ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the centrality of sexual and gender-based violence to the Herero genocide in German South West Africa (1904–1908). Tracking the evolution of colonial attitudes toward sexual relationships between German men and African women, it shows how white male sexual license generated outrage among the Herero and Nama, leading to the anticolonial Herero rebellion of 1904. German authorities responded to these acts of outrage by authorizing a genocidal policy against the Herero and later the Nama, sweeping in its orders to kill men, women, and children alike. Like other genocides of the twentieth century, mass rapes and sexual violence committed by German men against African women featured throughout. Yet attention to the role of gender and sexuality in the genocide, the first of the twentieth century, illuminates some of the uniquely colonial dimensions of this mass violence. In particular, a culture of impunity regarding rape of African women clearly links the Herero genocide to the pregenocide era.
