Paper short abstract:

The paper juxtaposes urban space-making practices and imaginaries between Swakopmund City Tour operated by Namibian Germans, and Herero activists around Swakopmund Genocide Museum, presenting alternative memory narratives.

Paper long abstract:

Despite the creation of new post-colonial public memories, legacies of colonialism, especially the Herero and Nama genocide of 1904 are not subject to intense memory work in Namibian public discourse. Non-commemoration of the genocide is behind the trauma among the Herero-Nama some of whom are active in counteracting SWAPO memory politics. Using a memory activism bottom-up approach, the paper attempts to investigate recent urban space-making practices and imaginaries of two different civic actors: Swakopmund City Tour operated by Namibian Germans depicting the “glorious” history of Swakopmund linked to German heritage, which silences the genocide, and a group of Herero activists around Swakopmund Genocide Museum, challenging the monopoly in framing representations of urban heritage and history, and presenting alternative memory narratives. By identifying the activist narratives and practices, and examining the relationships between the two streams, we ask: How is the official memory dealt with in present day-remembrance policies and practices? How is it challenged by Herero political activists? To answer these questions, we use a notion of a mnemoscape (Kössler 2012), including both intangible aspects of the remembrance of collective experience, and a memory landscape, i.e., the concrete shaping and transformation of the urban landscape by memory politics. Methodologically, the paper is based on the outcomes of a short fieldwork in the urban environment of Swakopmund. We argue that the Herero activists as active future-makers (Appadurai 2013) are agents for political transformation and social change and the ones who guide aspirations for urban futures in African societies.