by Xinhua writers Yang Dingdu, Lin Jing, Musa C Kaseke
WALVIS BAY, Namibia, July 21 (Xinhua) -- Few places on Earth hold sharper contrasts than this corner of Namibia's coast in southwestern Africa.
Here the Namib Desert plunges headlong into the Atlantic, and the shoreline splits the world in two: on one side, sand stretching beyond sight; on the other, a blue that runs unbroken to the sky.
Warm desert air meets the cold ocean current offshore and condenses into a sea fog that never quite lifts, wrapping two adjoining towns -- Walvis Bay to the south, Swakopmund to the north -- in a gentle, life-giving damp, on a coast that sees some of the lowest rainfall on Earth.
Centuries of colonization left an indelible European imprint here. Today, Belt and Road cooperation is opening a new sea lane toward the future.
OUT OF FOG
The fog rises off the ocean and settles over the coast, where scorching air from the Namib meets the icy waters of the Benguela Current and thickens into a dense grey-white. Centuries ago, it was colonial gunboats that tore through the fog.
As the only deep-water harbor along nearly 3,000 km of southwestern Africa's coastline, Walvis Bay was fought over for centuries. Portuguese navigators reached this shore first; the Dutch and the British followed. In 1878, Britain proclaimed possession of Walvis Bay, incorporating it into the Cape Colony in 1884 -- the same year Germany claimed the vast hinterland as German South West Africa.
Britain held the only natural harbor, so the Germans built their own. In 1892, they founded Swakopmund some 30 km up the coast, hoping to give their colony an outlet to the sea. The two towns set off down different roads: Walvis Bay speaks English, Swakopmund German. Walvis Bay's streets are lined with veranda-fronted colonial bungalows and corner shops selling fish and chips; Swakopmund's are rows of steep-roofed, gabled and half-timbered German buildings, its taverns smelling of draught beer and roasted pork knuckle.
From 1904 to 1908, German colonial troops, crushing an uprising by the Herero and Nama peoples, carried out massacres that shocked the world: countless people died by the gun, and many more were driven deep into the desert to perish of thirst and despair. Picturesque seaside Swakopmund was home to one of the concentration camps where they were held. Walvis Bay later became a South African exclave, returned to Namibia only in 1994 -- and only then did the twin towns, pulled apart by colonial rivalry, truly belong to one country.
Today, the memory of that killing and oppression is receding. On the edge of Walvis Bay, some 5,000 hectares of salt pans glow pink, pond after pond, tinting the fog and the clouds above -- here Walvis Bay Salt Holdings harvests more than 1 million tonnes of sea salt a year from sun and wind, making it sub-Saharan Africa's largest producer of solar sea salt. In Swakopmund, the old railway station has become a hotel, and the century-old red-and-white lighthouse still blinks in the mist. Elegant old European buildings and authentic German beer survive; the traces of colonialism have taken on a romantic glow.
Swakopmund's cafes, restaurants and boutiques fill mostly with European visitors, Germans above all, and German drifts down its streets -- this summer more than ever, as heatwave after heatwave scorches Europe and temperature records fall across the continent, while this stretch of coast, deep in the southern hemisphere's cool season, sits swathed in sea mist, another world entirely.
Driving past a retirement home, one glimpses, in a European-style courtyard, a white-haired old woman trimming an old man's hair. It is a scene of quiet tenderness -- and yet it calls to mind Europe's present inflation, malaise and division. How many Europeans, in the years ahead, will still be able to afford a holiday half a world away? How long can a prosperity pinned to faraway tourists last?
LIVING BY SEA
Swakopmund has distilled the sea fog into leisure; Walvis Bay, some 30 km away, has turned the sea into a living.
Northeast of the pink salt pans, tens of thousands of flamingos feed quietly in the shallows of the coastal lagoon, now and then unfolding crimson wings to skim the water.
Round the lagoon, at the tip of the sand spit, Cape fur seals in their thousands bask on the banks and tumble in the surf. A short boat ride out, dolphins fall in alongside, and the lucky may glimpse the arched back of a humpback whale and the slow slap of its flukes.
Such natural spectacle draws more than Europeans. Long as the journey is, Chinese tour groups now turn up regularly in Walvis Bay's Chinese restaurants. Even if European visitors were one day to thin out, this coast would be unlikely to fall quiet.
And the sea's gifts to these towns go far beyond scenery.
The Benguela Current sweeps north along the coast, churning nutrient-rich deep water up to the surface and sustaining one of the most productive marine ecosystems on Earth. Each morning, hake, horse mackerel and monkfish come off the boats, and processing plants send fillets, fishmeal and canned fish overseas. Across Namibia, some 16,000 people work directly in fishing, processing and related logistics, most of them based in the port towns of Walvis Bay and Luderitz; the country's fishery and aquaculture exports totaled about 794 million U.S. dollars in 2024, according to the Namibia Statistics Agency.
Namibian oysters are the signature of these cold waters. The plankton carried in by the current is so abundant that oyster spat, suspended in the bay, fatten on filter feeding alone and reach export size in eight to 10 months -- a size that might take a year or two to reach elsewhere. Once sold mostly to nearby South Africa, they now also make their way to China, Singapore and other Asian markets.
Beyond oysters, lobster, crab and other seafood stream abroad. Namibia ranks among Africa's leading nations in fisheries output and exports; 90 percent of its catch goes overseas, and fisheries account for roughly 15 percent of the country's exports.
THRIVING BY PORT
Farther east along the lagoon, the port's gantry cranes tower over ocean-going ships at berth. In busy spells, the queue of vessels waiting offshore trails away into the western fog.
The new container terminal was developed by the Namibian Ports Authority, with major financing from the African Development Bank and China Harbour Engineering Company as the main contractor. Construction began in 2014, and more than 100 experts from some 30 countries worked through the challenge of a porous, low-density diatomaceous seabed to reclaim about 40 hectares of land from the bay. Since the terminal entered service in 2019, the port's annual design handling capacity has doubled from about 350,000 to 750,000 TEUs, and the average waiting time for ships has been cut to under eight hours, according to a project report by the African Development Bank.
What leaves the port is no longer just fish and salt, but minerals and manufactured goods. The Chinese-invested Husab uranium mine employs thousands of local workers; during its construction, the Chinese side had environmental experts reroute a road to steer clear of the welwitschia -- Namibia's national plant -- growing in the sand along the way.
The port is wired into an entire hinterland. From here, transnational road corridors fan out: east to Botswana and South Africa, northeast to Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to reference times published by the Walvis Bay Corridor Group, cargo from the port reaches Lusaka or Ndola in Zambia in three to five days, and Lubumbashi in the DRC in about six to seven.
Minerals from Zambia and the DRC cross the ocean from this quay, while machinery, fertilizer and consumer goods roll the other way into Africa's interior. For a landlocked country, every new corridor is another window on the world. The ocean nurtures life, connects the world, and facilitates development. The ships and truck convoys moving through this port each day are a living portrait of the maritime community with a shared future that China has proposed.
As the port has boomed, the town has grown. In 1994, the year it returned to Namibia, Walvis Bay counted just over 20,000 people; the 2023 census put its population above 100,000 -- five times as many. Morning markets smell of curried pickled fish, night-shift workers squat by the roadside over tea, and children chase a ball across the sand. The towns' confidence no longer hangs on the whims of faraway tourists.
The jobs and development brought by Chinese investment have deepened local interest in, and affection for, China. At the Effective Communicators Conference in Swakopmund, English-language copies of "China's Governance Under Xi Jinping's Leadership," a book compiled by Xinhua, were quickly claimed by the Namibian delegates. Natalia Goagoses, governor of Erongo Region, received one and couldn't wait to open it. "China is remarkable. Chinese tourists and Chinese investors will always be welcome here," she said.
At dusk, the fog rolls in again from the Atlantic, folding itself around Swakopmund's old lighthouse and, some 30 km away, the harbor cranes of Walvis Bay.
Hundreds of years ago, gunboats burst through this same veil, their guns trained on the shore. Tonight, what carries out of the fog is the long, low call of cargo ships -- the sound of peaceful development traveling far across the water. Along the quay, the lights come on one by one, and burn throughout the long night. ■
