AFRICA FIRST MEETS CHINA FIRST
Okello Oculi writes that the continent has much to learn from China
When in 1945 the Vietcong humiliated French colonial armies and in 1949 Mao Zedung’s communist guerrillas drove out Japanese colonisers and the local Kuomintang rulers, drums of triumph sounded the shout: “The East is Red”. When a Chinese delegation attended the first globalisation at the 1955 Bandung Conference of ‘’Non-Aligned’’ countries, she broadened her alliance with Communist Soviet Union to include newly independent African and Asian countries.
During the colonial epoch, Africa and China had shared that tragic phase of globalisation as victims of Euro-American humiliation and exploitation. From Algeria to Angola and the collapse of virulent racism in Southern Africa, both China and Africa shared the birth of nationhood by what Ahmed Ben Bella called ‘’bleeding a little’’ to win freedom.
In 2002, Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki - an economist trained by British teachers at Makerere University College and the London School of Economics - announced that Kenya was turning to China for investment capital and the development of infrastructure. This followed collaboration between Tanzania, Zambia and China over the building of Tazara railway line to carry copper exports and vital imports; a liberation globalisation for Africa. Kibaki expressed a disgusted turning away from the IMF/World Bank as neo-colonial false guardians of development.
What might be termed as a ‘’season of migration to the east’’- to borrow the title of a novel by a Sudanese writer - the first two decades of the 21st Century has seen the deepening of Africa-China branch of globalisation. From September 1-3, 2018, 53 African presidents and prime ministers held the seventh forum with Chinese leaders in Beijing. Its context was concern about ramifications for Africa of a trade war launched by President Donald Trump against imports from China. African components of Chinese manufactures would be hit. Fumes of defiance against a hegemonic America flexing economic and diplomatic power was in the skies over Africa.
This situation calls for deep reflection. Michael Pillsbury, a writer on China, has urged American governments to closely study ancient Chinese texts and philosophy to inform contemporary diplomatic relations with that country. His critics accused him of seeking to replace Cold War contests with Communist Russia with a new one against China. Others accused him of campaigning for his family’s interests in global trade in grains for which he would make enormous financial gains from a food ‘’colonisation of stomachs’’ of a billion Chinese people. Nevertheless, Pillsbury does make a significant point for Africa to consider.
Africa has suffered from an information blockage about China by colonial administrations and post-colonial NATO manipulators of the global information order which they dominate. As an example, the ‘’Cultural Revolution’’ which Chairman Mao Zedung undertook as a means of weeding out actual and potential agents of American, British, French, German and Japanese intelligence operatives who were embedded in the country’s bureaucracy, was vilified as dictatorship. Its defensive value for protecting the sovereignty of a new nation was ignored. Africa ignored Mao’s initiative to high costs.
Merle Fainsod’s study of Bolshevik Russia reported that the Communist Party blocked sabotage of their policies by officials with feudal Czarists orientation by planting communist officials to oversee decisions of top bureaucrats. Most post-colonial African governments, either deliberately or out of lack of awareness of this experience, ignored the possible value of this social engineering. The price paid for this default has included a pandemic of military take-overs of governments; festering corruption and blockages of development targets.
In contemporary relations with China, several measures suggest themselves. An obvious one is a programme of translating classical Chinese texts and contemporary literary and political economy texts into African languages. European missionaries translated the Holy Bible into various African languages; a legacy which African authors writing in English, French and Portuguese have avoided either out of intellectual laziness or the erroneous hope that Euro-American readers would read their works. Kenya-born Ngugi Wa Thiongo remains a lonesome voice shouting in the wilderness for literary works to be published in African languages.
In line with Euro-American scramble for access into China’s over a billion consumers, African authors should push for translations into China’s languages of their novels, drama, poetry and works by ‘’public intellectuals’’. A dialogue between Africa and China must not be mediated primarily in European colonial languages. The invention of cell phones and computers with translations into different languages gives youths in Africa the advantage of acquiring competence in Chinese languages. President Nyerere translated Shakespeare’s works into Ki-Swahili
Euro-American propagandists blame birth rates in Africa for the poverty in the continent. They ignore centuries of exploitation of Africa’s human and material resources through transfers of labour and manufacturing into Euro-American economies, as well as criminal collusion with African officials to transfer funds out of Africa. President Thabo Mbeki’s Committee has reported that over 50 billion American dollars are sent out of African economies annually.
China has demonstrated that a huge population is a vital resource; especially critical if the population gets compulsory high quality education at all levels. Achieving highly skilled and highly disciplined pools of workers is China’s lesson to Africa. Scandinavian countries have also built this power; with special emphasis on ensuring that skills and talents of their female populations bloom. Nigeria, Ethiopia, Easy African Community countries and Egypt must open their minds to this lesson from China.
ACHIEVING HIGHLY SKILLED AND HIGHLY DISCIPLINED POOLS OF WORKERS IS CHINA’S LESSON TO AFRICA