This week-end, I had a rental car — and was driving into the Karoo; a desert with its own beauty… There’s rough hills (up to 1700m), there’s arid land (which in places still allows sheep-farming), but in the west, there’s cultivated valleys with vineyards. I learned that overall 1/3 of the South-African land is covered by the Karoo.
The Great Karoo
On my ride, I listened to South-Africa Radio from Cape-Town — and their main news contained a report about the new party “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD) having hold their convention, where… At the new Exhibition Halls in Stuttgart!
Why there?
Yes, of course they gathered many new voters and unfortunately were getting 15,1% of the votes, but hey, to me Stuttgart is the wrong city. Of course, they faced opposition by demonstrators…
As I have been addressed by my SA colleagues and asked about this political party and what’s “happening in Stuttgart”, here’s the result from the March’ 2016 elections [1] in the state of Baden-Württemberg (thanks Excel for making this easy & hard at the same time):
Election in BW in 2011
Election in BW in 2016
Before the election of 2011 the main influences were dissatisfaction with the previous government of CDU+FDP under president Mr. Stefan Mappus (state re-acquiring the share of the Electricity company EnBW from french EDF, handling of demonstrations of “Stuttgart 21”), as well as the shock from Japanese Fukushima, the Green Party gained 12.5% of votes. This ended the ~60 year lasting government of the conservative Christian Democratic Union in the state of Baden-Württemberg!
This past election in March 2016 were mainly under the impression of the so-called Refugee crisis (over 1 Mio. of refugees mainly from Syria, Afghanistan, but also other nations arriving in Germany) and events during the new-year celebration that may be subsumed under “Cologne attacks”…
What needs to be pointed out, is the fact, that the CDU once again lost many votes (down 12%), but also the SPD lost a tremendous 10,4% considering they are governing at the state- and at the national level — however both “large”, national parties have difficulties making their work known and visible. It seems though, that the type of voting in the state of Baden-Württemberg (one vote for one candidate — which most often belongs to one particular party) in essence boiled down to the question: are You satisfied with the work of the dominant party and it’s Minister, Mr. Winfried Kretschmann, who has been dubbed the “Blackest of all Greens” (aka the most conservatives) 🙂 . And yes, it seems people are satisfied with the government’s state of affairs.
Nevertheless, I feel ashamed, that Stuttgart was in the news in SA specifically for hosting this party’s congregation.
[1] http://www.statistik.baden-wuerttemberg.de/Wahlen/2016086.pm
[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landtagswahl_in_Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg_2011