At Uganda Talks we welcome guest blogs from our readers. Today, contributor Deo Lukyamuzi writes about the China-Africa relationship.
Africa is getting overly excited about its newly re-ignited friendship with China. To be specific, it is not African people but its leaders since they have found in China a willing “partner” who does not subject them to tiring and inconvenient questions about their records on good governance, wastefulness and human rights.
In June of this year, while on a state visit to Germany, President Museveni while flanked by Horst Kohler the German President, declared that no power (China inclusive) can exploit African Resources (New vision 17th June, 2009) therefore, China is not a threat. President Museveni’s assertion was in response to the German president’s expressed concern that Africa had opened wide its doors to Chinese investment in Africa because questions of democracy and human rights are set aside.
In October this year, four months after Museven’s expressed comfort with China, his neighbour and former lieutenant, President Kagame of Rwanda stated in an interview with Handelsblatt, a German newspaper (do not ask me what is it with the German connection), that Africa is better off doing business with China rather than the West because China apparently treats Africans as equals (unlike the west which treats them as less than equal).
Of the two, I am more surprised my Museveni’s rather sweeping statement of how no power can exploit Africa. It makes me literally scratch my head wondering what sort of brief the president read, because based on what all of us are witnessing, Africa is being exploited day in, day out by external powers—be they American, European or Chinese. Africa still does not fix prices for its produce. Still does not fix price for its imports, does not have an upper hand let alone an equal one in trade negotiations—bi-lateral or multi-lateral. Africa still cannot balance its budgets and the deficit is always financed by other powers. Africa is still, at most, pre-industrial while its outside partners are three stages ahead- having gone through the industrial, service and now, the information stage.
I want to contradict the President without being contradictory, that yes, Africa can be exploited and indeed is being exploited by other powers and Africa with its present structural and institutional weaknesses cannot do a damn thing about it.
However, without being too hush to my two presidents (I happen to be both Ugandan and Rwandan and that also, is not a contradiction) many African leaders hold the same view of China vis-à-vis the West. This view is born by two major factors: one is historical and the second born of political culture.
The Historical Factor
China is not one of the known foreign exploiters of Africa during the past or recent epochs. China never enslaved Africans, China never colonized Africa, it never neo-colonized Africa nor exercised imperialism in Africa. The West did all the above. On the other hand however, China came to Africa’s aid to fight against the West’s human crimes in Africa.
The West was propping and supporting (both politically and financially) puppet leaders and movements or governments in Africa like the apartheid regime in South Africa, Savimbi/UNITA in Angola, Dlakhama Alfonso/Renamo through the apartheid SA, Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko Ngbendu Kuku Wa Zabanga to mention just a few. At that very time China, was supporting groups and individuals who were largely seen as progressive, nationalist and Pan African among others; Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress, Samora Machel/Frelimo, Robert Mugabe/ZANU (not the present version), Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Keneth Kawunda of Zambia, Amilcar Cabral/PAIGC of Guinea Bissau, Sekou Toure/PDG of Guinea-Konacry. Even to those that China did not give significant support, material or otherwise to wage resistance against exploitation from the west, it was seen to be friendly and sympathetic to the African cause.
One can therefore conclude that China’s recent fortunes in Africa are dividends from its decades-long investments in solidarity with Africa. Also, there never having been a master/servant, superior/inferior, foreman/journeyman relationship between Chinese and Africans, it affords both sides a comfort zone with an air of past comrades in arms as opposed to Africa/West relationship which is always loaded with an atmosphere of past protagonists. The memory of past interaction between China and Africa is, if you want, sweet and that of the West, bitter. China itself, having been at one point in its history colonized, makes the two share a common bond of victim-hood.
The Political Culture Factor
China, like Africa, is a human rights dungeon. There are no human rights to talk about in China and the capitalist communist leaders in Beijing have no apologies for it. They uphold an ambiguous principle of the “unique and peculiar circumstances in each different country” therefore human rights cannot be uniform –read universal. Each country defines human rights according to its peculiar realities. That is music to African dictators. China and Africa are like erstwhile comrades who have turned partners in crime.
On one side, China which wants raw materials to feed its expansive industrial complex at home, and on the other you have an African leadership being taunted and threatened with sanctions by the West if it does not change its ways. It becomes obvious who will be chosen by Africa.
Since the end of the Cold War, the West, through government, through aid agencies and non government organizations have pleaded the case of the African people. The pressure from the West, through different forms and channels has made a contribution towards democratization, good governance and human right observance in Africa. They have done this through helping community-based initiatives financially and withholding different forms of assistance to African governments unless they are willing to implement certain changes.
China on the other hand could not care less what African military and civilian dictators are doing to its people. Anyway it would be laughable spectacle to see the Chinese teaching Africans about human rights.
I am not in any way saying that the West means only well for Africa –absolutely not—but, from the stand point of the African people, not the leadership, the West has done its part in alleviating the suffering. I cannot say the same thing for China. The worst Chinese behavior in Africa has been manifested in Sudan where it literally jumps over dead bodies of victims of the internal conflicts to go and scoop petroleum. They have not said a word about the suffering Sudanese.
China’s claim that it treats Africa as an equal does not hold either. While it is willing to buy all available raw materials from Africa for its industries, while it is willing to sell all its products without exception to Africa, China has only a paltry 3% of its direct foreign investment on the continent. I wonder why that is. Is it because it is not so sure about the safety of its investments just as is the West? In the just concluded China-Africa summit in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, the Chinese Prime Minister proudly announced a pledge of ten billion dollars in concessional loans and added, “We will help Africa build up its financing capacity”.
Just how exactly are 50+ African countries supposed to alleviate their problem of financing capacity with ten billion dollars? African Leaders have gotten so used to handouts that they have lost the ability to ask what is being dolled out to them. However much is being offered to them they take it and deal with details after. It is like a welfare recipient who cashes a government cheque, goes to the food bank, then to the clothes drop-off, then ask for a subsidized gym pass then to what else is being given free—it is an addiction. If it was an issue of lack of capital, African countries can easily put together ten billion dollars ten fold with out plunging their people in deeper indebtedness.
With all the justified finger-pointing we can make towards the West, Africa receives a lot more money from the West without committing itself to any contractual obligations. Due to the centuries-old interaction between the West and Africa, there is a well established, admittedly, sometimes uneasy sub-conscience acknowledging that we are going to be together for the fore-seeable future and there are efforts being made at many different levels to make this relationship improve.
Before African leaders start blowing trumpets of praise for their ‘more equal’ buddy China, they should ask themselves how much annual remittances by African Diaspora come from China? What percentage contribution does China make to the Global Millennium Development Fund of which Africa is a major beneficiary? How many Charity organizations, Community Based Organizations (CBOs), Non Government Organizations (NGOs) local or international get their funding from China? Where in Africa does China have its government agency to working with Africans to alleviate poverty, treat preventable killer illnesses?
The political conditionalities associated with aid from the West, have actually saved Africa, to a certain degree, from potential wars and conflicts. By and large, the democratic culture has not taken root in Africa –it is work in progress. Governments are still responsible for gross violations of human rights. Being in opposition in an African Country is risky business and often armed struggle is a pragmatic and only realistic way of participating in politics without being at the mercy of your opponent.
In some cases, the West has pressured governments into making democratic concessions, improvements on governance, curbs on human rights abuses and gives the opposition space to participate in the democratic process. In many countries, the opposition has successfully made governments relax restrictions against opposition activities by simply appealing to the country’s Western development partners.
China’s principle of non-interference in African domestic affairs may be music to leaders but certainly is bad news for the more vulnerable in Africa. It means that African corrupt and dictatorial governments have a back window through which they can continue mortgaging their peoples’ future without being accountable.
Just in case you did not notice, there are more than 1.3 billion hungry stomachs in the Far East –don’t count on them for leftovers.
-- Deo Lukyamuzi
N.B. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of Independent Publications Ltd.
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written by Kenyon, November 18, 2009
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written by John, November 19, 2009
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