The President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has apologised for atrocities committed by the country in what is today Tanzania during the colonial era.
Steinmeier was talking at a museum in the town of Songea in the south-west of the country. The area had been the site of an uprising against German imperial rule in the early 1900s. The conflict, known as the Maji Maji Rebellion, lasted from 1905 to 1907, with some estimates putting the death toll at the hands of German imperial forces at as high as 300 000.
Steinmeier was quoted as saying: ‘I would like to ask for forgiveness for what Germans did to your ancestors here. What happened here is our shared history, the history of your ancestors and the history of our ancestors in Germany.’
In 2021 the German government formally acknowledged committing genocide in what is today Namibia.