiated compensation payments of over 1.1 billion euros.

But that is no longer enough for the government in Windhoek, they want to renegotiate.

At the same time there is unrest and protests among the victims' associations: Hereros and Namas do not feel sufficiently involved in the negotiations, they fear that they will come away empty-handed.

The "reconciliation agreement" with Germany is currently on hold.

Anyone looking for traces of colonialism in the city will find that many remnants of German rule have been eliminated in recent years.

One almost gets the impression that SWAPO's thirty-year colonial period is embarrassing.

The "equestrian monument", the most famous landmark of the era, has disappeared from its original place.

"The government has dismantled it," says a guide in impeccable German.

"They brought the monument to the Alte Feste, the former headquarters of the Imperial Guard.

But that is closed.

It seems as if Namibia's government wants to keep the past secret."

But nothing can be kept secret in Windhoek.

Right in front of the Alte Feste now rises the Genocide Memorial, the colossal sculpture of a black couple raising their fists into the bright blue winter sky.

Opposite, in the National Museum of Namibia, director Esther Moombolah-Goagoses examines the artefacts that have arrived from Berlin.

Jewelry, a knife, a featureless doll with a white face.

The doyenne of Namibian museum science, who has excellent contacts with the government, is delighted with the project "Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures", which looks Janus-faced into the past and future.

“The objects selected in Berlin are all important to us because there are no equivalents in Namibia.

We need them to research our own history,” says the museum director.