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Bafowethu.

The New York Times had the following article of interest about Chinese economic adventures in Afrika. Singakhohlwa ukuthi bakhona laku Mthwakazi as imported by the ZANU regime.

ARE THERE ANY BENEFITS FROM A STARVING COUNTRY INTO A DEVELOPING CONTINENT?

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KOUDJIWAI, Chad ? The small plane flew in low over a scorched, peppercorn scrubland, following a broad, muddy river that was all elbows on its run to the southeast.

The first hint of humanity came with the appearance of an immense grid for seismic testing, laboriously traced through the brush. Finally, a lonely, hulking steel drilling platform popped into view. Chad is as geographically isolated as places come in Africa. It is also among the continent?s poorest and least stable countries, the scene of recurrent civil wars and foreign invasions since it gained independence from France in 1960. None of that has put off the Chinese, though. In January, they bought the rights to a vast exploration zone that surrounds this rural village, making the baked wilderness here, without roads, electricity or telephones, the latest frontier for their thirsty oil industry and increasingly global ambitions. The same is happening in one African country after another. In large oil-exporting countries like Angola and Nigeria, China is building or fixing railroads, and landing giant exploration contracts in Congo and Guinea. In mineral-rich countries that had been all but abandoned by foreign investors because of unrest and corruption, Chinese companies are reviving output of cobalt and bauxite. China has even become the new mover and shaker in agricultural countries like Ivory Coast, once the crown jewel in France?s postcolonial African empire, where Chinese companies are building a new capital, in Yamoussoukro, paid for by Chinese loans.
Surging Chinese interest in this continent has helped bring about what many Africans believe is the most important moment since the end of the cold war, when democracy was spreading in Africa and Western nations spoke of a ?peace dividend? that might ease African poverty. That blush of interest in Africa quickly faded, though, as did several of the new democracies, and Africans and Westerners have regarded each other warily ever since. Westerners complain about chronic corruption and ineffective government, while Africans lament broken promises on aid and a hostile international economic system. The Chinese have stepped into this picture, coming to struggling countries like Chad with deep pockets, fewer demands on how African governments should behave and an avowed faith in everyone?s ability to prosper.
As Beijing?s ambassador to this country, Wang Yingwu, said at his residence in Ndjamena, Chad?s capital, where the electricity repeatedly failed, ?We are exempting Chadian goods from import duties.? When the interviewer noted that Chad produced almost nothing besides oil, Mr. Wang was undaunted, saying, ?If they don?t produce things today, they will tomorrow.? To help make that happen, China plans to build the country?s first oil refinery, lay new roads, provide irrigation and erect a mobile telephone network, for starters. With such intensive efforts across the continent, China?s trade with Africa topped $55 billion in 2006, up from less than $10 million in the 1980s. To achieve this growth, it has bypassed multinational institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and flouted many of their lending criteria, including minimum standards of transparency, open bidding for contracts, environmental impact studies and assessments of overall debt and fiscal policies. In some ways, the new Chinese model of doing business in Africa is a throwback to an earlier era of Western involvement that is now widely seen as disastrous. In that era, borrowing countries typically had to work with companies from the lending nation, limiting competition and giving priority to business over development. Today, China takes things even further, signing long-term deals for rights to natural resources that allow countries otherwise unworthy of credit to repay their debt in oil or mineral output.
?In what manner has Africa progressed, in what sector?? said the Chadian president, Idriss D?by, referring to decades of close ties to the West. ?Whatever the good will of Africa?s old friends and the old partners in its development, it has not progressed at all.? Still, major doubts hang heavily in the air. Will China?s hunger for raw materials enable this continent to take off? Or will Beijing?s willingness to spend whatever it needs in Africa, without regard to fiscal prudence, democracy, honest business practices and human rights, produce a replay of booms past, enriching local elites but leaving the continent poorer, its environment despoiled and its natural resources depleted?
A Test Case for China There are few better places than Chad to watch for signs of how China?s African gambit will pay off. Chad ranks just four places from the bottom on the United Nations scale of human development, yet it is emerging as a critical piece in China?s economic push in a broad swath of sub-Saharan Africa, beginning with Sudan and extending in virtually every direction. Despite advanced prospecting by French and other Western firms dating back to the 1970s, Chad?s oil had never been tapped. The nation was simply too unstable and the price of oil too low to justify investing much here. The oil that had been found was of low quality, and there was no practical way to get it out.That changed in 2000, when the World Bank agreed to help finance a $4.2 billion, 665-mile pipeline connecting Chad to Cameroon on the condition that oil revenues be used to fight poverty. Chad?s revenues quickly outstripped expectations, but have not gone into quelling its immense poverty. Mismanagement and fraud have beset the World Bank plan from the start. Beyond that, Chadian rebels with bases in Sudan have been trying to depose Mr. D?by, so he pressed the World Bank to relax its rules on how to spend the country?s oil money. A compromise was reached, and he went on a military spending spree, buying guns, aircraft and armored vehicles for his troops, along with a fleet of armored Humvees that stop traffic as they zoom about Ndjamena?s dusty, potholed streets. Seeking an even freer hand with the country?s oil bonanza, Mr. D?by?s government also hinted that it could find other partners willing to invest in Chad, especially with the price of oil so high. Then, in 2006, Chad ended a relationship with Taiwan and recognized mainland China, and the floodgates opened. China bought the rights to several oil exploration zones in the country from a Canadian company and has gone from bit player to center stage in Chad?s affairs, confident that it can wring smart profits from the most inhospitable conditions.
?The Canadians and the Americans are only interested in really big finds,? said a veteran Western oil production engineer who works under contract here for the China National Petroleum Company, the C.N.P.C. ?Anything else they think is not worth their time. The Chinese have a different approach. They are happy with the smaller finds, just lots of them. ?They seem to have a different time frame, too,? the engineer added. ?They plan to be here for a while.? Indeed, the Chinese dream in this region consists of making finds here and there, using the World Bank financed pipeline to transport the oil and eventually building new pipelines to connect with a Chinese-built grid in Sudan. This vision requires not only finding more oil, but establishing peace between Chad and Sudan. Darfur, the chaotic western Sudanese region where at least 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million been displaced in a government-backed counterinsurgency campaign, lies next to China?s exploration zones. Human rights groups maintain that Chinese weapons have played a major role in the carnage in Darfur. Beijing?s recent diplomatic activity in the region may be explained by these Chinese oil interests as much as by American pressure on China to help stop the killing in Darfur. ?It used to be that when we had problems with our neighbor sending mercenaries to invade us that none of our complaints before the United Nations would pass, because China blocked them,? said President D?by. Since breaking relations with Taiwan and opening the door to Chinese investment, he added, ?we have been able to raise our concerns without taboo.?
One topic that neither side was willing to say much about was the World Bank?s foundering efforts to ensure that petroleum revenues were well spent here. ?I know the current pipeline is part of a project involving the World Bank and Esso,? said Dou Lirong, the general manager of C.N.P.C. International in Chad, calling the authority over revenues ?a very complicated? matter. ?I don?t know too much about it,? Mr. Dou continued, ?but I?ve read a little bit on the Web.? In fact, the very idea of the World Bank project is anathema to China?s deeply held noninterference policy, which has for decades governed China?s foreign policy and development. Underlying both is a kind of golden rule ? China considers other countries meddling in its affairs unacceptable, and it assumes its friends feel the same way. Cao Zhongming, deputy director of the Department of African Affairs, in the Chinese Foreign Ministry said: ?China won?t interfere with Chad?s internal affairs. As a policy, that doesn?t change. If C.N.P.C., World Bank and Chad reach an agreement, it?s between them.? But, he added, if Chad does not accept the World Bank arrangement, ?neither C.N.P.C. or the Chinese government would impose it. The Chinese government won?t enforce something that Chad thinks interferes with their internal affairs.? To China?s new African allies, this notion is a breath of fresh air. After years of hewing to the latest fads in international development doled out by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Western donors and the United Nations, African governments have grown weary of the strings attached to foreign aid. Th?r?se Mekombe, vice chairwoman of the committee that monitors Chad?s oil money to make sure it is used properly, expressed surprise about the Chinese executive?s uncertainty about how oil revenues would be handled. Brandishing a copy of the law, she said all of the country?s oil earnings fell under the control of the World Bank arrangement. ?The Chinese need to understand that they cannot arrive in a country and just impose their way of thinking,? Ms. Mekombe said.
A ?Win-Win? Business Plan Chinese officials almost invariably describe their relationship with African countries as a win-win ? based on mutual respect, aimed at joint prosperity and free of the overtones of exploitation and paternalism that critics worldwide say have governed much of the West?s postcolonial relationship with Africa. China plans to build a petroleum refinery and a cement factory in Chad, both desperately needed in a landlocked country forced to import basic goods. Indeed, lowering gas and cement prices, which are among the highest in Africa, could do more to reduce poverty than the efforts of the World Bank and other donors combined, Mr. Dou suggested. ?We can make a contribution to Chad,? he said. Asked for an example of what win-win relationships look like, Mr. Dou offered what might seem an unlikely choice: Sudan. In its capital, Khartoum, he said, signs of China?s impact are everywhere. ?If you go to Sudan, you see paved roads,? he said. In the past, ?the cars in Sudan had no turn signals, they point directions by hand. Now there are many good cars.? Asked whether the oil money was really benefiting the Sudanese people, not just their rulers, Mr. Dou replied: ?It is difficult for me to say. I am an engineer.? To some critics, the answer is clear. ?China?s no-strings-attached approach is problematic, particularly if its effect, if not its intent, is to undermine others? efforts to change situations on the ground,? said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. ?Often what is happening,? he added, ?is underwriting of repression.?
Few Benefits for the People Even with binding arrangements governing the use of oil revenues, Chad?s people have largely missed out. In the Mayo-K?bbi region, where much of China?s feverish oil exploration is happening, the city of Bongor hardly looks like the capital of the booming oil region it is set to become. Along its tree-fringed main avenue, the briskest business is preparing the city?s signature dish ? a chicken so scrawny it can be grilled whole in a few minutes. At the lone hospital, a moldering colonial-era structure, a handful of workers tended to dozens of patients suffering from the classic ailments of poverty: hunger, diarrhea, malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, pneumonia. Civil servants were on strike, seeking to force the government, which according to World Bank estimates will collect $1.2 billion in oil money this year, to increase their meager salaries. Pauline Maratangou, a 53-year-old midwife, did show up to work, and it was a good thing. Half a dozen pregnant women with bellies fit to burst patiently awaited her services. ?Vas-y, vas-y, vas-y!? she cooed, urging an 18-year-old mother to push. The maternity ward had only a padded bench for deliveries and no stirrups. The floors and walls were caked with dirt ? the orderlies were on strike. Ms. Maratangou worked with quick, efficient motions, pouring iodine over the crown of the baby?s head as it emerged, trying to keep mother and child free of infection. At last a little boy popped out, his head slightly misshapen, like a peanut shell. ?Ah, he?s a handsome boy,? she said, holding him aloft, feet first, waiting for his first bellowing cries. There was only time to snip his umbilical cord, weigh him ? five and a half pounds, not too bad for this part of the world ? and swaddle him in rags before the next mother, also 18, was ready to hop on the table still slick with afterbirth slime. The grim conditions help explain why Chad has among the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world. One of every five children will die before age 5. ?We hear that our country has oil, but we see no evidence of it here,? said Ms. Maratangou, the midwife.
Officials in Bongor say money from Chinese investments could fix schools and hospitals, or provide jobs and new roads. Under Chadian law, 5 percent of the oil revenue is supposed to go back to the community where the oil was drilled. ?We have very high hopes,? said Khalifa Malloum, the secretary general of Bongor?s regional government. ?If the West does not want to invest in us, let the Chinese come. We welcome them. They don?t tell us what to do and they bring development. They are good partners.? But Limassou Saleh, a community organizer in Bongor, said he was deeply skeptical. ?Chad is maybe the most corrupt country in the world,? Mr. Saleh said. ?We have a long history of human rights violations, of lack of transparency, of exploitation. China has a reputation for corruption. They are one of the worst human rights abusers. They have no record of transparency. What would we want with a country like that? Only to make our own problems worse.?

New York Times. Aug 13 2007.

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The Chineese almost brought Zambia to its knees by the now defunct TAZARA (Tanzania-Zambia-Railways).

Li Zwangendaba.

Bakwethu into zamaChaneese yingcekeza abantu bakhona ngamatsosti awuzwa abadala nxa ungaqilwa ngumuntu bathi usudliwe ngumachayina yet the Englishman talks about anything that is not factual as the wisphers of the chaneese.Kwaqala kudala imisebenzi engalunganga. Akukho luthu oluzalunga nxa sizama ukuphila lokungabantu lokhu. Afrika is just desperate hence the resort to China as they do not require one to be transparent in their governance ,etc

Bafowethu.

We are in for another phase of COLONIALISM. Just because some leaders in Afrika want to hold on to power and preserve it for their children.

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From the New York Times:

LILONGWE, Malawi ? When Yang Jie left home at 18, he was doing what people from China?s hardscrabble Fujian Province have done for generations: emigrating in search of a better living overseas.

New Power in Africa
The Entrepreneurs
This series explores China?s deepening economic and political ties with Africa.

What set him apart was his destination. Instead of the traditional adopted homelands like the United States and Europe, where Fujian people have settled by the hundreds of thousands, he chose this small, landlocked country in southern Africa.
?Before I left China,? said Mr. Yang, now 25, ?I thought Africa was all one big desert.? So he figured that ice cream would be in high demand, and with money pooled from relatives and friends, he created his own factory at the edge of Lilongwe, Malawi?s capital. The climate is in fact subtropical, but that has not stopped his ice cream company from becoming the country?s biggest.

Stories like this have become legion across Africa in the past five years or so, as hundreds of thousands of Chinese have discovered the continent, setting off to do business in a part of the world that had been terra incognita. The Xinhua News Agency recently estimated that at least 750,000 Chinese were working or living for extended periods on the continent, a reflection of deepening economic ties between China and Africa that reached $55 billion in trade in 2006, compared with less than $10 million a generation earlier. Even when Mr. Yang arrived here in 2001, he said, he could go weeks without encountering another traveler from his homeland. But as surely as his investments in the country have prospered, he said, an increasingly large community of Chinese migrants has taken root, and now runs everything from small factories to health care clinics and trading companies. During the previous wave of Chinese interest in Africa in the 1960s and ?70s, an era of radical socialism and proclaimed third-world solidarity, European and American companies held sway over economies in most of the continent. Here and there, though, the Chinese made their presence felt, often in drably dressed, state-run work brigades that built stadiums, railroads and highways, crushing rocks and doing other labor by hand.

Today, in many of the countries where the new Chinese emigrants have settled, like Chad, Chinese-owned pharmacies, massage parlors and restaurants serving a variety of regional Chinese cuisines can be found; the Western presence, once dominant, has steadily dwindled, and essentially consists nowadays of relief experts working international agencies or oil workers, living behind high walls in heavily guarded enclaves. At first, this new Chinese exodus was driven largely by word of mouth, as pioneers like Mr. Yang relayed news back home of abundant opportunities in a part of the world where many economies lie undeveloped or in ruins, and where even in the richer countries many things taken for granted in the developed world await builders and investors.

Conditions like these often deter Western investors, but for many budding Chinese entrepreneurs, Africa?s emerging economies are inviting precisely because they seem small and accessible. Competition is often weak or nonexistent, and for African customers, the low price of many Chinese goods and services make them more affordable than their Western counterparts.
Chinese Expansion . You Xianwen sold his pipe-laying business in Chengdu, in southwest China, this year to move to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia?s capital, to join a startup company with a Chinese partner he had met only online. ?Back where I come from we are pretty independent people,? Mr. You, 55, said. ?My brothers and sisters all supported my decision to come here. In fact, they say that if things really work out for me, they would like to move to Africa, too.? Mr. You said he had considered other African countries before settling on Ethiopia, including Zambia. ?Luckily I didn?t decide to go there,? he said, explaining that he had been frightened by the recent anti-Chinese protests in that country. His new business, ABC Bioenergy, builds devices that generate combustible gas from ordinary refuse, providing what Mr. You said would be an affordable alternative source of energy in a country where electricity supplies are erratic and prices high. Mr. You?s partner here, Mei Haijun, first came to Ethiopia a decade ago to work at a Chinese-built textile factory and has since married an Ethiopian woman, with whom he has a child. ?When I first came here you could go two months without seeing another Chinese person,? he said. ?But it is a different era now. There?s a flight to China every day.?

The pickup in air traffic between China and countries like Ethiopia now has Chinese companies scrambling to add new routes, as the Chinese government and big Chinese companies increase their stake in Africa. Much of that activity reflects an intense appetite for African oil and mineral resources needed to fuel China?s manufacturing sector, but big Chinese companies have quickly become formidable competitors in other sectors as well, particularly for big-ticket public works contracts. China is building major new railroad lines in Nigeria and Angola, large dams in Sudan, airports in several countries and new roads, it seems, almost everywhere. One of the largest road builders, China Road and Bridge Construction, has picked up where the solidarity brigades of an earlier generation left off. The company, which is owned by the Chinese government, has 29 projects in Africa, many financed by the World Bank or other lenders, and it maintains offices in 22 African countries.
On a recent Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Beijing brimming with Chinese contractors, workers from Road and Bridge and other companies swapped notes on the grab bag of countries they work in, and debated about the difficulties of learning Portuguese and French in places like Mozambique and Ivory Coast. Africans view the influx of Chinese with a mix of anticipation and dread. Business leaders in Chad, a central African nation with deepening oil ties to China, are bracing for what they suspect will be an army of Chinese workers and investors. ?We expect a large influx of at least 40,000 Chinese in the coming years,? said Renaud Dinguemnaial, director of Chad?s Chamber of Commerce. ?This massive arrival could be a plus for the economy, but we are also worried. When they arrive, will they bring their own workers, stay in their own houses, send all their money home??

In Zambia, where anti-Chinese sentiment has been building for several years, merchants at the central market in Lusaka, the capital, said that if Chinese people wanted to come to Africa, they should come as investors, building factories, not as petty traders who compete for already scarce customers for bottom-dollar items like flip-flops and T-shirts. ?The Chinese claim to come here as investors, but they are trading just like us,? said Dorothy Mainga, who sells knockoff Puma sneakers and Harley Davidson T-shirts in the Kamwala Market in Lusaka. ?They are selling the same things we are selling at cheap prices. We pay duty and tax, but they use their connections to avoid paying tax.? Although Chinese oil workers have been kidnapped in Nigeria and in Ethiopia, where nine were killed by an armed separatist movement in May, the growing Chinese presence around the continent has produced few serious incidents.

Misunderstandings are common, however, and resentments inevitably arise. Africans in many countries complain that Chinese workers occupy jobs that locals are either qualified for or could be easily trained to do. ?We are happy to have the Chinese here,? said Dennis Phiri, 21, a Malawian university student who is studying to become an engineer. ?The problem with the Chinese companies is that they reserve all the good jobs for their own people. Africans are only hired in menial roles.? Another frequent criticism is that the Chinese are clannish, sticking among themselves day and night. In Addis Ababa, in what is a typical arrangement for most large companies, the 200 Chinese workers for the Road and Bridge Corporation live in a communal compound, eating food prepared by cooks brought from China and receiving basic health care from a Chinese doctor. ?After a day off you wonder what you?re doing here, so we like to keep working,? said Cheng Qian, the country manager for the road-building company in Ethiopia. He added that his family had never visited him during several years of work here.
African Ambivalence

Sometimes, the Chinese approach has created serious frictions with African workers. At a leading hotel here in Lilongwe, breakfast guests stared as an agitated Chinese traveling salesman, sweating profusely, screamed at his staff minutes before his pitch on nutritional supplements was set to begin.
?You say it is not your fault, but the way you are doing things is just stupid, stupid,? the man sputtered before a clutch of African assistants, who looked humiliated. ?You people are unbelievable.? When the salesman finally left the room, members of the restaurant staff gathered near the door and vented their disgust. ?We don?t need people like that to come here and colonize us again,? one said. After nearly seven years in Malawi, Yang Jie, the ice cream maker, seems to have learned better. Greeting his workers at the ice cream factory, he begins the day by asking, ?How did you sleep last night??
One quickly replied, ?Very well,? sounding a bit formal.
?Don?t tell me a lie,? Mr. Yang answered with a sly, friendly smile. ?It?s O.K. to tell me your worries.?

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Li Zwangendaba.

Bafowethu.

From the New York Times:
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KABWE, Zambia ? The courtyard in front of the Zambia China Mulungushi Textiles factory is so quiet, even at midday, that the fluttering of the ragged Chinese and Zambian flags is the only sound hanging in the air.

The factory used to roar. From the day it opened more than 20 years ago, the vast compound had shuddered to the whir of rollers and the clatter of mechanical weaving machines spooling out millions of yards of brightly colored African cloth. Today, only the cotton gin still runs, with the company?s Chinese managers buying raw cotton for export to China?s humming textile industry. Nobody can say when or even if the factory here will reopen.
?We are back where we started,? said Wilfred Collins Wonani, who leads the Chamber of Commerce here, sighing at the loss of one of the city?s biggest employers. ?Sending raw materials out, bringing cheap manufactured goods in. This isn?t progress. It is colonialism.?

Chinese officials and their African allies like to call their growing relationship a win-win proposition, a rising tide that lifts all boats in China?s ever-widening sea of influence. This year, China pledged $20 billion to finance trade and infrastructure across the continent over the next three years. In Zambia alone, China plans to invest $800 million in the next few years. From South Africa?s manganese mines to Niger?s uranium pits, from Sudan?s oil fields to Congo?s cobalt mines, China?s hunger for resources has been a shot in the arm, increasing revenues and helping push some of the world?s poorest countries further up the ladder of development. But China is also exporting huge volumes of finished, manufactured goods ? T-shirts, flashlights, radios and socks, just to name a few ? to those same countries, hampering Africa?s ability to make its own products and develop healthy, diverse economies.
?Most of our countries have been independent for 35 to 50 years,? said Moeletsi Mbeki, a South African entrepreneur and a political analyst. ?Yet they have failed to develop manufacturing for a variety of reasons, and for the Chinese that?s a huge opportunity. We are a very important market for China.?

On the one hand, Chinese imports give Africans access to goods and amenities that developed countries take for granted but that most people here could not have dreamed of affording just a few years ago ? cellular telephones, televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, computers. And cheaper prices on more basic items, like clothing, light bulbs and shoes, mean people have more money in their pockets.

?There is no doubt China has been good for Zambia,? said Felix Mutati, Zambia?s minister of finance. ?Why should we have a bad attitude toward the Chinese when they are doing all the right things? They are bringing investment, world-class technology, jobs, value addition. What more can you ask for??

But across Africa, and especially in the relatively robust economies of southern Africa, there are clear winners and losers. Textile mills and other factories here in Zambia have suffered and even closed as cheap Chinese goods flood the world market, eliminating jobs in a country that sorely needs them. The Chinese investment in copper mining here has left a trail of heartbreak and recrimination after one of the worst industrial accidents in Zambian history, a blast at a Chinese-owned explosives factory in Chambishi in 2005 that killed 46 people, most of them in their 20s.

?Who is winning? The Chinese are, for sure,? said Michael Sata, a Zambian opposition politician who campaigned in last year?s presidential election on an anti-China platform. He lost, but with a surprisingly strong showing, and his party, the Patriotic Front, won many seats in local and parliamentary elections in Lusaka, the capital, and the Zambian industrial heartland, where China has made its biggest investments. ?Their interest is exploiting us, just like everyone who came before,? he said. ?They have simply come to take the place of the West as the new colonizers of Africa.?

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Lusaka did not respond to repeated requests to discuss the country?s role in Zambia. But Chinese diplomats across Africa and top officials in Beijing have emphasized the money and opportunity they bring to Africa. In Zambia, for example, government officials say that the Chinese are sending dozens of workers for training in China and that their investments will create thousands of high-wage jobs. Measured in some ways, Zambia?s economy is booming. Copper prices have soared from 75 cents a pound in January 2003 to more than $3 a pound this year, driven in large part by Chinese demand. That demand has pushed Zambia?s long-dormant copper mines into record production. China?s Nonferrous Metals Corporation, a state-owned company, purchased rights to develop a mine in Chambishi, in the heart of the copper belt, in 1998, and it plans to build factories in an export processing zone that will bring as many as 60,000 jobs, according to government officials. But China?s growing presence in global trade is wiping out thousands of jobs in countries with fledgling manufacturing sectors like Zambia and South Africa. Despite relatively low wages in many countries, African manufacturers find it very hard to compete, arguing that China?s currency policies undervalue the yuan and give Chinese exporters a huge advantage. Many industries in China also benefited at various points from subsidies and free or low-cost government financing, making their costs lower. Beyond that, there are major infrastructure problems in Africa, where industry struggles with inadequate roads and railways, and unreliable electricity and water supplies.

?So who do you blame?? said Martyn J. Davies, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. ?You can?t blame China for being too competitive. China is doing what every other emerging market is doing.?
The textile and clothing industry, one of the engines China used to fuel its own economic expansion in the 1980s, has been particularly hard hit in Africa. For decades, African countries exported large quantities of clothes and textiles to developed countries under a trade agreement intended to protect European and American markets from competition from China and others, while encouraging exports from the world?s poorest nations. But the trade provision, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, expired in January 2005, putting these countries in direct export competition with China. Africa found itself once again on the losing end of globalization. If copper is Zambia?s bread and butter, manufacturing should have been its main meal ? just as many economies across the globe have progressed from producers of raw materials to low-tech manufacturing and beyond, a well-trod path to development. Ms. Zimba, 40, a quality-control worker at the plant here who asked to be identified only by her common last name because she feared losing her termination benefits, first got a job at the factory in 1989, after moving to Kabwe from the depressed eastern region of the country with her brother. She earned a little less than $100 a month, as well as free health care and a pension, and a little three-room house in the workers? compound. But since she lost her job, her family?s standard of living has plummeted. The water was turned off, and Ms. Zimba does not know where she will come up with next semester?s tuition for her 20-year-old daughter?s trade school.
?We will see what God brings me,? Ms. Zimba said. For Ms. Zimba, the transition from salaried work to selling goods for pocket change in the market is a devastating setback to a grim fate she thought she had escaped ? her mother was widowed when Ms. Zimba was 15 and reduced to selling in the market as well. ?I am right back where I started,? Ms. Zimba said. As for the Chinese, she bitterly refers to them as ?briefcase investors.? ?They just fill their briefcases with our wealth and leave,? she said.

Such anti-Chinese sentiment has been brewing here for several years. When China?s president, Hu Jintao, visited Zambia earlier this year he received the usual red carpet treatment from his Zambian host, President Levy Mwanawasa , but the reception from many ordinary Zambians was nasty. A trip to the site of China?s big new investment, Chambishi, had to be scuttled entirely because of fears of unrest, and the circumstances of the industrial disaster there are still not entirely understood. The mine at Chambishi had for decades been run by the government, and had limped along while copper prices slumped in the 1980s. When the Non-ferrous Metal Mining Group bought the rights to develop the mine in 1998, local residents cheered, hoping for new jobs. In 2003, Keegan Chibuye got one as a mechanic at the mine, a job he was grateful to have in a country where even skilled men like himself struggled to find work. Mr. Chibuye?s sister, Vennie, 27, also found work for the Chinese, as a computer specialist at an explosives factory on the mine?s grounds. Ms. Chibuye was the eldest of seven, and her parents had sent her to Britain at great expense, to a technical college in Derbyshire, where she earned a diploma in information technology. A brother, Mwape, got a job as a casual worker in the explosives factory, for a little more than a dollar a day, to save money for college. Keegan Chibuye said he had concerns about the way the Chinese managers were running the mine almost from the beginning. ?They were careless,? he said. ?Safety was not their priority. Everything was about productivity no matter what.? On April 20, 2005, Keegan Chibuye heard an ear-splitting boom that would shatter his world ? a huge blast at the explosives factory.

There was almost nothing left of Vennie and Mwape left to bury. Virtually all the bodies had been incinerated. Only fragments were buried just off the main road at the graveyard built by the Chinese owners ? a finger, an ear, a bit of scalp. As the 46 headstones testify, most of the workers were young, born after 1980. Officials of the company that runs the mine did not respond to repeated telephone requests for an interview to talk about working conditions and safety at the mine. But at the Chinese workers? compound in Chambishi, Han Yaping, who identified himself as the company?s human resources manager, said that the company hoped to help Zambia develop. ?China works here in cooperation with Zambia,? Mr. Han said in English. ?It is friendship.? Asked why the wages at the mine were lower than those paid by other companies, Mr. Han said that Zambian workers had limited skills and no experience with technology. By way of example, he said, a Chinese worker trying to remove a screw would use a screwdriver. ?But a Zambian worker,? he continued with a chuckle, ?he use his finger.?

A look around the compound for Chinese workers illustrates why China is able to do business so profitably in Africa. While Western companies must provide relatively plush and private accommodations to attract expatriate workers, the Chinese employees at Chambishi live in barracks-like conditions, several to a room. A table for table tennis and a dusty soccer field are the only recreational facilities. ?We like simple,? Mr. Han explained. Many African scholars and political leaders say Africa has no need for the colonial baggage and paternalism of the West, and they welcome the Chinese approach of cowboy capitalism. ?Let the Chinese come,? said Mahamat Hassan Abakar, a lawyer in Chad, a former French colony in central Africa with deepening ties to China. ?What Africa needs is investment. It needs partners. All of these years we have been tied to France. Look what it has brought us.?

In South Africa, dozens of clothing and textile companies closed, according to trade organizations representing manufacturers. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost because of Chinese imports, and in response the government negotiated temporary voluntary restraints on some items. But Iqbal Meer-Sharma, deputy director of South Africa?s Department of Trade and Industry, said that the clothing industry was ultimately less valuable to South Africa than the other benefits of its growing relationship with China. ?We?ve always known we have a dysfunctional relationship with the West,? Mr. Sharma said. ?Now with China we have a relationship as equals. They don?t look down on us. They are not condescending.?

In an era of ruthless global competition, Mr. Sharma said, Africa should stop trying to compete with China at what it does best ? producing cheap goods for export ? and find other ways to compete instead. In the meantime, many Africans are caught in limbo. Clarissa Fabrik, 19, lives at the edge of Atlantis, a depressed industrial town in South Africa?s Western Cape. She had hoped to earn an engineering degree, courtesy of the scholarship fund from her mother?s clothing workers? union benefit package. But her mother?s factory closed, and now she is trying to teach herself basics from a textbook on industrial electronics when she is not at her retail job. ?I don?t know what the future will bring,? she said.
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Vuka Afrika.

Li Zwangendaba

Li,
Lisakhumbula itshabi uStrive Musiyiwa, wathwala nzima ezama ukuvula iCell phone Company eMzimbagwe. UNkomo esaphila wazama ngamandla ukusiza uMusiyiwa kodwa wehluleka, kwaze kwasiza inkundla enkulu yezomthetho! Uma sisephansi kangaka, ukwakha isizwe lokuzibusa kukhanya kusekhatshana! Izinja lenyamazana kazizibusi, zibuswa ngabantu! Ngaphandle kokuba siguquke emicabangweni, sibone ukukhanya(guided by enlightened thought) sibengabantu, phinde sikubone ukuphumelela! Sizohlala sikhononda ngabanye abantu! Inotho yeziwula idliwa ngabahlakaniphileyo!

Mina ngiyatshiseka Mthwakazi!

nansi enye yezindaba zama Tshayina:

http://www.africafiles.org/atissueezine.asp

Vukani Mahlabezulu!

Ekuhle.

Omnyama, ngehlulekile ukuvula i LINK yakho ye Africafiles.

If I read you well mntaka baba, you rightly say it ukuthi nxa singela lizwe lethu, asisoze senelise ukwakha umnotho ngendlela esiyifunayo.

Yikho mina to be honest with you, ngisapota i MPC. Kodwa isapoti kuphela kayincedi. Akelingazise ukuthi ngubani osikhokhelayo lapha eJoza. Ngifuna ukuba lilunga lami ngincedise ekuzikhululeni.

Asithatheni ilizwe besesikhuluma ngokulakha. Ungafisa ukwakha indlu yomunye uzadana esekulalisa phandle.

Yimi okaMblazi.

kanti9Kunjalo,

Ngilosizi ngelink engavulekiyo. Kimi iya vuleka ngempela! Zama njalo ku http://www.africafiles.org, kumbe ngithi, "copy or type this url into your web browser".

Indlela yokuphumelela ilula, njalo iyaziwa! Yikufunda! Izizwe ze Asia bezifana nje ne Africa ngama 1960's. Babe thumezela abantwababo e America nakwamanye amazwe angasentshonalanga ngalezozikhathi. Namhlanje sebevuna!

Wena oseningizimu Africa, donsela abanye abakini ezikholweni eziphezulu uma uthole amathuba, ukuze bafunde! Lokhu ngenye yendlela zokuzikhulula!

Ukuthola uzibuse lelizwe akutsho lutho, uma abantu bengela buntu! Khangela okwenzakala kweleMzimbagwe! Kungenxa yokuba kubusa izinja!!! Ukwakha isizwe yikwakha ingqondo lobuntu bethu! Ngemva kwalokho ke besekulandela umhlaba, in that order! Kodwa lokhu kungenzeka sikhathi sinye! Kodwa i first priority yibuntu bethu, kandukuba sizothola ukuzibusa!

Mhlawumbe ungabuza amadoda eMPC, yibo abangakuqondisa ngokuthi wenzeni!

omnyama!

Bafowethu.

Omnyama, ngiyakubonga ngamazwi akho ajulileyo. Liyazi zihlobo liyasakha sibili lapha eNkundleni. Asikhuthazeni abantwana bafunde njalo bazazi UBUNTU babo.

U Kanti 9, 10, 11 hk hk hk etc, ngizamthola mina ngizamqhubela kulabo angahlangana labo.

Vuka Mthwakazi. We have no business in Zimbabwe.

Li Zwangendaba.

Mthwakazi

this thing about foreign investments ibuhlungu, ngoba esikhathini esinengi isenza thina lapha eAfrica singazithathi njengabantu abale-initiative. we have subsequently taken as given ukuthi someone from out there uzabuya lapha ezofaka imali lentuthuko mhlawumbe, even if such investment if through ruthless business people like the Chinese. one thing is for sure, China does not care if Africa benefits or not, thier record at looking out for the interests of others are proof enough.

but the question eyokuswelakala kwemali (leading to foreign investment/exploitation) is a real one. yenza ukuthi umAfrica abe exposed to exploitation and abuse. we need to evaluate the cost-benefit ratio yokwamukela uncedo lwabanye kwintuthukho yethu. and this is why the Asian tiges rejected western prescriptions and decided to master their own destiny. something similar might help africa, including ukuthi siqale ukuba le-pride ngama systems and structures wethu, because esikhathini esinengi thina kasizithembi kwakuqala, njalo seyisa ama-cultural systems and values wethu, which actually define who we are.

having said that, i still agree ukuthi kasikhululeni uMthwakazi kuqala, them sesingaqala ukufunana lendlela zokuzikhuphula.

Madoda lamadodakazi, let us stand up and be counted!!!!

Bafowethu.

I am very critical of the Chineese. Besides dangerous goods like the POISONED TOYS and TOOTHPASTE they are sending to the USA, they operate mostly ROBBER ECONOMICS. Here is some more:
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Germans See Imitation in Chinese Cars

John MacDougall/Agence France-Presse ? Getty Images
At the Frankfurt Motor Show, a CEO, made by Shuanghuan Automobile. BMW says the car is a copy of its X5 S.U.V. By MARK LANDLER. Published: September 12, 2007
FRANKFURT, Sept. 11 ? It?s hardly surprising that a car that bills itself as the ?ultimate driving machine? would inspire imitation. But to BMW, the CEO, a Chinese sport utility vehicle, is less respectful homage than brazen knockoff.

Wheels: Frankfurt Auto Show
A Frankfurt Motor Show visitor with a BC3 prototype by Brilliance JinBei Automobile of China, which uses its own designs.
A team of New York Times contributors present news and insight from the Frankfurt International Motor Show. Charging that the CEO is a copy of BMW?s popular X5, the company has filed suit to prohibit its sale in Germany by the Chinese carmaker Shuanghuan Automobile. That did not prevent Shuanghuan?s European importer from showing off the CEO on Tuesday at the Frankfurt Motor Show. It was a vivid illustration, on the show?s first day, that the struggle over intellectual property rights between China and the West ? a battle that has ranged over products from designer handbags to computer chips ? now extends to cars. ?We did not like it,? BMW chief executive, Norbert Reithofer, said curtly in an interview here. Neither did DaimlerChrysler, which is taking legal action against Shuanghuan to prevent it from selling the Noble, a subcompact that bears an uncanny resemblance to Daimler?s Smart minicar. The Noble did not appear at the show, though the importer, China Automobile Deutschland, insisted that it decided on its own not to distribute the car in Germany. ?Naturally, our cars are inspired by European carmakers,? said Karl Schl?ssl, a German who is the chief executive of China Automobile. ?But we reject the charge that they are copies.? Mr. Schl?ssl seemed to be reveling in the dispute, which catapulted his Chinese client from obscurity to center stage at this car show, traditionally dominated by the titans of German automaking. At a circuslike news conference, Mr. Schl?ssl refused to speak the name BMW, instead referring to it as ?that company.? He spoke of having a southern German accent that would make him at home in the hallways of the Munich-based BMW, and he introduced a tall blond woman as his companion. Mr. Schl?ssl said Shuanghuan, which is based in Shijiazhuang, China, and has been producing cars since 1988, had approval from the Chinese government to make these models. But he said there was no one from the company available to answer additional questions.
There are serious issues behind all the theatrics. Few European executives doubt the Chinese will be genuine competitors in a few years, despite a bumpy start because of safety concerns with their first models. Brilliance JinBei Automobile, a Chinese carmaker with a more established reputation overseas than Shuanghuan, is drawing attention with its new compact car. With the web of alliances between Chinese and Western automakers, there are plenty of opportunities for European innovations to turn up in Chinese cars that are then peddled to Europeans. General Motors and Honda have both accused Chinese carmakers of copying their designs, often slavishly, but have gotten little relief from Chinese courts. Some auto analysts said the European manufacturers needed to accept copying as the price of doing business in China.
?There are three copies of the Smart,? said Graeme Maxton, an independent auto analyst in Hong Kong. ?When it comes to body panels, I almost sympathize with the Chinese; it?s not that big a deal.? Mr. Maxton said Chinese carmakers sometimes copied the exterior of a car from one model, and the interior from another. In the case of the CEO, for instance, it is not clear that the BMW X5 was the sole inspiration for its design. Auto critics have said that while the rear end of the vehicle is a dead ringer for the X5, the front end looks more like a Toyota Land Cruiser. BMW emphasized that under the hood, the CEO is no X5. Small wonder: the X5 starts at 59,000 euros ($86,830) in Europe; the twin-turbo diesel model on display here goes for 92,000 euros ($126,040). Mr. Schl?ssl said the CEO would sell for a base price of 25,900 euros ($35,483). ?Someone who buys a BMW for 100,000 euros is not the same person who will look at a CEO,? Mr. Schl?ssl said. Regardless, the Germans are zealous about protecting their image, particularly at a car show on their home turf.
?I think it?s confusing to our customer base,? said DaimlerChrysler?s chairman, Dieter Zetsche. ?Showing a vehicle that looks very similar to a car on our stand raises unnecessary questions.? Mr. Zetsche said he would consider litigation against other Chinese knockoffs. DaimlerChrysler and BMW have manufacturing operations in China, as well as thriving export franchises, and neither seemed keen on turning the dispute into a broader offensive against China. Mr. Zetsche and Mr. Reithofer said they believed that the Chinese government would protect intellectual property more scrupulously as their own engineers begin turning out proprietary technology. ?In Asia, in general,? Mr. Zetsche said, ?the culture does not define copying as something bad or unethical.? For now, the Chinese are struggling with more basic issues, like designing a safe car. Two carmakers, Brilliance and Landwind, suffered when their cars performed abysmally in crash tests conducted by the German automobile club ADAC. Landwind has stopped selling while it retools its cars to improve their safety, according to Peter Bijvelds, a Dutch car dealer who holds the distribution license for the brand. Brilliance, which collaborates with BMW in assembling cars in China, insisted it had improved its safety standards, though it still received only a middling score in a subsequent crash test. It presented its new compact, the BS2, as a low-cost alternative to the Volkswagen Golf. Like Mr. Zetsche and Mr. Reithofer, the vice chairman of Brilliance, He Guohua, said he, too, was confident China would regulate intellectual property more strictly in coming years. In any event, he declared, his cars, which were styled with the help of an Italian design studio, do not rip off any of their European rivals. ?We do our own design work,? Mr. He said.

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I will also agree with you on the question of ACHIEVING Mthwakazi first. When Nkomo tried to invest in Zimbabwe, which was not his country, all his efforts were brought to nought by the EVIL SYSTEM of ZIMBWA-MANJE. They TORE DOWN HIS NITRAM SUCCESS TO SHREDS. If you invest in your own country, you will not have the problem of going 600 KM to SALISBURY only to go and fill-in forms then be denied the opportunity to develop.

Li Zwangendaba.