Krautwald, Fabian; (2023) The Past Will Set You Free: Prophetic Memory in Twentieth-Century Herero Religious Thought. International Journal of African Historical Studies , 56 (3) pp. 387-411.

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Abstract

This article examines how a southern African society commemorated colonial genocide by auguring alternative futures. Drawing on the concept of “prophetic memory,” it illustrates how the Herero combined vernacular ideas about freedom and land, Christian eschatology, as well as pan-Africanist ideology to reflect on the Herero and Nama genocide of 1904–1908 between the final years of German colonial rule (until 1915) and Namibia’s subsequent occupation by South Africa. Based on the analysis of the Otjiherero mission newspaper “Omahungi” (“Conversation” or “Stories”) and prophecies by Herero Christians made between 1946–1948, the article shows that pastors, evangelists, and ordinary believers articulated emancipatory, but often diverging, visions of redemption by combining invocations of pioneering Herero converts and biblical as well as indigenous prophets with long-standing notions of slavery and land as well as the rhetoric of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The resulting disagreements over how to achieve self-determination contributed to growing opposition to white supremacy and encouraged the founding of independent African churches after 1945. The article shows the lasting impact of the first genocide of the twentieth century as well as the breadth of the registers through which survivors and their descendants remembered its violence.

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