{"id":1520,"date":"2016-05-18T15:01:01","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T20:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=1520"},"modified":"2025-03-01T08:58:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T14:58:40","slug":"guten-abend-aus-windhoek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2016\/05\/18\/guten-abend-aus-windhoek\/","title":{"rendered":"Guten Abend Aus Windhoek"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To answer the question of what\u2019s at the corner of Luderitz Strasse and Fidel Castro Street, it\u2019s\"\"<\/a> the Goethe Institute which houses the Goethe Caf\u00e9 (on one corner) and the headquarters of the Lutheran Church here.\u00a0 Both the Castro reference and the Teutonic emphases help explain contemporary Namibia.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
In front of German HQ<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The German influence, as I\u2019ve suggested earlier, is pronounced, although its history as German Southwest Africa ended in 1915 or 1916.\u00a0 Part of the heritage is in the architecture.\u00a0 Cultural relics abound, including the old Christ kirche, a Lutheran Church that looks gingerbread-like outside and has a Rubens copy painting inside (probably a fake imported from China, like so many other things), the Hochschule (not sure I got the spelling \"\"<\/a>right) which houses part of the museum of Namibia, and my favorite, the Alte Feste, the old\u00a0 fort\/headquarters of the German army in SWA, with its crenelated castle towers and a huge statue erected in honor of the \u201cFallen Soldaten\u201d in world war I\u00a0 nearly half a century later.\u00a0 The discussion we had at the Embassy pointed out that many German habits still prevail (people stop at the stop lights), and many of the restaurants feature German fare (I had schnitzel the other day).<\/p>\n

The Fidel Castro reference is equally important in explaining recent Namibian history (which also has a spillover effect on business, especially on US businesses).\u00a0 Simply, the good guys who helped Namibia liberate itself from South Africa, as the Namibians perceive it, were Cuba, Russia, China, and North Korea. For example,\u00a0 I went to the new museum of history, built by North Korea (I\u2019d never before heard of North Korean construction companies going anywhere beyond their borders!).\u00a0 Inside, what I saw would have made Kim (anyone of the three) immensely proud, because the vocabulary and displays were \u201csocialist realism.\u201d\u00a0 There were exploited \"\"<\/a>workers both in historical pictures and in artwork right out of the Chinese mold (the founder of the Republic stands statuesque in front, looking for all the world like Mao\/Kim with a slightly different face–he does have a beard).\u00a0 The pictures (and that was most of the exhibit) didn\u2019t give any context, but I could imagine the struggle for liberation from the displays.\u00a0 The country finally became independent in 1990 (March 21 if you want to win the trivial pursuit game), with the assistance of the United Nations.<\/p>\n

That allegiance of SWAPO, the party of the revolution, and the party which has run the country since, is tilted toward the communist bloc.\u00a0 Many of the businesses are state-owned, and we learned that the sentiment is that \u201cprofit is bad,\u201d which has had a salutary effect on the corporate social responsibility of businesses that want to operate in this country.\u00a0 One of our speakers, from 3M, sells respiratory devices to mining companies, and its entry strategy has been to give free training to mine owners who were convinced that towels and cloth masks were sufficient to prevent silicosis (!)\u00a0 And, until recently, the parliament members were on the committee to scrutinize applications from companies desiring to do business here, or invest here (most of the mines are foreign owned, the capital requirements being too great for locals to manage, though about 95% of the workers are local\u2014at least 80% have to be\u2014and, the Chamber of Mines economist assured us, at least 70% of the revenue remains in Namibia. I thought it was fitting that her title was \u201ceconomist,\u201d but her training was in journalism.)\u00a0 The mines are a major contributor to the GDP.\u00a0 As I understand it, there is a new $6 b Chinese-owned uranium mine soon to open that will add 5% to the GDP of the country.\u00a0 And the economist also assured us, miners\u2019 pay is relatively high, both within Namibia and in the African mining industry.<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>
At the US embassy in Windhoek<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The bias has some interesting effects.\u00a0 A government tender for a railroad led to 8 bids, which went to a Chinese company.\u00a0 The seven losers contested, and the proposal was rebid with 7 bidders.\u00a0 The result was the Chinese won again.\u00a0 The port of Walvis Bay is being expanded with Chinese construction (some of the subcontracting is going to Caterpillar). I\u2019m beginning to get the picture now; the battle is partly for the interior-the Botswana and Zambia and Zimbabwe.\u00a0 The port will require additional infrastructure, especially railroads, and we saw some plans (there are a lot of plans in and for Africa) for linking Walvis Bay with other countries.\u00a0 The embassy told us even now it\u2019s more efficient to ship to Walvis Bay than to the South African ports.<\/p>\n

All this may be changing.\u00a0 There is an American-educated President (the first) who is less skeptical about the motives of the United States (and Obama\u2019s presidency has helped here, too), though the commercial attache related a story about telling the Minister of Foreign Trade how important the \u201cease of doing business in\u201d and other ratings are in attracting foreign investment only to be told, \u201cBut countries lower than us get the most money.\u201d\u00a0 We\u2019re having a reception at the embassy tomorrow, so maybe we\u2019ll get more of a sense of what is happening in this large (think Alaska), thinly populated (2 million) and environmentally varied and naturally attractive country.<\/p>\n

Gotta go essen!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To answer the question of what\u2019s at the corner of Luderitz Strasse and Fidel Castro Street, it\u2019s the Goethe Institute which houses the Goethe Caf\u00e9 (on one corner) and the headquarters of the Lutheran Church here.\u00a0 Both the Castro reference and the Teutonic emphases help explain contemporary Namibia. The German influence, as I\u2019ve suggested earlier, … Continue reading “Guten Abend Aus Windhoek”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa-2016"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1520"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8420,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520\/revisions\/8420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}