ALMOST 200,000 years ago modern humans originated in parts of what is today called Namibia and South Africa. The six billion people who now occupy all the continents and nations of the world owe their origin to these ancient ancestors, who now survive in almost original form as “primitive'”nomads, the so-called Bushmen, Nama or KhoiSan. No matter how racist we comprehend the world, or superior we view ourselves, we cannot escape this common ancestry.

This book is a history, from more recent times when events can be documented, so the story of when man first saw the world and his fellows with human eyes is beyond its remit. The first chapter, on The Archaeology of Namibia by John Kinahan, goes somewhat beyond the scope of documenting events that most histories compass, so we are given a closer look at our genesis. Brilliant rock paintings, pottery, tools, weapons are there in abundance, silent testimony to times past.

The significance of this archaeological evidence, the richness of the culture, is ample proof that human beings occupied this territory for a long time, and did not wait 200 millennia for murdering Europeans to rescue them from barbarism with their “civilising mission”. In this sense, the book reinforces the philosophy of the Liberation Movement, and of all transforming ideologies of the past, that all men and women are created equal, and should be treated as such.

The German philosopher Hegel said that Africans had no history, a statement of the most profound ignorance, until one accepts the extent to which privilege and the justification for exploitation distorts and diminishes the intellect. It should not be forgotten that Hegel’s Germany was at the forefront of Western music, science, philosophy and culture when it designed and perpetrated the greatest horrors in the history of the world.

German imperialism played a significant role in the modern history of Namibia, and the book documents how the genocide, concentration camps, and medical experiments on live humans which so-called Aryans perfected in two World Wars were first practised on Africans. While the British, Dutch and other Europeans who defeated the Germans appeared more humane in their “histories”, we should always remember Napoleon’s caution that “history is the tale told by the winning side”. Before the architects of apartheid were defeated, their “history” declared Europeans superior.

By documenting the names and deeds of the indigenous population, the book counters the “history” concocted by colonialism, that passive subjects, soulless “barbarians”, “heathens” in need of religion and “civilisation” needed to be introduced into history by cannon, machine guns, and concentration camps. The peoples, ethnic groups or “tribes” were shown to have human aspirations for thousands of years, and did not need illiterate Europeans to “civilise” them.

The political economy of the territory, in which the colonised were deprived and tortured, so that European colonists could sustain a privileged existence, showed that imposing “religion” and “civilisation” were afterthoughts, while colonialism was a bread and butter issue, as well as theft of crops, land, cattle and human labour. While their ideology preached racial superiority of Europeans, the extent to which they stacked the decks against the colonised was a sign of profound inferiority.

Robbing agricultural and pastoral people of land and cattle so that foreigners could triumph is hardly a sign of perceptions of superiority or security. If civilisation is defined in terms of humane values, mass murders, tortures, plunders, rape and racial discrimination, they hardly qualify. Transportation of African slaves to the Caribbean, and the use of racism to justify such inhumanity, share the same structure as the colonialism imposed on Namibia and elsewhere in the world.

The various peoples of Namibia were able to sustain themselves over a profound period of time because they had evolved structures in keeping with their environment. Not all their practices would pass muster in modern times, but then neither did the massacres and grand theft of their European conquerors. Some migrated between Angola, Namibia and South Africa and the imposition of boundaries by invaders, without consultation or consent, added to the colonial dislocation.

Despite the dislocation, deprivation and mass murders they suffered, the people never surrendered. The liberation struggle organised by the South West Africa People’s (SWAPO) was a continuation of this resistance, not the work of “outside agitators” stirring up a docile population of contented subjects. While liberation has not resulted in the return of all to history, it is a beginning, a refutation of a system which justified exploitation, torture and murder through lies and slander.

The author said that she could not cover the period after Independence in the same detail as the colonial period, because of the time she already spent on the book, and this is a pity. As an activist, she probably was afraid of upsetting leaders of the struggle for what she perceives as betrayal. Maybe she felt uneasy saying colonialism has been succeeded by neo-colonialism. But even then, she could be forgiven for this show of intellectual politeness.

For the current leaders of Namibia, the lesson of the book is clear. They now rule because history has shown that exploitation of one human being by another is wrong. In the past it was the European who claimed that he was superior in order to justify his exploitation. SWAPO which challenged that exploitation by exposing racial superiority as a fraud, cannot now rely on even this threadbare fantasy.

Patrick Wilmot, who is based in London, is a writer and commentator on African affairs for the BBC, Sky News, Al-Jazeera and CNN.