Zambia accused of selling out to Chinese after story in mandarin

When the state-owned Times of Zambia recently published its leading story in mandarin, it stoked simmering anger over perceptions that President Edgar Lungu’s government is gradually surrendering the country’s sovereignty to China.

The Asian powerhouse has long fended off accusations that it is undertaking a covert “second colonisation” of Africa.

Still, suspicions have lately gained traction in this former British colony of Northern Rhodesia, whose citizens are usually regarded as some of the most hospitable in southern Africa.

The article in the Times of Zambia, or “Times of Chambia” as some residents are now calling it, has done little to ease fears that Lungu’s government could cede control of national assets like state-owned power utility Zesco to offset some of its heavy debt to Beijing.

Lungu’s administration denies it plans to sell the electricity company.

Information Minister Dora Siliya said the use of the Chinese dialect in the newspaper article was a business decision meant to attract Chinese readers and advertisers.

In the article, Lungu told a visiting Swiss delegation that Zambia would “not look east or west [but] look forward and go with whoever wants to go with us”.

But for many, the article was another example of Lusaka kowtowing to China, to which it owes a large chunk of its nearly $10 billion (about R147 billion) in external debt. – ANA