A handful of tattered photos are all that remain of Mozambican Anacleto Amade’s two years in East Germany, where he worked in the 1980s under a labor scheme between the then-communist allies.
However, his memories of friendships abroad and walking in the snow are scant comfort now. Like most of the 15,000 Mozambicans sent to work in East German factories, Amade said he has never been paid his full wages.
“When I see those pictures, the emotion is enormous, it is big. It is the size of the world, because no one’s story is the same,” the 41-year-old said.
PHOTO: AFP
While in East Germany, the Mozambicans were paid only 40 percent of their salaries, they said. They were told the rest was sent to Mozambique for investment and pay-out upon their return.
However, after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the labor pact ended and they were sent home to a nation that was still a Cold War proxy battlefield. They received only about US$350 each.
The Mozambicans in East Germany worked in steel, construction, manufacturing and textiles industries from 1979.
Locally they are known as the MadGermans, meaning “those from Germany” in the Shangaan language.
“It’s pejorative,” MadGerman Association president Zeca Cossa said from their base at a park across from parliament in the Mozambican capital Maputo.
“We were there to learn these trades to build Mozambique. Then we returned and we were all unemployed,” Cossa said. “They told us ‘We don’t have money.’”
He believes the group was sent to repay East Germany for the weapons sold on credit to liberation party Frelimo during Mozambique’s fight for independence against Portugal from 1964 and during the civil war that ended in 1992.
“We didn’t go to train. We went there to work off Mozambique’s debt,” he said. “We were used like slaves.”
The MadGermans’ situation reflects nagging problems that remain in the country, one of the world’s poorest, after the 16-year civil war that pitted the communist Frelimo government against rebels supported by apartheid South Africa.
Despite the economy’s projected 6.5 percent growth this year, 60 percent of Mozambicans do not have work.
However, the MadGermans see more sinister reasons behind their failure to build a life in their home country. They say the government, the nation’s biggest employer, refuses them work because they demonstrate for their rights.
“Most Africans don’t see. Even when they do see, they don’t speak,” Cossa said. “We who were in Europe can see.”
“But in Mozambique, if you talk, they kill you,” he said, referring to a demonstration in 2003 when police shot dead one of the group.
Every Wednesday about 300 MadGermans march through the city’s streets. Earlier this year they even attempted to storm parliament.
The labor ministry afterward said it would make some payments to nearly 1,800 former workers, “definitely closing” the case, state radio reported.
However, the group’s reputation as troublemakers complicates finding a job anywhere.
“Even when you work, when they find out you’re a MadGerman, you lose your job,” said Rose Ester Libombo, who worked in a lamp factory in Erfurt for two years.
“When they find out, they think you could make a noise because we insist on our rights,” Libombo said. “They call us marginalized, confused.”
These days she sits waiting in the dusty park with other MadGermans in the shadow of a tattered German flag hanging off a tree stump, while street vendors dodge the refuse and heaps of ash as they ply their trade.
Asked about the way forward, Libombo smiles faintly.
“I don’t have plans. You need money to make plans,” she said.
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
Taiwanese exports to the US are to be subject to a 20 percent tariff starting on Thursday next week, according to an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump yesterday. The 20 percent levy was the same as the tariffs imposed on Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by Trump. It was higher than the tariffs imposed on Japan, South Korea and the EU (15 percent), as well as those on the Philippines (19 percent). A Taiwan official with knowledge of the matter said it is a "phased" tariff rate, and negotiations would continue. "Once negotiations conclude, Taiwan will obtain a better