Language: German – Subtitles: English / Portuguese Format: HD 16:9 Coloured 8:46 min
Excerpts from play:
“Africa for Africans!” “We do not need any foreign bosses!” After all this time! After all these years! After all we have achieved here, after what we have invested!”
I really don’t understand. We always paid our employees well, as business people, we did good business from which the Mozambicans also profited! In GDR times we provided development aid, what happened to all these projects? Most of them went bust! Well, they just didn’t work hard enough. It’s a matter of talking more with the local workers so as to not always impose projects on them that they don’t want to do. You have to consider more how the whole thing that you’re setting up is to continue after your departure or when the money no longer flows in from the West!
After all, the important thing is that we accomplish something together! Together! And we also have to question our own interests! We are not only helping here out of the goodness of our hearts. We want to bring in our values, to spread our concept of democracy. We need raw materials and we want to sell our products!
From 1816, the Hansing family had an import and export business located on the Isle of Mozambique, in the North of the country. Besides trade, they also operated sisal and cotton plantations. In the course of the Mozambican Civil War, the firm’s accounts were frozen in the 1980s and trade came to an end.
Angelika Hansing grew up on the Isle of Mozambique. Her touching memories and deep longing for the distant country have left their mark on her up to this day. On a walk around Hamburg’s port and with the help of old business papers she reconstructs in a highly emotional manner a relationship which, though based on economic dependencies, was never a relationship of colonial power.