Forum on Africa-China Cooperation ... Mutumwa Mawere attended the summit in SA
The lions of Africa: Mugabe and Malema
I WAS privileged to attend the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (FOCAC) summit hosted by South Africa in Johannesburg during 4 to 5 December 2015.
As I watched the opening of the summit by its co-Chairmen, President Xi Xinping and President Zuma, I could not help but observe that the irony of a single Chinese individual, making the promises of independence to an attentive crowd of 54 representatives of presumed sovereign African nation-states all seeking to outdo each other in a beauty pageant style to look good as beneficiaries and resource mortgagors.
Any rational observer would have taken note of the fact that, China, the world's most populous nation-state, with a population of about 1.3 billion compared with Africa's 1.11 billion, has a single individual as its head of state as opposed to Africa's 54 incoherent voices. It is the case that scale matters in the economic order of things yet the unity of Africa is being driven by outsiders who have the financial power to make it happen than the people in whom true sovereignty is vested.
A lot has been said about the colonial and post-colonial relationship between China and Africa and implications thereof as if to suggest that China is some kind of a salvation army to fill the perceived gap created by the Western Nations who know better that money without values is recipe for disaster.
During the African decolonization period, China was pursuing the idea of socialism and, therefore, the value and principles that informed its worldview were founded on the premise that the state and its actors ought to drive the agenda of delivering a just, inclusive and prosperous dispensation. The fact that the socialist idea was fatally flawed from conception and implementation was proved right by the passage of time.
The idea failed, as could be predicted, to capture the imagination and creativity of the Chinese people yet the big idea that the state and its actors know better and act in the national interest seems to be taking root with the assistance of the Chinese whose history and emergence as a super power suggest otherwise.
With the death of Chairman Mao and the short-lived transition, it was as predictable as it was inevitable that China would have no choice but to conform to the dictates of the human spirit in order to unlock the true potential that resided in the frustrated minds of the ordinary Chinese citizens.
The evolution of China from a socialist/communist system has been quick and transformational yet the African post-colonial journey has and remains painful, uninspiring and dangerous. A careful observation of the Chinese work ethic in countries and territories dominated by the Chinese like Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, and to a lesser extent Malaysia and Indonesia would confirm that the Anglo-Saxon protestant ethic is not unique to Caucasians.
The history of human civilization has taught us that human beings have the inherent capacity to step up to the plate when opportunities exist and when freedom reigns for them to dream and convert dreams into products and services.
Posted by Ike Onwubuya
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