The Caplitalist Lemmings

YES, I fully agree with the writer on the traffic chaos at Maerua Mall, and I invite the geni-ass who designed the parking and traffic access system to step forward.

This system requires all would-be parkers and shoppers at the mall to find their way through a horrible little concrete channel/bottleneck (see photograph, left) with a side entrance from which it is almost impossible to escape at peak hours. It’s all very well to have parking spaces for N thousand cars, but who gave thought as to how the cars were going to get to those parks, and come to that, how those thousands of cars were going to pass along Jan Jonker road, not widened since colonial days, to the centre.And we hear that still more buildings are going up there, including a complex entitled “Maerua Lifestyle”.What will a Maerua lifestyle comprise – to be caught up in traffic fumes and road rage for most of your waking hours? The whole place reminds me of the lemming theory of capitalism.First there was the original centre, reasonably small, tenanted with shops and looking fairly good.Then when the new centre was built, all the lemmings of big-name retailing rushed to abandon their premises and set up in the new centre, leaving the old part of the centre to its fate of becoming deserted, run-down and unoccupied.In fact it is already looking that way.Nearly all the new shops are something “home” – Home and Garden, @Home, Home and Away or whatever.Can’t the big names of retailing think of any more original names for their enterprises? Meanwhile, back in town, other big-name lemming construction companies are watching this development with alarm.So half of the old Wernhil Park is being demolished to make way for a bigger and better shopping centre.Curiously, for a very capitalist project, the work is surrounded by huge red Maoist type slogans – about breaking eggs to make a better omelette, and urgings to “Bear with us”.Why should we? (and anyway isn’t that a furniture shop?) So again, when this centre is completed, the retail lemmings will desert their Maerua Mall ‘home’ in the frenzied quest to be fashionable, and set up in the new Wernhil.May help to solve the traffic problem.Meanwhile there will be a new shopping mall going up in …Bill Torbitt WindhoekIt’s all very well to have parking spaces for N thousand cars, but who gave thought as to how the cars were going to get to those parks, and come to that, how those thousands of cars were going to pass along Jan Jonker road, not widened since colonial days, to the centre.And we hear that still more buildings are going up there, including a complex entitled “Maerua Lifestyle”.What will a Maerua lifestyle comprise – to be caught up in traffic fumes and road rage for most of your waking hours? The whole place reminds me of the lemming theory of capitalism.First there was the original centre, reasonably small, tenanted with shops and looking fairly good.Then when the new centre was built, all the lemmings of big-name retailing rushed to abandon their premises and set up in the new centre, leaving the old part of the centre to its fate of becoming deserted, run-down and unoccupied.In fact it is already looking that way.Nearly all the new shops are something “home” – Home and Garden, @Home, Home and Away or whatever.Can’t the big names of retailing think of any more original names for their enterprises? Meanwhile, back in town, other big-name lemming construction companies are watching this development with alarm.So half of the old Wernhil Park is being demolished to make way for a bigger and better shopping centre.Curiously, for a very capitalist project, the work is surrounded by huge red Maoist type slogans – about breaking eggs to make a better omelette, and urgings to “Bear with us”.Why should we? (and anyway isn’t that a furniture shop?) So again, when this centre is completed, the retail lemmings will desert their Maerua Mall ‘home’ in the frenzied quest to be fashionable, and set up in the new Wernhil.May help to solve the traffic problem.Meanwhile there will be a new shopping mall going up in …Bill Torbitt Windhoek