The Colonial Misunderstanding

LE MALENTENDU COLONIAL is a voyage into the colonial past of Germany and its attempts to colonize Africa through religion and trade. Starting in the early 19th century, the city of Wuppertal was a mayor source of missionaries going to countries like Togo, Cameroon, Namibia and South Africa. Often there was empathy on the part of the white clergymen, but within the church opinions differed as to how the native population should be treated. This resulted in a difference between missions and their active cooperation with the European colonial powers, who after the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 had divided Africa amongst themselves. The war against the Herrero in Namibia (1904-1907) exposed the true, gruesome nature of colonialism, and as a result tens of thousands of men, women and children died, were driven into the desert or locked up in concentration camps. Through interviews with experts from Germany and Africa, Jean-Marie Teno paints a picture of the relatively short but nevertheless horrific colonial history of Germany in Africa. And even that history was changed to fit with the image that Europeans wanted to have: a former slave named Joseph Merrick was the man who founded the first missionary in Cameroon, but church records erased this African’s name and replaced it with that of Alfred Saker, an Englishman who did not arrive until years later.