[lbo-talk] Zimbabwe's future: Made in China

Joseph Wanzala jwanzala at hotmail.com
Mon Jul 25 08:45:32 PDT 2005


The New York Times wrote: "[Mugabe] Shunned by Western leaders and investors for his government's human rights policies..."

In fact, Western leaders have until recently enabled the Zimbabwean government's human rights abuses. And even as they pretend to take a principled stance on human rights violations in Zimbabwe, they tacitly support the human rights abuses of leaders such as Uganda's Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda's Paul Kagame - especially with respect to those countries military presence in the Congo which has directly and indirectly contributed to the deaths of millions of people and the theft (by Uganda and Rwanda) of billions of dollars worth of the Congo's natural resources.

Joe W.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/1861719.stm

British Invitation to Mugabe's Butcher

Panorama has discovered that the military commander behind the worst atrocities of Robert Mugabe's rule in Zimbabwe was invited to study at the British Ministry of Defence's most prestigious college.

The invitation came barely a year after Perence Shiri led the force that committed the most serious crimes against humanity in Zimbabwe.

Shiri commanded the 5th Brigade which carried out a reign of terror in Matabeleland during 1983 and 1984. The slaughter claimed thousands of civilian lives and thousands more were tortured.

Despite this, in 1986, Shiri took up a place at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London, an institution that describes itself as "the senior Defence academic institution in the United Kingdom. The most prestigious institution of its kind in the world".


>From: Sujeet Bhatt <sujeet.bhatt at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: [lbo-talk] Zimbabwe's future: Made in China
>Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 09:30:07 +0530
>
>http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/24/news/zimbabwe.php
>
>Zimbabwe's future: Made in China
>By Michael Wines The New York Times
>
>MONDAY, JULY 25, 2005
>JOHANNESBURG His new 25-bedroom palace is covered with midnight-blue
>Chinese roof tiles. His air force trains on Chinese jets. His subjects
>wear Chinese shoes, ride Chinese buses and, lately, zip around the
>country in Chinese propjets. He has even urged his countrymen to learn
>Mandarin and nurture a taste for Chinese cuisine.
>
>That President Robert Mugabe rules Zimbabwe is irrelevant. Tightening
>his embrace of all things Chinese, the 81-year-old Mugabe, Zimbabwe's
>canny autocrat for 25 years, arrived in Beijing on Saturday for six
>days of talks with China's leaders, led by President Hu Jintao.
>
>Shunned by Western leaders and investors for his government's human
>rights policies, Zimbabwe has begun a determined campaign to hitch its
>plummeting fortunes to China's rising star.
>
>Mugabe calls the policy "Look East" and has relentlessly promoted it
>as another way to thumb Zimbabwe's nose at its old colonial ruler,
>Britain, and Britain's allies, like the United States. The sheer
>intensity of the pro-China drive has stirred resentment among average
>Zimbabweans and raised eyebrows among the elite, some of whom question
>whether Mugabe is simply replacing British political domination with a
>more up-to-date Asian economic rule.
>
>But it is a hand-in-glove fit for the Chinese, who are steadily
>extending their political and economic influence across Africa,
>particularly in regions rich in oil and minerals.
>
>The Chinese are widely reported to covet a stake in Zimbabwe's
>platinum mines, which have the world's second-largest reserves, and
>Mugabe's government has hinted at a desire to accommodate them. The
>mines' principal operator denies being pressured to deal with the
>Chinese, but negotiations are under way to sell a stake to
>unidentified Zimbabweans. The operator has postponed major spending on
>the mines, citing political uncertainty.
>
>Meanwhile, China is investing billions of dollars to get access to
>resources for its fast-growing economy, in areas like Angolan oil and
>Zambian copper mines. And because they do not comment on their
>partners' human rights policies, the Chinese are becoming entrenched
>in some states, including Zimbabwe and Sudan, that bridle at Western
>criticism.
>
>While the talk is of democracy sweeping the continent, some experts
>believe that China's rising influence in Africa may power its blend of
>free-market dictatorship, particularly among African leaders already
>reluctant to turn over power democratically.
>
>"We might see the Chinese political system appealing to a lot of
>states whose elites and regimes are more in line with that sort of
>thinking," said Chris Maroleng, a Zimbabwe expert at the Institute for
>Security Studies in Pretoria. "It's really a conflict of two systems,
>one based on regime security and the other, almost Western, which
>talks of human security - good governance and human rights."
>
>The Chinese have been friendly with Zimbabwe since 1980, when they and
>Mugabe, who led the newly independent state, shared much the same
>Marxist ideology.
>
>But in the past two or three years, as Zimbabwe's economy has edged
>ever closer to collapse, the friendship has turned on investments and
>goods that Mugabe's government was increasingly unable to find
>elsewhere.
>
>Some exchanges amount to good will: China, for example, donated the
>blue tiles adorning the $13 million palace Mugabe is building for
>himself in Borrowdale, a comparatively wealthy Harare suburb.
>
>Others are more significant. Chinese companies have won contracts
>worth hundreds of millions of dollars to provide hydroelectric
>generators for the national power authority, run by Mugabe's
>brother-in-law. China Aviation Industry, an aircraft maker, has sold
>or given three 60-seat propjets to the beleaguered Air Zimbabwe.
>
>First Automobile Works of China has agreed to sell the Zimbabwean
>government 1,000 commuter buses to upgrade its municipal fleet.
>
>China won a contract last year to farm 1,000 square kilometers, or 386
>square miles, of land seized from white commercial farmers during the
>land-confiscation program begun by Mugabe in 2000. Zimbabwe's air
>force has bought $200 million in Chinese-made Karakorum 8 trainer
>jets.
>
>Rumors abound that China has sold Zimbabwe's internal-security
>apparatus water cannons to subdue protesters and bugging equipment to
>monitor cellphone networks.
>
>Zimbabwe says trade with China amounted to $100 million in the first
>three months of this year. Mugabe says China is close to becoming the
>country's leading foreign investor, a claim that seems likely given
>the headlong flight of Western capital.
>
>Maroleng, of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, and
>others say that many deals are hidden in a welter of barter
>arrangements and front companies, reflecting Zimbabwe's inability to
>pay China with hard currency. China is widely reported, for example,
>to have taken a share of Zimbabwe's tobacco harvest in exchange for
>equipment.
>
>
>What the ordinary Zimbabwean reaps from this relationship is unclear.
>
>Zimbabweans complain that their new Chinese buses break down regularly
>and that the Chinese goods that flood stores and roadside stalls are
>shoddy. They have coined a term for the phenomenon: zhing-zhong.
>
>"To call something zhing-zhong means that it is substandard," said
>Eldred Masunugure, the chairman of the political science department at
>the University of Zimbabwe in Harare. "The resentment of the Chinese
>is not only widespread, it's deeply rooted. It's affecting even other
>Chinese-looking people, like the Japanese."
>
>Masunugure and others say that Harare's few Japanese residents
>complain of being taunted and called zhing-zhong. Harare newspapers
>report that high-yielding robberies of Harare's Chinese residents are
>rising.
>
>A solution, however, is in the wings: In a meeting last month, China
>and Zimbabwe signed a letter of intent to cooperate in law enforcement
>and the judiciary. Atop the list is a plan for China to train
>Zimbabweans in managing prisons.
>
>"They have a fairly advanced prison system," Zimbabwe's justice
>minister, Patrick Chinamasa, said. "We would also want to tap into
>that expertise."
>
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