German soldiers killed some 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama members in a 1904-1908 campaign after a revolt against land seizures by colonists. Historians and the United Nations have long called this the first genocide of the 20th century.
While Germany has previously acknowledged "moral responsibility" for the killings, it has avoided making an official apology for the massacres to avoid compensation claims.
In a statement announcing an agreement with Namibia following more than five years of negotiations with its government, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the events of the German colonial period should be named "without sparing or glossing over them".
"We will now also officially call these events what they were from today's perspective: a genocide," Maas said.
"In light of Germany's historical and moral responsibility, we will ask Namibia and the descendants of the victims for forgiveness," he said.
Congratulations to the persistent efforts of the likes of Joshua Kwesi Aikins in Berlin #Germany #Herero https://t.co/rc13RepO41
— james shikwati (@ShikwatiJames) May 28, 2021
Over a billion euros in support fund
As a "gesture of recognition of the immeasurable suffering" Germany caused, Maas said it would set up a fund amounting to 1.1 billion euros to be used in reconstruction and development projects that would directly benefit the genocide-affected communities.
Namibian media reported on Thursday that the money would fund infrastructure, healthcare and training programmes over 30 years.
The foreign minister said that representatives of the Herero and Nama communities were closely involved in the negotiating process.
The declaration is expected to be signed in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, in early June, before being ratified by the parliaments of both countries.
Germany, which lost all its colonial territories after World War One, was the third biggest colonial power after Britain and France. But its colonial past was ignored for decades while historians and politicians focused more on the legacy of Nazi crimes, including the Holocaust.
In 2015, it began formal negotiations with Namibia over the issue and in 2018 it returned skulls and other remains of massacred tribespeople that were used in the colonial-era experiments to assert claims of European racial superiority.
Germany's announcement of the agreement with Namibia came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron stopped short of apologising for France's role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
He did however, in an echo of Maas' words "ask for forgiveness."
"Only those who crossed the night can maybe forgive; give us the gift of forgiving us," he said, addressing himself to the victims at the memorial in Kigali on Thursday.
(with Reuters)
