Abstract:
Africa was colonised and subjected to brutal colonial rule. Namibia, is no exception, in fact, the
country went through two brutal colonial powers; imperial Germany, and the South African regime,
which subjected Namibia to an apartheid rule, a localised form of colonialism fitted to oppress
Africans. Between the two, the imperial German rule was crueler, resulting in genocide.
The 1904-1908 genocide by the Germans against the Ovaherero and Nama people of Namibia is a
horrible and unforgettable history. This dark history, forgotten and ignored by the Germany
government for over a hundred years, has seen much criticism over the resent past year. Many
critiques argue that the Germany army committed acts of annihilation, which the current Germany
government need to pay reparations for. This history has seen four novels published about it, and
hundreds of articles and research papers interrogating the genocide. This thesis explores
ambivalence in two of the four published Namibian literary works on this history: Zirk van der Berg’s
Parts Unknown (2018) and Jaspar Utley’s The Lie of the Land (2017). These works of literature
explore acts of rape against black women by the German army, acts of discrimination and inferiority
complex painted on the natives by ‘superior’ Germany. They record acts of annihilation aimed at
depopulating the country of its natives. They record a slaughter of innocent women and children,
and unarmed surrendered men.
The study explores the shifting nature of the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. It
traces the ambiguities by examining the language used by the characters, and the cruel descriptions
of the colonial war. The aim of this research is to enable the reader to understand how colonisation
impacted the relationship between blacks and whites.
This is a qualitative, desktop study grounded on Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial concept of ambivalence
as its theoretical framework.
