05 ISSUE III
FEBRUARY 2025
FEBRUARY 2025
How to make a decolonial film
The Namibian film UNDER THE HANGING TREE explores colonial trauma, identity, and justice through a gripping murder investigation.
By Obai me Ijure
The hanging trees, known as Ngauzepo, were where Herero and Nama survivors of the German genocide were publicly hanged to deter rebellion after enduring starvation. Today, these trees stand as somber witnesses to the brutal violence of the early twentieth-century genocide, which is considered the first of its kind in the modern era and a precursor to the Holocaust. As a result, the cruelty inflicted upon this land is deeply etched into Namibian landscape.
The territory that is now Namibia was colonized by Germany in 1884 and renamed German South West Africa. At the turn of the century, the Herero and Nama rebelled against German land seizures. In 1904, the German military, led by the very sadistic General Lothar von Trotha, ordered the extermination of the Herero and Nama, forcing survivors into deserts and concentration camps. Tens of thousands died from disease, starvation, exploitation, and medical experimentation. By 1905, the Herero population had plummeted from 80,000 to 15,000.
After Germany’s defeat in World War I, Namibia came under UN trusteeship, but white South Africa, aligned with the West, had already occupied the region. In 1919, the League of Nations mandated South Africa to govern Namibia. South Africa implemented its apartheid and authoritarian policies there, and the territory remained under its rule until Namibia gained independence in 1990.
Land in present-day Namibia is divided into commercial (42%), communal (35%), and state land (23%). Descendants of German and South African white settlers (including white South Africans who had settled there after serving in South Africa’s occupying force) own 70% of the commercial land where they farm or run guest houses, game lodges, and parks. The workers on these farms, lodges, and parks are usually black.
Though Namibians had campaigned for reparations and official recognition of the genocide since the late 1990s, momentum grew in the 2010s. In May 2021, after six years of negotiations, Germany officially recognized the genocide and offered Namibia $1.2 billion in development aid for infrastructure projects.
The 2023 film “Under the Hanging Tree,” by Namibian director Perivi Katjavivi, explores the legacy of this violence. The story follows Christina, a black cop investigating the death of a white German farmer found hanging under a hanging tree from where her ancestors had been hung during the genocide. “The inequality is conveyed through long shots of Christina walking across farmlands. In his vision for the film, Katjavivi has described Christina as “... a very modern hero, raised in the city, tough and filled with the disconnectivity of modernity. She is oblivious to her cultural ancestry and the historical traumas that run through her blood. She is us. We travel through this ghostly narrative through her eyes as she rediscovers Herero tribal wisdom which helps her solve the case and embrace motherhood.”
In interviews, Katjavivi has explained that he wasn’t necessarily interested in making a police (cop) genre film or a film about the genocide or colonialism, but “just trying to make a piece of art that gets inside the head and heart of what it’s like to be young and alive, now, in Namibia and have to look into the darkness that is our colonial history.” As he told The Namibian, the country’s leading progressive newspaper: “What is the psycho and spiritual disposition of the cop in our drama? What does she think and feel? Not the ancestors or the chiefs or the government, or the German antagonists, but her. Us, you and I as individuals and humans.”
Some of Christina’s showdowns are with her aunt Ndjambi over housework and the “traditional” role of women in Herero culture, but crucially with a farmworker, played by famed actor, David Ndjavera, who died before the film was completed: “On the surface, he appears as a vengeful Herero farmworker – but he is much more than that. His role is that of a shaman, a wisdom keeper, a conjurer of the past.”
Christina also has to face up to questions about her identity—such as her inability to speak Odjiherero, her mother’s language. Locals also question her allegiance—whether she sides with the Germans, the government, the local community, or herself.
The film creatively deals with restorative justice, including an exorcism; on occasion, Katjavivi has said the “film might create some kind of self-possession” for the viewer. The film implies that restorative justice is not a one-off gesture but an ongoing conversation. It should involve memorialization, truth-telling, and public policy that goes beyond diplomatic aid semantics. True restorative justice requires social and economic equity, including access to housing and recognition for indigenous and marginalized groups.
Obai mei ijure is a public policy scholar.