WINDHOEK – The director of Oriental City, Harold //Guiob, who is currently in China on a trade mission with the Deputy Prime Minister, Marco Hausiku, says there is a need to introduce Chinese culture in Namibia to promote cultural cooperation between the two countries.
Oriental City subscribes to the research agenda of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) through the council’s flagship Pan-African Forum for Research and Dialogue on Africa-China Relations which seeks to build a strong knowledge base on Africa-China relations within Africa, in order to support African policy makers in their engagement with China and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). “We will start a Namibia-China Friendship Club as a vehicle to exploit this potential. The club will consist of Namibian and Chinese friends whose association is fundamentally based on friendship and the need to learn and appreciate African and Chinese cultures.
The club will also subscribe to the principles of ‘reciprocal anthropology’, which in our association with a foreign culture should serve as a self-reflection of our strengths and shortcomings and that of our interlocutors, enabling us to learn from one another’s successes through people to people contacts aided by interventions such as the annual Namibia-China Open Day and ‘Carrying the Spirit’ of Namibia Holiday Tours to China in collaboration with Air Namibia,” //Guiob elaborated. Oriental City, he stressed, seeks to provide an independent African voice that will encapsulate commitment aimed at redressing the current anomalies in Africa-China research output and ownership as identified by CODESRIA and seeking to raise the Namibian voice in the continental debate about China in Africa.
“Oriental City will someday be replaced by the National Institute for the Study of China. In the meantime, we will create and disseminate knowledge about the ever expanding partnership between Namibia and China and lay a strong foundation for the establishment of the national institute incorporated within the University of Namibia, offering Chinese studies at under-graduate and post-graduate levels within the university’s curriculum and certified by the university, and offering academic exchange programmes and internships, and hosting a fully-fledged SADC-China Cultural Museum,” he said.
According to //Guiob a bilateral case study of Namibia-China relations which will include a detailed history organized under various themes will also be incorporated to focus on the initiation of friendship with the dragon in exile (1960 – 1976), courting friendship with the dragon in exile (1977 – 1989), consolidating friendship with the dragon after independence (1990 – 2000), as well as the changing face of the dragon (2000 to present). The initiative will further gauge the Chinese small trader’s perceptions about living and doing business in Namibia across the 13 political regions of Namibia, the Namibian perceptions about Chinese small traders in the streets and market places where they interact and explore one another’s worlds, as well as the conceptualisation of a narrative that will facilitate better understanding between Namibian and Chinese citizens at grassroots level. “These initiatives will substantially assist in raising Namibia’s voice in the continental debate about China in Africa,” said //Guiob.
By Engel Nawatiseb