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.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique