A local bank has set up a hotline for victims of the major flood, which hit Windhoek the past weekend. According to Corporate Communication Manager of First National Bank, Ebben Simon, affected FNB customers of the Acacia town house complex in Windhoek should contact the bank during banking hours with regard to their housing loans and insurances due to damages suffered by them. About 35 houses were flooded and damaged in Acacia area last Friday night when the Arebbusch River broke its banks and flooded a nearby bridge and spilt into houses and garages, causing severe damage to furniture and cars. Ms Simon further said the bank would assist house owners who are clients of FNB, with temporary accommodation.

About 200 workers in the fishing industry will lose their jobs by the end of January. A demonstration for Thursday was to take place in front of Hangana Seafood in Walvis Bay. The company was apparently forced to take this drastic step after the weak US dollar caused the rand and Namibia dollar to gain 30 %, causing Namibian fish exporters heavy losses. About 90 workers are due for automatic retrenchment, while only 35 of the remaining 112 opted for their packages, the rest want to keep their jobs. Negotiations with the Namibia Food and Allied Workers Union (Nafau) took place, while the minister of fisheries and marine resources, Dr Abraham Iyambo told media that he had not yet been officially informed about the retrenchments. Two more fishing enterprises might lay off workers in the near future.

The arrival of German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in South Africa late Wednesday night also brought hopes for further economic cooperation and joint ventures in South Africa and neighbouring Mozambique. Many large German companies have subsidiaries in South Africa already since the apartheid days. In Nairobi he visited the United Nations Environment Program, run by Klaus Töpfer, and signed an agreement to double development aid for Kenya to a total 50 million euros for 2004 and 2005. Travelling with Schröder are 23 high-powered business delegates including the heads of large companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Commerzbank, DaimlerChrysler, Beiersdorf and Lufthansa, as well as trade union leaders. Germany is South Africa’s largest import partner and its fourth largest export partner with trade amounting to 7.6 billion euros in 2002 and with foreign direct investment of 2.1 billion euros in 2001. Siemens, Volkswagen and BMW have large car assembly plants in South Africa, creating thousands of jobs for mainly black South Africans. The fact that Schröder did not include Namibia on his first ever Africa tour, raised eyebrows. Herero Chief Riruako told PLUS, Schröder should have come to Namibia and attend the Herero genocide commemorations on 12 January.

South African mining companies will plough a staggering 60 billion rand into the Democratic Republic of Congo. This announcement was made at the end of President Thabo Mbeki’s state visit to Kinshasa at the end of last week, according to media reports in South Africa. The South African businessmen agreed to invest 60 billion rand in a series of projects to rebuild the shattered mining industry in the northeast and southeast of the DRC, but according to Mbeki the two governments were not involved. Mbeki also signed a pact with Joseph Kabila, his counterpart, for greater cooperation between the DRC and South Africa in the fields of defence and security, politics, economics, human rights, education, agriculture and livestock rearing, and tourism. Mbeki was accompanied to Kinshasa by seven government ministers and a strong delegation of businessmen. Mbeki and Kabila also witnessed the signing of an agreement of the South African confederation of business, on protecting investments in the DRC.