We packed a lot into the last day in Cape Town before we left at\u00a0 5 am this morning.\u00a0 We had three visits that helped put a little more heft into our understanding of the Western Cape\u2019s role in the South African economy.\u00a0 Cape Town generates 11% of the country\u2019s GDP, mostly by providing financial and business services, as well as being the hub for agriculture and agricultural exports.\u00a0 The economist for Wesgro, a kind of chamber of commerce for the region, gave us the kind of reasons she gives potential investors: if you\u2019re seeking a footprint on the African continent, Cape has an educated work force (4 major universities), a 17% lower cost of living than Johannesburg and 60% less than New York, and a business-friendly government.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
A visit to the Port facility confirmed many of her statistics.\u00a0 Part of a government-run business that manages freight trains, pipelines, as well as 8 ports (the largest being Durban, in the Indian Ocean).\u00a0 The harbor at Cape moves 86% of the country\u2019s fish exports, 60% of its beverages (read l million bottles of\u00a0 wine), and 50% of its agriculture in general.\u00a0 The biggest exports to the United States are usually metals and minerals, especially platinum.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The dockage includes some exotic features, such as a freezer terminal (to keep the fish at -10 C), and two rather interesting special features.\u00a0 We had to take a breathalyzer test to get into the facility; the manager emphasized the importance of safety.\u00a0 The port requires one of its pilots to get the ships into the harbor, and sobriety is essential.\u00a0 What was probably the neatest feature of the visit was that the control tower is 11 stories high, and from its walkway, we had stunning view of the waterfront area and the harbor.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
On the way back to our hotel, I got dropped off at one of the museums I had I didn\u2019t want to leave the subject of Cape without mentioning the election last Wednesday.\u00a0 Our third visit yesterday was to a newspaper agency which had a post that captured \u201cmuch about muchness.\u201d\u00a0 The ruling African One other important (for me) Cape factoid: in 1641, before the founding of Cape Town (and maybe one of the impetus for it), a Dutch ship\u2019s captain was lost.\u00a0 What was \u201cfound\u201d was the Legend of the Flying Dutchman, one of my favorite Wagnerian operas.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n We\u2019ve got a variety of activities available tomorrow, but tonight I\u2019m looking up at Orion, who left our hemisphere a few months ago to move into the southern hemisphere.\u00a0 As I mentioned, we\u2019re 17 degrees south of the equator.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" May 11, 2019 Perhaps the most famous words in African journalism in the 19th century were Stanley\u2019s quest to find Dr. Livingston [sic] , a medical missionary\/explorer who was the first European to see Victoria Falls.\u00a0 Partly in honor of finding what is the number one tourist spot in Zambia, the grateful British renamed Constitution … Continue reading “Dr.Livingstone, I presume?”<\/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":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-southern-africa-2019"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742","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=1742"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8524,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions\/8524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2019\/05\/slave-lodge.jpg\")
<\/a>marked as a \u201cmust do\u201d\u2014 the Old Slave Lodge, which had been an old slave lodge where the Dutch East India Company kept its company-owned slaves.\u00a0 Ironically, the building subsequently saw service as the location of the Supreme Court before it was reconstructed.\u00a0 What I learned was that 1) the first ship carrying slaves arrived from Portuguese Angola in 1658; 2) the majority of slaves came from Mozambique or from the Indies.\u00a0 The latter helps explain the persistence of a Muslim community in Cape, the so called Bo-Kaap area, with its colorful homes and mosques; 3) Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807, and frequently enforced the law by capturing slavers and releasing the victims (though frequently as indentured servants); and 4) Britain banned slavery in 1834, which was one of the triggers that set the Boers (Dutch for farmers) trekking east and establishing republics, that were to last until the second Boer war.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/a>National Congress got a majority, as expected, but was down about 5 per cent from the last election five years ago.\u00a0 The Democratic Alliance won the Western Cape and will have the premier, but it also lost percentages from five years ago.\u00a0 The winners were the left and right extremist parties; though they have small numbers, they still will be represented in parliament because of the proportional seating.\u00a0 Everyone claimed victory.\u00a0 Perhaps we\u2019ll know more when we return to Johannesburg next week.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n