I’m having a beer in Windhoek, Namibia, observing a group of German tourists in safari gear crowd into a young Black man’s space. I’m not close enough to overhear their exchange, but I watch it unfold.

He had a table all to himself until two of them arrived, their body language all, “you don’t mind if we just perch here closer to the view, do you?” He graciously obliged and went back to working on his tablet. Soon, another couple showed up to join the first, draping jackets with too many pockets over the chairs they dragged over from the bar and plonking their large gin tonics down, like flags in the soil. 

When the poor guy got up to abandon his spot, they protested, “Oh no! Please stay, we couldn’t possibly! Well, as long as you’re sure...gee, thanks”

It feels like the most obvious colonial metaphor I can imagine.

I imagine them rationalizing, “but he wasn’t even looking at the sunset!” Who cares? He was literally here first and what he does at his table with his tablet is his business.

Before I know it, an American couple has moved into what was left of his space, asking him to take their picture against the backdrop. 

My blood boils.

I love Namibia, but something about Windhoek sets my teeth on edge. In terms of the racial divide, it feels like Cape Town on steroids. Mostly White Germans, with a smattering of French and Americans, cooing over handicrafts while drinking rosé imported from South Africa.

To be fair, I’ve been cranky since I got here, probably because it wasn’t my choice to come in the first place. I had to exit South Africa before a certain date so as not to overstay my current visa, and in order to re-enter on my new visa. Windhoek is one of the few direct, relatively short flights anywhere outside of SA from Cape Town. So it’s a utilitarian trip to a pretty sleepy little town in the middle of a gorgeous country I just don’t have the time or money to explore at the moment (although I have in the past, and certainly will again).

But, while wandering around yesterday, I came across a memorial that reminded me about that the first genocide to begin in the 20th century happened right here. Not to give my subconscious too much credit, but I suddenly felt my bad mood, poor sleep and general malaise click into place.

120 years ago, the Germans stated their intention to annihilate the rebelling Herero and, subsequently, Nama people, first in a bloody battle, then by driving them into and trapping them in the Omaheke Desert, where many died of starvation and dehydration. (Earlier today, I overheard a German tourist order an Omaheke lemonade from a young Namibian waitress. It takes my breath away to even begin absorbing the layers there…)

Survivors were herded into concentration camps, used as slave laborers and exploited in medical experiments. Prisoners in the camps died of disease, exhaustion, starvation and malnutrition, with an estimated mortality rate between 45% - 74%.

In a devastating yet somehow unsurprising twist, some scholars argue that the Herero and Nama genocide set a precedent - “a crucial precursor to Nazi colonialism and genocide.”

It’s hard not to draw parallels to Gaza. Settler colonialism, alive and well. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Ok, yes. This is all a very tidy and self-aggrandizing way of looking at things. My bad mood related to the ghosts of a 1904 genocide connected to the current genocide in Gaza. And the fact that I am here in order to cement my status in South Africa just makes it all too rich. It’s much, much, messier and more painful than all of that. And yet sometimes the simpler view is the more brutal and honest one. 

Particularly as we look ahead to an election in the U.S. characterized not only, but in large part, by quite tribalist othering. 

Look. I don’t know what it means in real terms for us to elect a criminal authoritarian. Maybe our democratic systems will hold out. But I’m not so sure anymore. I’ve lived in a few dictatorships and I find that the only argument against us tumbling into that category is American exceptionalism.

Which I stopped believing in (if ever I really did) somewhere in the early nineties.