South Africa P.I.G.: CHINA

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How China's taking over Africa.

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2u4xqSVgR8AIbEk0hqIP33rTddsGRshpMMK1Z8cNyvU_OkkVLEADYkqE_V3D9T_UXGRqwzzA7QNYyI20A-TgLjdeqZkiyk1nbMWXaUpG00EJMTp5DnstDLW5lwSl2UDN8lA0LpmoufLY/s1600-h/Zuma_ivisit_to_China.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352700756020814050" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2u4xqSVgR8AIbEk0hqIP33rTddsGRshpMMK1Z8cNyvU_OkkVLEADYkqE_V3D9T_UXGRqwzzA7QNYyI20A-TgLjdeqZkiyk1nbMWXaUpG00EJMTp5DnstDLW5lwSl2UDN8lA0LpmoufLY/s400/Zuma_ivisit_to_China.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 287px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" /></a> On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own right, outlined a daring new method to 'tame' and colonise what was then known as the Dark Continent. <blockquote>'My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race,' wrote Galton. 'I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.' </blockquote><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352702187990744690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3DZWtDvK9tL-eGZ-oTut2zYw8MmrjtuGlHFGtIiIlVyJnRYbX7o9pWXnUrF7UUbTTocUTETCJFGWMqvDsfrtkVeLF__MQG-yMfOoumCNL4TeKV6dWWhCRCY0V5QzeTp_UvBIjksHRQSQ/s400/chinaafrica372.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 372px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 192px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" /> Despite an outcry in Parliament and heated debate in the august salons of the Royal Geographic Society, <blockquote>Galton insisted that 'the history of the world tells the tale of the continual displacement of populations, each by a worthier successor, and humanity gains thereby'.</blockquote>A controversial figure, Galton was also the pioneer of eugenics, the theory that was used by Hitler to try to fulfil his mad dreams of a German Master Race. Eventually, Galton's grand resettlement plans fizzled out because there were much more exciting things going on in Africa. But that was more than 100 years ago, and with legendary explorers such as Livingstone, Speke and Burton still battling to find the source of the Nile - and new discoveries of exotic species of birds and animals featuring regularly on newspaper front pages - vast swathes of the continent had not even been 'discovered'. Yet Sir Francis Galton, it now appears, was ahead of his time. His vision is coming true - if not in the way he imagined. An astonishing invasion of Africa is now under way. In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony. Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke. With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiAHXaXnNglPtUzMHuBL-EnP9HjI9cG6CJtrHbVtGME0TUh2q9KZknm6v5u3NLq99OOukE5IsSFO3Dp7N-L1T-sxckTPc2DvB-NuDy3CwHRrRRTArwYI3sSzqF20WvCkzzqdFVXYppcE0/s1600-h/china-zimbabwe.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266427632530234978" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiAHXaXnNglPtUzMHuBL-EnP9HjI9cG6CJtrHbVtGME0TUh2q9KZknm6v5u3NLq99OOukE5IsSFO3Dp7N-L1T-sxckTPc2DvB-NuDy3CwHRrRRTArwYI3sSzqF20WvCkzzqdFVXYppcE0/s400/china-zimbabwe.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" /></a>The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve China's problems of over-population and pollution. New horizons? Mugabe has said: 'We must turn from the West and face the East' The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools. The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.The trains are linked to ports dotted around the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap toys made in China. Confucius Institutes (state-funded Chinese 'cultural centres') have sprung up throughout Africa, as far afield as the tiny land-locked countries of Burundi and Rwanda, teaching baffled local people how to do business in Mandarin and Cantonese. Massive dams are being built, flooding nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines, with 'slave' labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and minerals. Pristine forests are being destroyed, with China taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa. All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own 'Chinatown', as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent. 'African cloths' sold in markets on the continent are now almost always imported, bearing the legend: 'Made in China'. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKdijKK-hoib7JksG9MwaOCXTViIaA4d0OxA_YZRAE9kfynVKcCjlUa4Mgs-OYR_oUxL39up_i8LmDJGxTd-7aMwxeZyA1d-zAu-3CXsAclJlwgDfpVbvn0sjr0RrWkeblu4PhDd9e-6M/s1600-h/china-africa_LGVtzKoCEqsw.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266047673566844130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKdijKK-hoib7JksG9MwaOCXTViIaA4d0OxA_YZRAE9kfynVKcCjlUa4Mgs-OYR_oUxL39up_i8LmDJGxTd-7aMwxeZyA1d-zAu-3CXsAclJlwgDfpVbvn0sjr0RrWkeblu4PhDd9e-6M/s400/china-africa_LGVtzKoCEqsw.jpg" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 372px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 283px" /></a>From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower's long-term survival. 'The Chinese are all over the place,' says Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing interests around the continent. 'If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have taken their place.' Likened to one race deciding to adopt a new home on another planet, Beijing has launched its so-called 'One China In Africa' policy because of crippling pressure on its own natural resources in a country where the population has almost trebled from 500 million to 1.3 billion in 50 years. China is hungry - for land, food and energy. While accounting for a fifth of the world's population, its oil consumption has risen 35-fold in the past decade and Africa is now providing a third of it; imports of steel, copper and aluminium have also shot up, with Beijing devouring 80 per cent of world supplies. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi93SyZ3T8mzO5BjmYvJ2NNAuyVasaVQVmuoKYfM013V4euJ8Hoblt6ZramLaYdafSG9m_RsLJIeUdxussR3TRFxwZK4oE5yuiyexRd-7AF4W_6dAo9cq16Jc70yaI3VE_wCzzD-v7vt1Q/s1600-h/article-0-01EF328B00000578.jpg"></a>Fuelling its own boom at home, China is also desperate for new markets to sell goods. And Africa, with non-existent health and safety rules to protect against shoddy and dangerous goods, is the perfect destination.The result of China's demand for raw materials and its sales of products to Africa is that turnover in trade between Africa and China has risen from £5million annually a decade ago to £6billion today. However, there is a lethal price to pay. There is a sinister aspect to this invasion. Chinese-made war planes roar through the African sky, bombing opponents. Chinese-made assault rifles and grenades are being used to fuel countless murderous civil wars, often over the materials the Chinese are desperate to buy.<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352698808240982786" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAr3ZAk8j4VEpnqlKt4aRyXN4u6gCaDmmoaRsbiOd6zm1tz4KjOZT8qtTHnh48mthuGfMXUU-YTWAtBuaQFsuEvZB6wyl9phfTrjc0MUMs8pGfNxFD9j0HUOeOWj8om7JaGIoaD_yuJaw/s400/china-africa02.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 227px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" />Take, for example, Zimbabwe. Recently, a giant container ship from China was due to deliver its cargo of three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 3,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,500 mortars to President Robert Mugabe's regime. After an international outcry, the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, was forced to return to China, despite Beijing's insistence that the arms consignment was a 'normal commercial deal'. Indeed, the 77-ton arms shipment would have been small beer - a fraction of China's help to Mugabe. He already has high-tech, Chinese-built helicopter gunships and fighter jets to use against his people.Ever since the U.S. and Britain imposed sanctions in 2003, Mugabe has courted the Chinese, offering mining concessions for arms and currency. While flying regularly to Beijing as a high-ranking guest, the 84-year-old dictator rants at 'small dots' such as Britain and America. <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266422820235483202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4zJekjTpcCZLYfkNL1YLrQlhr7sF8Zhqnc2IYKTEsCYorcAaPpCJWRFX4S920bR0T_QqGyenz-UWlj3klQyzldvcgCcWgGGp-Fvnfuf-UNj8nEfe-CjwXCcUDA6IDvoM8TWXNamLdac/s400/china-anyuf-jiang.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 280px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" /> He can afford to. Mugabe is orchestrating his campaign of terror from a 25-bedroom, pagoda-style mansion built by the Chinese. Much of his estimated £1billion fortune is believed to have been siphoned off from Chinese 'loans'. The imposing grey building of ZANU-PF, his ruling party, was paid for and built by the Chinese. Mugabe received £200 million last year alone from China, enabling him to buy loyalty from the army. See also <a href="http://www.fin24.com/articles/default/display_article.aspx?ArticleId=1518-1783_2534618">Zimbabwe gets $950m from China</a> In another disturbing illustration of the warm relations between China and the ageing dictator, a platoon of the China People's Liberation Army has been out on the streets of Mutare, a city near the border with Mozambique, which voted against the president in the recent, disputed election. Almost 30 years ago, Britain pulled out of Zimbabwe - as it had done already out of the rest of Africa, in the wake of Harold Macmillan's 'wind of change' speech. Today, Mugabe says: 'We have turned East, where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West, where the sun sets.' Despite Britain's commendable colonial legacy of a network of roads, railways and schools, the British are now being shunned. According to one veteran diplomat: 'China is easier to do business with because it doesn't care about human rights in Africa - just as it doesn't care about them in its own country. All the Chinese care about is money.' <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266206986971799170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ9qsJDV5XGczng8IM932bRfUlkSn5GGEW9xS-R0Jv0NYCq_qMqy8nKePlyAvfJ7QvYiJe8ibUwFipC-EJs3UNEU3C17kPdsuUAcPRP8MK83JQr5pGlQGKd0fnO4OUKhe5SYcLnFSrFOM/s400/china_sudan_big.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 224px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" />Nowhere is that more true than Sudan. Branded 'Africa's Killing Fields', the massive oil-rich East African state is in the throes of the genocide and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of black, non-Arab peasants in southern Sudan. In effect, through its supplies of arms and support, China has been accused of underwriting a humanitarian scandal. The atrocities in Sudan have been described by the U.S. as 'the worst human rights crisis in the world today'. The government in Khartoum has helped the feared Janjaweed militia to rape, murder and burn to death more than 350,000 people. The Chinese - who now buy half of all Sudan's oil - have happily provided armoured vehicles, aircraft and millions of bullets and grenades in return for lucrative deals. Indeed, an estimated £1billion of Chinese cash has been spent on weapons. According to Human Rights First, a leading human rights advocacy organisation, Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and ammunition for rifles and heavy machine guns are continuing to flow into Darfur, which is dotted with giant refugee camps, each containing hundreds of thousands of people. Between 2003 and 2006, China sold Sudan $55 million worth of small arms, flouting a United Nations weapons embargo. With new warnings that the cycle of killing is intensifying, an estimated two thirds of the non-Arab population has lost at least one member of their families in Darfur. Although two million people have been uprooted from their homes in the conflict, China has repeatedly thwarted United Nations denunciations of the Sudanese regime. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3BO_lIpQR2IOOJvkrrPvcPlFYMD5zeA2Tw3suXQYUAqSLnS44KKe2fwFDZ_ONw-h-ZcObHZYTl6yRkzvZ0ppHrsAZd6gORE4f3axD8a_bZIXR2L5c7J_MRLLbHtOFxdSOmuSd4C0wm_8/s1600-h/china-angola-oil.jpg"></a>While the Sudanese slaughter has attracted worldwide condemnation, prompting Hollywood film-maker Steven Spielberg to quit as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics, few parts of Africa are now untouched by China.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz-kbhb6kpm8ICw-cwh6iYx6Nhm390WtZ0-TggJDPoIkCMGPZp2UMZe3WfJr-QlkUYgCTxYFCYHoDLwMIi11tdfyJPyNZZl0wGAWJBW1h41ic06RPytrof6EIRXZacnK3niYLPPLCk8YY/s1600-h/china-africa-oil.jpg"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SPAWmdYZr90tiL8C9QdjYf7ycskUrsfcUejKYCOSxnsaDT_BsuL_WpAZvtLQuqVKCr_NLEDVATuVGIoq7iOQpXI_UuIZ8Is0WCiIj5ey5Bee8ClhRBB7xCnTtIFD8atQoxm3Y6Vber0/s1600-h/china-africa2LG.jpg"></a>In Congo, more than £2billion has been 'loaned' to the government. In Angola, £3 billion has been paid in exchange for oil. In Nigeria, more than £5billion has been handed over. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhev_gfL3RCY8vfjWPnrzGQpLz172UQ8d40Y9yX52iX3srH529u7eb8SyuFdsxil0xKQjxxL8X69nm0_HPE19yv-EFdRvi44cr6ef6TOILn3XJCmkouwP0V5Y3cXkys9dqJsOD9CSWJJSk/s1600-h/china-equatorial-guinea.jpg"></a>In Equatorial Guinea, where the president publicly hung his predecessor from a cage suspended in a theatre before having him shot, Chinese firms are helping the dictator build an entirely new capital, full of gleaming skyscrapers and, of course, Chinese restaurants.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguLXdoRE7l-VOeIg34mdjM9fhtRQ-Cft3LEgPBXiPwUWiHVo7Bc3Wj_8lBuAo-PmqTwkYu90RhvSqSW1mpfll3ET4Wf1WOosKRTrry4veFC8yUyFV83RAUaOaq8L8nag1EEon2N4lnwLM/s1600-h/china-equatorial-guinea.jpg"></a><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352699315606139186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvkTOkmYr-z6nvCdROVX2FZ5cMj0-3oF1Z-N9qXL3AqD2eR4ou9o-u5x0LuiHdt2yWq2Qtazk4DFx2o6QPKfFmf2pIs5nz8kfFca___u-NiiKmJP_EDlzNB_5R0C17zZT5HrfUdL7Mb-I/s400/china-africa01.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 276px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" />After battling for years against the white colonial powers of Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, post-independence African leaders are happy to do business with China for a straightforward reason: cash. With western loans linked to an insistence on democratic reforms and the need for 'transparency' in using the money (diplomatic language for rules to ensure dictators do not pocket millions), the Chinese have proved much more relaxed about what their billions are used for. Certainly, little of it reaches the continent's impoverished 800 million people. Much of it goes straight into the pockets of dictators. In Africa, corruption is a multi-billion pound industry and many experts believe that China is fuelling the cancer. The Chinese are contemptuous of such criticism. To them, Africa is about pragmatism, not human rights. 'Business is business,' says Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong, adding that Beijing should not interfere in 'internal' affairs. 'We try to separate politics from business.' While the bounty has, not surprisingly, been welcomed by African dictators, the people of Africa are less impressed. At a market in Zimbabwe recently, where Chinese goods were on sale at nearly every stall, one woman told me she would not waste her money on 'Zing-Zong' products. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-29eXs3rYusCA6nhpOSQzZGThLjgxELC-yXOXUwnmESt8Lr8dSTBC69_5J6owWeItKDJmRecaFzR8LlaLQ8j7D4KKlIDiGB_HGvD-pfEPBp1TWNKNo3s-J0EkU3aAnv4wHF-6exe1-YM/s1600-h/chinadeals1102.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352704809551290386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-29eXs3rYusCA6nhpOSQzZGThLjgxELC-yXOXUwnmESt8Lr8dSTBC69_5J6owWeItKDJmRecaFzR8LlaLQ8j7D4KKlIDiGB_HGvD-pfEPBp1TWNKNo3s-J0EkU3aAnv4wHF-6exe1-YM/s400/chinadeals1102.gif" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 272px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 230px" /></a>'They go Zing when they work, and then they quickly go Zong and break,' she said. 'They are a waste of money. But there's nothing else. China is the only country that will do business with us.' There have also been riots in Zambia, Angola and Congo over the flood of Chinese immigrant workers. The Chinese do not use African labour where possible, saying black Africans are lazy and unskilled. In Angola, the government has agreed that 70 per cent of tendered public works must go to Chinese firms, most of which do not employ Angolans. As well as enticing hundreds of thousands to settle in Africa, they have even shipped Chinese prisoners to produce the goods cheaply. In Kenya, for example, only ten textile factories are still producing, compared with 200 factories five years ago, as China undercuts locals in the production of 'African' souvenirs. Where will it all end? As far as Beijing is concerned, it will stop only when Africa no longer has any minerals or oil to be extracted from the continent. A century after Sir Francis Galton outlined his vision for Africa, the Chinese are here to stay. More will come. The people of this bewitching, beautiful continent, where humankind first emerged from the Great Rift Valley, desperately need progress. The Chinese are not here for that. They are here for plunder. After centuries of pain and war, Africa deserves better.Here is a rundown of all the agreements signed so far:-<a href="http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/economy/artikel.php?ID=106028">Ghana, China sign agreements to boost economic cooperation</a> <a href="http://za.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2006-06-19T144055Z_01_BAN952832_RTRIDST_0_OZABS-GHANA-CHINA-DAM-20060619.XML">Ghana confident China to finance $600 million dam</a> <a href="http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-06-19-voa35.cfm">VOA: China, Ghana Boost Trade Agreement</a> <a href="http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2006/june/06_21_4.html">China Egypt Sign Energy Accord</a> <a href="http://www2.chinaknowledge.com/news/news-detail.aspx?id=3429">China Gives Egypt $50 Million Loan</a> <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2006/gb20060607_581473.htm?campaign_id=nws_insdr_jun9&link_position=link10" target="new">A Bidding Frenzy for Angola's Oil</a>. <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=68&art_id=qw1150884001300B255">Chinese PM wraps up Angola agreements</a> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,,1798605,00.html">Guardian: China deal gives Zimbabwe ÃÂ£700m boost </a> <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/200606120054.html">Zimbabwe: Govt, China in $1.3 Billion Power Deal</a> <a href="http://english.people.com.cn/200606/20/eng20060620_275432.html">Huge potentials for China-Congo cooperation: communique</a> <a href="http://www2.chinaknowledge.com/news/news-detail.aspx?id=3454">Premier Wen visits Republic of Congo to enhance economic ties</a> <a href="http://za.today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2006-06-21T170450Z_01_ALL161477_RTRIDST_0_OZABS-TRADE-CHINA-SAFRICA-20060621.XML">China to cap textile exports to S.Africa</a> <a href="http://www.sabcnews.com/politics/government/0,2172,129784,00.html">14 bilateral agreements signed between SA,China</a> <a href="http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/eng/news/today/?show=88434">China Gives Angola Fresh $2bn credit</a>

How China's taking over Africa.

On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own...

4:13 AM

The Post-Mbeki Government Continues to Recycle Thugs and Thieves

IN A recent radio debate with analyst Steven Friedman, African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Gwede Mantashe spoke of the Polokwane revolution as a rejection of Thabo Mbeki’s ANC. No sooner had he uttered these words than the Dalai Lama was refused a visa to attend the 2010 Soccer World Cup peace conference.<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322477652246044738" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVlr-r8rAkDc_wKvXxzPLQNp_l55vmOmvb6rcyTNy3hyeN6PsUmfc5h5Utowm8jY7H0eLx5qTbMnqx27lX-l-16GkDK-wX4XjGl1Pqo9YcjN9YRCjmKIMRXT-npCX39hdd_e7pCN0WUi0H/s400/zumaditwitsbirds.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 372px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" />In true Mbeki tradition, the ANC’s alliance with rogue states such as Syria, Iran, Burma, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and now China, continues. To quote Tony Leon, the ANC government has yet to show us a dictator it does not like. Supporting China, SA’s R60bn-trading partner and new colonial master, is more important than promoting world peace. For both countries, respect for human rights is an obstacle to their attainment of a national democratic revolution — so stupidly affirmed by presidential spokesman, Thabo Masebe, on a national news bulletin. Unbelievably, Masebe said the presence of the Dalai Lama would just focus attention on relations between China and Tibet, and divert attention from the good things SA is doing. Yeah, right! Good things such as mowing down black foreign nationals and refugees fleeing their turbulent countries for SA . Or the hate crimes against Somali traders and xenophobic attacks against Zimbabweans and the Congolese. Should this not be construed as the natural outcome of the government consistently undermining, not supporting, Bishop Paul Verryn for doing what the government should be doing? South Africans, regrettably, have imbibed this extreme display of callousness towards foreign nationals upon whom they act out their animosity in situations where jobs and houses are scarce. Worryingly, the evidence that the Jacob Zuma presidency will be a continuation of the past is overwhelming. How does one explain the cover up to protect the 220 MPs involved in the travel scandal? About R370000 of taxpayers’ money has been used to pay for the debtors’ book of Bathong Travel, to obliterate all evidence of those involved. Parliament is going to do its damndest to make Travelgate go away, and instead of retrieving at least R6m it could have recovered for one aspect of the fraud, MPs have devised a master stroke to conceal their sins. To make matters worse, this cover up is disgustingly driven by Speaker Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde and her National Council of Provinces comrade, Mninawa Mahlangu, continuing in the footsteps of deputy president and former speaker, Baleka Mbete. News that Sheryl Cwele, wife of Minister of Intelligence Siyabonga Cwele, is allegedly involved in drug smuggling, fully explains the dip in public confidence in the ruling party. Surely President Kgalema Motlanthe should have suspended the minister of intelligence immediately, pending investigations. How can one command the intelligence forces of the country when intelligence on the home front is found wanting? Does this not remind us of former police commissioner and head of Interpol, Jackie Selebi, and his links with underworld figures such as Glenn Agliotti ? Where is the political accountability? Why do politicians want our vote when they do as they please anyway? Transparency is an alien concept, replaced by a culture of impunity that has become inscribed in the DNA of the body politic. The post-Mbeki government continues to recycle thugs and thieves, appointing them to leading positions in the state. No wonder election posters display bland slogans such as the ANC’s “Working Together We Can Do More”. The ANC can no longer in all honesty make promises they know they will fail to fulfil. As someone wisely said, “Politicians know it’s not necessary to fool all the people all of the time — just during election campaigns.” The time for taking our lives into our own hands is now. We would really be stupid if we vote to continue the status quo, which makes both the Congress of the People and the ANC ineligible. Let us make April 22 the beginning of the real transformation of SA by voting responsibly — otherwise we have no right to moan when things get worse. Rhoda Kadalie ~ Human rights activist ~ Cape Town

The Post-Mbeki Government Continues to Recycle Thugs and Thieves

IN A recent radio debate with analyst Steven Friedman, African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Gwede Mantashe spoke of the Polokwa...

12:07 PM

ANC denies using Chinese T-shirt suppliers

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5SvljUDXTvamBpKgdg388zDDqRxucxEZLmkotEmbR7jzlzHk-8fiQjUwhTAlCly183RhF2J1mdA-gLyRkNpkY74yEfEfbiGmw-MZFoaUftFddGWwaqj8RpUqaDH4xBuOgV63mlj5xpKhm/s1600-h/made_in_china.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322737078164314018" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5SvljUDXTvamBpKgdg388zDDqRxucxEZLmkotEmbR7jzlzHk-8fiQjUwhTAlCly183RhF2J1mdA-gLyRkNpkY74yEfEfbiGmw-MZFoaUftFddGWwaqj8RpUqaDH4xBuOgV63mlj5xpKhm/s320/made_in_china.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 254px" /></a>The African National Congress's (ANC) T-shirt suppliers are all South African, the ruling party said on Thursday after reports that it sourced T-shirts totalling millions of rands from China. "We needed two million T-shirts -- that was the order. We used the services of a group of people who buy and print them. The suppliers bought the T-shirts, not the ANC," said ANC spokesperson Jessie Duarte. "All our suppliers are South African. I don't know anything about the Chinese." The Star on Thursday reported that T-shirt orders for the ANC, valued between R15-million and R20-million, were given to Chinese manufacturers, further damaging South Africa's already ailing textiles industry. The report said 850 000 shirts which bore "Made in China" labels and were printed with ANC slogans had flooded the country ahead of the April 22 election. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxUaHZ_JpBa9nkZ1cdXO1e0FXjce_PFkGpXxE_qdHKZlPmPgoXTU5bW3TEz4Jur6S2KrNg0aZG-kkxY4fS3rJBb8A4r-fvfcvCQqGCxnnz5NP1OydyQj2OS4mEH0loPIupwcgis9mL-OTU/s1600-h/proudly-sa-clothing.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322805003621096850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxUaHZ_JpBa9nkZ1cdXO1e0FXjce_PFkGpXxE_qdHKZlPmPgoXTU5bW3TEz4Jur6S2KrNg0aZG-kkxY4fS3rJBb8A4r-fvfcvCQqGCxnnz5NP1OydyQj2OS4mEH0loPIupwcgis9mL-OTU/s400/proudly-sa-clothing.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 235px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 160px" /></a>It said the foreign order caused an uproar in the textiles industry as the ANC and its allies had, in the past, targeted large retailers for selling Chinese textiles saying they were undermining the job market.Over US$1-billion has been spent since 1994 on modernising South Africa's textile industry The Star quoted Democratic Alliance parliamentary candidate Rory Macpherson, who was involved in the textiles industry, as saying he was made aware of the order by a "concerned member of the ANC". "In real terms, this order of 850 000 shirts is worth about R20-million. An order of this magnitude could keep several small CMT [cut, manufacture, trim] manufacturers busy for and alive for months," he told the paper. The textile industry was one of the hardest hit manufacturing sectors in the slowdown in the economy.

ANC denies using Chinese T-shirt suppliers

The African National Congress's (ANC) T-shirt suppliers are all South African, the ruling party said on Thursday after reports that it s...

8:26 AM

Dalai Lama gets 385 million more votes than Trevor Manuel

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVH6umx2QsKra4eu0q7FZhwzftjMvWHMdrGxYkshXhqZdM8hhR-y91ZlQZCR6PBe742YkfyHOg0QT2lPBSdBvS_WeG6UzZcZgCFo0sK2uxTcUauMllF91pEFk9ZjpfgyQnPYzChikcZEQ/s1600-h/dali-lama-crowds.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319370601442110994" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVH6umx2QsKra4eu0q7FZhwzftjMvWHMdrGxYkshXhqZdM8hhR-y91ZlQZCR6PBe742YkfyHOg0QT2lPBSdBvS_WeG6UzZcZgCFo0sK2uxTcUauMllF91pEFk9ZjpfgyQnPYzChikcZEQ/s400/dali-lama-crowds.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 269px" /></a>After asking 'Who is the Dalai Lama?' last week, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has been informed that the Tibetan is in fact the spiritual leader of 400 million people, or roughly 385 million more than voted for the ANC. Manuel has also been given a set of encyclopedias to bulk up his general knowledge, which colleagues describe as "just a gaping hole". Manuel's question, asked at a conference where he was trying to explain the semantic difference between being China's whore and being China's bitch, added more fuel to the fire of controversy surrounding South Africa's barring of the Dalai Lama. The comment also sent shockwaves through the financial world as market observers wondered what else Manuel didn't know. "If he has to ask who the Dalai Lama is, does he even know how to feed himself?" asked a worried Finance Ministry insider who asked not to be named as he did not want to be sent to China for re-education. "As far as we can tell, Trevor thinks the Dalai Lama is the main character from a Broadway musical called 'Hello Dalai'. "It is very awkward." However the exiled Tibetan government has asked the South African public to be patient with its Finance Minister, saying that he could not help it if his general knowledge matched that of a bush of geraniums. It said it was sending him a set of encyclopedias with 'Tibet', 'Dalai Lama' and 'human rights' dog-eared in the hope that Manuel would "one day figure out the difference between 15 million voters and 385 million believers". Manuel's office said the minister was grateful for the gift as he had started taking strain having to formulate fiscal policy using Chappies wrappers as reference material. According to Finance Ministry spokesman Shekels Mpundu, the controversy had put Manuel in a very uncomfortable position. "As Finance Minister, Mr Manuel is the farm-hand who has to milk the Chinese dragon," explained Mpundu. "Basically he has to massage dragon-teats all day. "When he comes home he's too sticky and tired to read up on world events. All he wants to do is have his dinner, watch Desperate Housewives on the PVR, phone Beijing and ask permission to go to bed, and go to bed. "People should understand that and cut the guy some slack." Link <a href="http://phplist.sundaymedia.co.za/lists/lt.php?id=cUUBVlUGBQ9TVx1VAwYdUA8CBVc%3D">Dalai Lama gets 385 million more votes than Trevor Manuel </a>

Dalai Lama gets 385 million more votes than Trevor Manuel

After asking 'Who is the Dalai Lama?' last week, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has been informed that the Tibetan is in fact the sp...

5:24 AM

Is the ANC selling out our sovereignty?

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_uTIk0o0G5zlerdNP_E2zpsxYE0PW60gFo1drfr-91O_yjXJ-LgM2jbRJUUTeqNiv8g0vxOSD19wJ5Q6dfm8knfQ53VD23WyOMOXaz6Vvj5V_hV7qsHXGtzyqOhUDxWo19U0Wg0Bjr6A/s1600-h/Zuma+ivisit+to+China.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318370056966791474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_uTIk0o0G5zlerdNP_E2zpsxYE0PW60gFo1drfr-91O_yjXJ-LgM2jbRJUUTeqNiv8g0vxOSD19wJ5Q6dfm8knfQ53VD23WyOMOXaz6Vvj5V_hV7qsHXGtzyqOhUDxWo19U0Wg0Bjr6A/s400/Zuma+ivisit+to+China.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 287px" /></a>....How do you say, “We’ve sold our soul to the devil” in Chinese?<a href="http://phplist.sundaymedia.co.za/lists/lt.php?id=cUUJXlcEDQZWGlBWBU9QWQQHBw%3D%3D">Sovereign SA bans Dalai Lama, will call Chinese Premier 'baas'</a>The South African government has defended its decision to ban Tibet's Dalai Lama from entering the country and has denied that it is slavishly obeying China. According to a spokesman, the government has made only minor concessions to Beijing.... See link for full story <a href="http://www.hayibo.com/">http://www.hayibo.com/</a> James Myburgh, editor of politicsweb.co.za, on the dangers of the ANC using foreign funding to buy its way to a two-thirds majority The Chinese Communist Party is helping to pay for the ANC's 2009 election campaign. For some time now it has been clear that the African National Congress has been running the best election campaign that money can buy. Compared to the other political parties, which have had to scrape together funds to contest the elections, South Africa's ruling party seems to have an almost bottomless war chest. Some of the sources of the ANC's advantages in fundraising are known. The ANC, due to the current size of its parliamentary majority, receives some seventy percent of government funding - although it is not allowed to spend this on electioneering per se. Most corporate funders allocate the bulk of their political party funding to the ANC, although opposition parties receive a greater or lesser share as well. The ANC has also, over the years, pursued various surreptitious funding schemes which may or may not have borne fruit in this election. Yet it seems that much of the ANC's massive, and possibly overwhelming, expenditure on this election campaign originates from foreign sources. On Friday the Mail & Guardian <a href="http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-03-21-ancs-dodgy-funders" target="_blank">quoted</a> "party insiders" as saying the ANC's election effort has been "heavily subsidised by the ruling parties in Libya, Angola, China and India." It has also apparently received funds from Equatorial Guinea. This report seems to have been little noticed, which is surprising as this kind of funding poses as much, if not more of, a threat to South Africa's democracy than the efforts to subvert the National Prosecuting Authority. There are self-evident problems with this kind of funding. For one thing, for the ANC to actively solicit such donations obviously compromises South Africa's national security (<a href="http://books.google.co.za/books?id=XzLJJ6yhZggC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=continued+ability+of+this+country+to+pursue+its+internal+life+without+serious+interference.%22&source=bl&ots=hJxVcxZKlm&sig=of4yxNoogi2tPQkSTLNSUZLFB7w&hl=en&ei=yD_ISfyzB5LvnQfJ5uzKAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result" target="_blank">defined as</a> the continued ability of the country "to pursue the development of its internal life without serious interference ... from foreign powers.") For another, it poses clear dangers for the consolidation of democracy in this country. It is for such reasons that many democracies ban foreign donations outright. In the United States - according to a Federal Electoral Commission <a href="http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/foreign.shtml" target="_blank">brochure</a> - the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) "prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment." Such prohibitions apply in many other countries as well. In 2003 the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) produced a useful handbook on political party funding across the world (see <a href="http://www.idea.int/publications/funding_parties/index.cfm" target="_blank">here</a>). It states that foreign donations to political parties were banned in forty out of the 111 countries surveyed. Among the countries where ANC-style foreign fundraising would be illegal were: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Honduras, Iceland, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Senegal, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. The IDEA handbook notes that foreign funding of political parties presents the most "obvious danger" of all sources of party funding: "If a governing party depends heavily on financial resources provided by foreign governments or especially multinational corporations, their influence may undermine national sovereignty and the democratic principle of self-determination." The ANC's 1994 and 1999 election campaigns were largely financed with donations from foreign countries, including some of the world's most notorious dictatorships. One result has been the serial neglect by the ANC government of South Africa's national interests in foreign policy (not to mention human rights considerations) as its first priority has always been to repay its main funders with favours. At various points over the past fifteen years the ANC has been in hock to the regimes of Nigeria, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Libya, China, and Taiwan (see <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=96124&sn=Detail">here</a>). And these are just the ones we know about. Foreign funding seems to have dried up before the 2004 poll after Nelson Mandela stopped tapping foreign leaders on the ANC's behalf following his fallout with Thabo Mbeki. But, according to the Mail & Guardian ANC President Jacob Zuma has now successfully used his visits to various fraternal ruling parties overseas to do some fund raising on the side. This may already be compromising the ability of South Africa to pursue its own interests, free of external interference. If the M&G <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71654?oid=122419&sn=Detail">and COPE</a> are correct - and the Chinese Communist Party is helping to pay for the ANC's 2009 election campaign - the obvious question is whether this underpinned the government's otherwise inexplicable <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71627?oid=122403&sn=Detail">decision to refuse</a> the Dalai Lama a visa to attend a conference in this country? In its section on party funding in Africa the IDEA handbook notes that those sources of funding most incompatible with democracy are "kickbacks from recipients of government contracts and other largesse, diverting state resources to the governing party through front organizations, and donations from foreign sources such as business owners, multinationals and governments." In addition in many African countries "the use and abuse of state resources is a corrupt form of massive public funding... available only to the governing party." The advantages that can accrue to ruling parties are a major contributing factor to democratic atrophy in Africa. As IDEA notes: "In many African countries Governing parties' use of state resources, with evident impunity, and their brazen demand for and acceptance of kickbacks explain much of the apparent electoral impregnability of many African governing parties, even those with clear records of economic and human rights failures. They manage to build such formidable electoral war chests that their impoverished opponents usually have little chance." Apart from donations from foreign sources, there is already much evidence in the public domain of the ANC using these other dubious means to advantage itself and secure its position. The dangers for democracy in South Africa are also similar. At a time when this country should be looking forward to a more pluralistic and responsive democracy - and the ruling party to a much reduced majority - the ANC may succeed in simply buying its way back to a two-thirds majority.

Is the ANC selling out our sovereignty?

....How do you say, “We’ve sold our soul to the devil” in Chinese? Sovereign SA bans Dalai Lama, will call Chinese Premier 'baas' Th...

1:35 PM

ANC's dodgy funders

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj03BIh2I3cVLltTapY46N2rWoEyN3_9NQhVPBk7DpQHSFY_1i6EPOSwBijLigExZeqgQ4RvKuSlqshQ37xqCtAoaa_TTBiVNu8JlPf12_Srv9AcUJfOVDGvWjm0Txsi2zUu_Mb_MZwbTs/s1600-h/Zuma+visit+to+India.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318374922187909202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj03BIh2I3cVLltTapY46N2rWoEyN3_9NQhVPBk7DpQHSFY_1i6EPOSwBijLigExZeqgQ4RvKuSlqshQ37xqCtAoaa_TTBiVNu8JlPf12_Srv9AcUJfOVDGvWjm0Txsi2zUu_Mb_MZwbTs/s400/Zuma+visit+to+India.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 304px" /></a>The ANC is keeping mum on its funding sources for the election campaign, but party insiders involved in fundraising say its election effort is heavily subsidised by the ruling parties in Libya, Angola, China and India. A source involved in fundraising said the party began actively fund-raising in these countries for its election coffers before Polokwane. The ANC's initial election budget for the 2009 election totalled about R100-million, excluding travel and logistical arrangements, which cost the most, a source said. He said the party has also received funds from oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, one of Africa's most notorious dictatorships. The ANC's funding strategy is based on donations by individuals, but the big money comes from ruling parties elsewhere. ANC president Jacob Zuma and ANC delegations have been travelling, ostensibly to build historical relationships with other ruling parties but also to raise funds, insiders say. He visited Angola in March last year for the celebration of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale with a heavyweight ANC delegation. In June last year, in New Delhi, he signed a memorandum of understanding between the ANC and the Indian National Congress. This was followed by a visit to China where he met Hu Jintao, Chinese president and general secretary of the Communist Party of China. In October last year he attended Equatorial Guinea's independence day celebrations as a guest of dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has ruled the country since 1979, despite flawed elections. "The ANC have never asked for money from foreign governments; it is always from one ruling party to another," said an ANC insider.

ANC's dodgy funders

The ANC is keeping mum on its funding sources for the election campaign, but party insiders involved in fundraising say its election effort ...

12:46 PM

China funding ANC campaign?

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR9NiPRgINoBMjzDKV7meGXl3JYXjsp5mhYAzYyG1uYWrfQ6kDVkPgRZkpYyspsqZtk1EwELoDQdgaQE7ofi7CFhncPE7HAt2ueTLpfdrJBVn17Gw8289Z2oT9Yjbi_83d2biC4IEr-1M/s1600-h/zuma01.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317907751111431250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR9NiPRgINoBMjzDKV7meGXl3JYXjsp5mhYAzYyG1uYWrfQ6kDVkPgRZkpYyspsqZtk1EwELoDQdgaQE7ofi7CFhncPE7HAt2ueTLpfdrJBVn17Gw8289Z2oT9Yjbi_83d2biC4IEr-1M/s400/zuma01.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 290px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 170px" /></a>The government's refusal to grant the Dalai Lama a visa highlights the need for the regulation of political party funding, political analyst Judith February said on Thursday. "We just had the situation with the Dalai Lama, so I think it is reasonable to ask whether the ANC received funding from the Chinese recently to fund its election campaign," February, an analyst for the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), told the Cape Town Press Club. The Dalai Lama was refused a visa to attend a 2010 World Cup peace conference to have been held in Johannesburg starting on Friday. The event was cancelled after Nobel peace laureates FW De Klerk and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu withdrew in solidarity with the Dalai Lama. Shrouded in secrecy "The whole process of party funding is shrouded in secrecy," February said. "There are no regulations of private funding to political parties. This is a big gap in our anti-corruption apparatus. It needs to be fixed sooner rather than later." Idasa took five political parties to the Cape High Court in 2005 to get them to reveal their funding. The organisation was unsuccessful in its application, with the judge ruling that political parties were private bodies which did not have to make their books public. Issues with funding She said all political parties had had issues with funding, including the ANC, DA and Independent Democrats. "I think most political parties agree on a situation of 'show yours and I'll show you mine'," she said. February said it was worrying that Parliament had shown no movement on the issue, despite the ANC taking a resolution at its conference in Polokwane in 2007 calling for transparency on contributions to parties. February also spoke on the upcoming April 22 elections. ANC could be hurt in polls She said there was a good chance that the ANC might be hurt in the polls after the way in which it handled corruption charges against party president Jacob Zuma. "I think that the ANC is in danger of losing the two-thirds majority in Parliament," she said. "Some of the pressure to drop the charges against Zuma might hurt them at the polls," she said. "The ANC needs to be very careful in the way it deals with this issue." February said she expected the DA to "do very well" in the Western Cape and the ANC had itself to blame for losing support in the province. "The party did not do a good job in running the city," she said. "I think that in Helen Zille people see a leader of integrity. The city of Cape Town has had no corruption scandals. That sticks with people."

China funding ANC campaign?

The government's refusal to grant the Dalai Lama a visa highlights the need for the regulation of political party funding, political ana...

9:33 AM

South Africa cosying up to nasty Regimes

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ0oWpMx1L7eExSgyQ8fI7TVFb1czPkaRAIDKNuPAcHBOHY072FzHZZXd7YoktRC0ufCJ_lj8wF4BGgBKGGzjGydbzbPOxugId4yw7dpy4nH3Y0PJg6jZtdOwGOcEjEX5qNXBeYcUjF40/s1600-h/socialist-unity.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313746601313766178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ0oWpMx1L7eExSgyQ8fI7TVFb1czPkaRAIDKNuPAcHBOHY072FzHZZXd7YoktRC0ufCJ_lj8wF4BGgBKGGzjGydbzbPOxugId4yw7dpy4nH3Y0PJg6jZtdOwGOcEjEX5qNXBeYcUjF40/s400/socialist-unity.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 243px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px" /></a>Why post-apartheid South Africa, once a shining beacon of human rights, is cosying up to nasty regimes around the world South Africa’s handling of the Zimbabwean crisis has drawn sharp criticism from many corners. Indeed, among the international human-rights fraternity, post-apartheid South Africa—the democratic, multicultural “rainbow nation” forged by Nelson Mandela—is once again regarded as something of a pariah. Its gentle treatment of Mr Mugabe, once justified by fear of instability on South Africa’s borders, has become part of a wider pattern of alignment with some of the world’s least savoury regimes. In the UN Security Council, South Africa has voted against imposing sanctions not only on Zimbabwe but also on Myanmar’s military junta (after last year’s crackdown on peaceful protesters) and Iran (for violating nuclear safeguards). It is now leading efforts to suspend the International Criminal Court’s prosecution of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, for alleged genocide in Darfur. Its record in the UN Human Rights Council is no better. It has voted to stop monitoring human rights in Uzbekistan, despite widespread torture there, and in Iran, where executions, including those of juvenile offenders, have soared. “Never in my wildest dreams did I believe South Africa would play such a negative role,” says Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch, an international monitoring group. Shortly before taking over as South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994, Mr Mandela vowed that “human rights will be the light that guides our foreign affairs.” After decades of isolation under an apartheid government, Africa’s richest country would return to the world stage as a “beacon of hope” for the oppressed. And it all seemed to begin so well. At home, the new government brought in one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, prohibiting every kind of discrimination and guaranteeing not only the classic civil liberties but also a right to adequate housing, reproductive health care and even to “have the environment protected”. The death penalty was abolished; the abandonment of nuclear weapons confirmed. Abroad, South Africa launched itself as one of the region’s leading peacemakers, mediating in conflicts across Africa and sending troops into Darfur, Burundi, the Central African Republic and Congo. It was also the leading light behind the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, with an African peer-review system to promote democracy and good governance. Along with Brazil, China, India and Mexico, South Africa is now one of five emerging countries regularly invited to meetings of the G8, the group of the world’s richest states. And whenever reform of the UN Security Council comes up, its name is always among those mooted for a possible new permanent seat. But in recent years, Mr Mandela’s promised beacon has begun to look decidedly dim. Since 2006, when South Africa secured a (non-permanent) seat on the Security Council for the first time, it has been chumming up with China, Russia and other authoritarian regimes to water down or block virtually every resolution touching on human rights. It argues that the Security Council (dominated by the five veto-wielding permanent members) should not concern itself with such issues, leaving them to the Human Rights Council (on which developing countries have a controlling majority). But that body has proved as ineffectual as its predecessor, stifling—with South Africa’s help—criticism of the world’s worst tyrants. Why has democratic South Africa done so much to squander its once acclaimed moral leadership? In truth, the ruling African National Congress has always been cosy with some dictators, such as Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, even under Mr Mandela—largely out of gratitude for past help during the struggle against white rule. Another reason for its actions can be found in Mr Mandela’s experience in 1995, when he found little support in Africa for action against Nigeria’s former military junta. A bigger reason lies in South Africa’s ambivalent sense of identity, with one foot in the rich world, where its main economic interests continue to lie, and the other in the poor one, with which many of its people identify. Even after the end of white rule, some of South Africa’s neighbours regard it as something of a Trojan horse for the West. Hence its desire constantly to affirm its African credentials while playing down any hegemonic ambitions. South Africa has never sought to define itself as a great force for good in the world, says Aziz Pahad, deputy foreign minister until his resignation in September. Like almost every other country, its foreign policy is based not on morality but primarily on its own national interest. And that, says Mr Pahad, lies in creating a new and more equitable world order. Thus South Africa’s earlier talk about setting Africa’s house in order has given way to pushing for more representation of poorer countries in multilateral institutions such as the UN Security Council, the IMF and the World Bank. South Africa’s ambition to gain a greater voice means making common cause not just with its African neighbours but also with the rest of the poor world, democratic or not. Many South Africans say that rich countries’ strictures on democracy and human rights will carry little moral force until poorer countries have a bigger say in running the affairs of the world. Not all agree. Turning a blind eye to oppression abroad is “a betrayal of our own noble past”, argues Desmond Tutu, a Nobel peace-prize winner and a hero of the struggle against white rule. “If others had used the arguments we are using today when we asked them for their support against apartheid we might still have been unfree,” he says.

South Africa cosying up to nasty Regimes

W hy post-apartheid South Africa, once a shining beacon of human rights, is cosying up to nasty regimes around the world S outh Africa’s han...

12:26 PM

Britain's $1bn Africa transport routes in six former British colonies

Road and rail infrastructure improvements aim to boost trade and counter growing Chinese influence on the African continent <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305284916886844338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-htJJLq6_Tjuq_ZEkEeu3B8g5nzPoDJpK6J3UtcxtFiQtZ1pA_VoSnCcSkMMI6xpOJ8yWPEQggcLU0etgsMnmrsty6wK5Mj1kEpH02u4Fjzuu0cwVBbbYZdQWYfFuJIKEE-zHJ6gMED4/s400/Passengers-on-a-commuter--001.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" /> Britain is joining the latest scramble in Africa – to reverse decades of decay and even the disappearance of large parts of road and rail systems – with a $1bn (£690m) project to rebuild the transport network across the south of the continent. The UK today announced an agreement with eight African countries and the World Bank that will see the reconstruction of 5,280 miles (8,500km) of roads and the rejuvenation of 373 miles of railways, including some new track and the upgrading of border posts. Britain says the decade-long project will boost trade in the region by hundreds of millions of pounds each year by speeding up transport times, including at border crossings where lorries can wait for days to be allowed through. The initiative is part of a web of investments and reconstruction plans that have taken hold across Africa in recent years, on a scale unseen since the road and rail networks were first laid down by European colonisers. They include massive Chinese construction programmes that have unnerved western countries, which fear loss of trade and influence on the continent. The international development minister, Gareth Thomas, today told a business conference that trade routes across central and southern Africa could be "revolutionised" by the UK's north-south corridor initiative to rebuild the transport infrastructure in six former British colonies – Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, Tanzania and South Africa – as well as two other countries with close trading ties to them, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Thomas said that the intiative would initially boost regional trade by 10%, and eventually by 50%. "Africa's share of global trade fell from 6% to 2% between 1960 and 2002, and high transport costs are a major reason for this," said Thomas. "Farmers and businesses operating in landlocked countries such as Zambia, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo face transport costs up to 50% higher than coastal countries. "As a consequence, their trade volume is 60% smaller. Without a better route out, supermarkets and traders are missing out on quality produce and African communities are missing the chance to trade, create more jobs and, in turn, feed themselves and school their children." A large part of the road and rail infrastructure inherited by newly independent African countries about 50 years ago has fallen into disrepair. In some states, most notably Congo, it has largely disappeared. Under Mobutu Sese Seko's negligent and plunderous rule, much of the Belgian-built road system was buried under rainforest or destroyed by heavy lorries and lack of maintenance. Travelling just 60 miles drive from the capital, Kinshasa, can take about eight hours. Congo, a nation nearly 10 times the size of the UK, has just 1,400 miles of paved roads – less than a tenth of what existed at independence and not enough for even a single road from one side of the country to the other. The decline has been less marked in countries such as Tanzania and Zambia, but over the years lack of maintenance has seen the road system worn away and the railways becoming increasingly decrepit and unreliable. Zambia has 12,500 miles of paved roads but they are riddled with potholes. Mozambique's infrastructure was wrecked by civil war, sponsored by apartheid South Africa, while the rail network has fared little better. The famed Benguela railway across Angola ground to a halt because of the civil war and foreign invasion, meaning much of it was destroyed. Britain is expected to put about $100m into the project initially. It will focus on linking inland trade routes with ports in Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa, where Durban and Port Elizabeth are the principal gateways for many of the goods moved in and out of southern Africa. China has already had a major impact in other African countries, including Mozambique where it has built thousands of miles of new roads. Other recent initiatives have revived part of the region's railway network – one of the first was the route from Durban, across Zimbabwe and into Zambia at Victoria Falls. It ends at the major mining town of Ndola. It took a lot of money and nearly a decade to make the three rail networks function together, but the end result is that a freight train now takes about three days to run from Ndola to Durban. It used to take more than a month.

Britain's $1bn Africa transport routes in six former British colonies

Road and rail infrastructure improvements aim to boost trade and counter growing Chinese influence on the African continent Britain is joini...

7:57 AM

How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2u4xqSVgR8AIbEk0hqIP33rTddsGRshpMMK1Z8cNyvU_OkkVLEADYkqE_V3D9T_UXGRqwzzA7QNYyI20A-TgLjdeqZkiyk1nbMWXaUpG00EJMTp5DnstDLW5lwSl2UDN8lA0LpmoufLY/s1600-h/Zuma_ivisit_to_China.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352700756020814050" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2u4xqSVgR8AIbEk0hqIP33rTddsGRshpMMK1Z8cNyvU_OkkVLEADYkqE_V3D9T_UXGRqwzzA7QNYyI20A-TgLjdeqZkiyk1nbMWXaUpG00EJMTp5DnstDLW5lwSl2UDN8lA0LpmoufLY/s400/Zuma_ivisit_to_China.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 287px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" /></a> On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own right, outlined a daring (if by today's standards utterly offensive) new method to 'tame' and colonise what was then known as the Dark Continent. 'My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race,' wrote Galton. 'I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.' <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352702187990744690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3DZWtDvK9tL-eGZ-oTut2zYw8MmrjtuGlHFGtIiIlVyJnRYbX7o9pWXnUrF7UUbTTocUTETCJFGWMqvDsfrtkVeLF__MQG-yMfOoumCNL4TeKV6dWWhCRCY0V5QzeTp_UvBIjksHRQSQ/s400/chinaafrica372.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 372px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 192px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" /> Despite an outcry in Parliament and heated debate in the august salons of the Royal Geographic Society, Galton insisted that 'the history of the world tells the tale of the continual displacement of populations, each by a worthier successor, and humanity gains thereby'. A controversial figure, Galton was also the pioneer of eugenics, the theory that was used by Hitler to try to fulfil his mad dreams of a German Master Race. Eventually, Galton's grand resettlement plans fizzled out because there were much more exciting things going on in Africa. But that was more than 100 years ago, and with legendary explorers such as Livingstone, Speke and Burton still battling to find the source of the Nile - and new discoveries of exotic species of birds and animals featuring regularly on newspaper front pages - vast swathes of the continent had not even been 'discovered'. Yet Sir Francis Galton, it now appears, was ahead of his time. His vision is coming true - if not in the way he imagined. An astonishing invasion of Africa is now under way. In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony. Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke. With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiAHXaXnNglPtUzMHuBL-EnP9HjI9cG6CJtrHbVtGME0TUh2q9KZknm6v5u3NLq99OOukE5IsSFO3Dp7N-L1T-sxckTPc2DvB-NuDy3CwHRrRRTArwYI3sSzqF20WvCkzzqdFVXYppcE0/s1600-h/china-zimbabwe.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266427632530234978" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiAHXaXnNglPtUzMHuBL-EnP9HjI9cG6CJtrHbVtGME0TUh2q9KZknm6v5u3NLq99OOukE5IsSFO3Dp7N-L1T-sxckTPc2DvB-NuDy3CwHRrRRTArwYI3sSzqF20WvCkzzqdFVXYppcE0/s400/china-zimbabwe.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" /></a>The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve China's problems of over-population and pollution. New horizons? Mugabe has said: 'We must turn from the West and face the East' The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools. The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.The trains are linked to ports dotted around the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap toys made in China. Confucius Institutes (state-funded Chinese 'cultural centres') have sprung up throughout Africa, as far afield as the tiny land-locked countries of Burundi and Rwanda, teaching baffled local people how to do business in Mandarin and Cantonese. Massive dams are being built, flooding nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines, with 'slave' labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and minerals. Pristine forests are being destroyed, with China taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa. All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own 'Chinatown', as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent. 'African cloths' sold in markets on the continent are now almost always imported, bearing the legend: 'Made in China'. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKdijKK-hoib7JksG9MwaOCXTViIaA4d0OxA_YZRAE9kfynVKcCjlUa4Mgs-OYR_oUxL39up_i8LmDJGxTd-7aMwxeZyA1d-zAu-3CXsAclJlwgDfpVbvn0sjr0RrWkeblu4PhDd9e-6M/s1600-h/china-africa_LGVtzKoCEqsw.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266047673566844130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKdijKK-hoib7JksG9MwaOCXTViIaA4d0OxA_YZRAE9kfynVKcCjlUa4Mgs-OYR_oUxL39up_i8LmDJGxTd-7aMwxeZyA1d-zAu-3CXsAclJlwgDfpVbvn0sjr0RrWkeblu4PhDd9e-6M/s400/china-africa_LGVtzKoCEqsw.jpg" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 372px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 283px" /></a>From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower's long-term survival. 'The Chinese are all over the place,' says Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing interests around the continent. 'If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have taken their place.' Likened to one race deciding to adopt a new home on another planet, Beijing has launched its so-called 'One China In Africa' policy because of crippling pressure on its own natural resources in a country where the population has almost trebled from 500 million to 1.3 billion in 50 years. China is hungry - for land, food and energy. While accounting for a fifth of the world's population, its oil consumption has risen 35-fold in the past decade and Africa is now providing a third of it; imports of steel, copper and aluminium have also shot up, with Beijing devouring 80 per cent of world supplies. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi93SyZ3T8mzO5BjmYvJ2NNAuyVasaVQVmuoKYfM013V4euJ8Hoblt6ZramLaYdafSG9m_RsLJIeUdxussR3TRFxwZK4oE5yuiyexRd-7AF4W_6dAo9cq16Jc70yaI3VE_wCzzD-v7vt1Q/s1600-h/article-0-01EF328B00000578.jpg"></a>Fuelling its own boom at home, China is also desperate for new markets to sell goods. And Africa, with non-existent health and safety rules to protect against shoddy and dangerous goods, is the perfect destination.The result of China's demand for raw materials and its sales of products to Africa is that turnover in trade between Africa and China has risen from £5million annually a decade ago to £6billion today. However, there is a lethal price to pay. There is a sinister aspect to this invasion. Chinese-made war planes roar through the African sky, bombing opponents. Chinese-made assault rifles and grenades are being used to fuel countless murderous civil wars, often over the materials the Chinese are desperate to buy.<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352698808240982786" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAr3ZAk8j4VEpnqlKt4aRyXN4u6gCaDmmoaRsbiOd6zm1tz4KjOZT8qtTHnh48mthuGfMXUU-YTWAtBuaQFsuEvZB6wyl9phfTrjc0MUMs8pGfNxFD9j0HUOeOWj8om7JaGIoaD_yuJaw/s400/china-africa02.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 227px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" />Take, for example, Zimbabwe. Recently, a giant container ship from China was due to deliver its cargo of three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 3,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,500 mortars to President Robert Mugabe's regime. After an international outcry, the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, was forced to return to China, despite Beijing's insistence that the arms consignment was a 'normal commercial deal'. Indeed, the 77-ton arms shipment would have been small beer - a fraction of China's help to Mugabe. He already has high-tech, Chinese-built helicopter gunships and fighter jets to use against his people.Ever since the U.S. and Britain imposed sanctions in 2003, Mugabe has courted the Chinese, offering mining concessions for arms and currency. While flying regularly to Beijing as a high-ranking guest, the 84-year-old dictator rants at 'small dots' such as Britain and America. <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266422820235483202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4zJekjTpcCZLYfkNL1YLrQlhr7sF8Zhqnc2IYKTEsCYorcAaPpCJWRFX4S920bR0T_QqGyenz-UWlj3klQyzldvcgCcWgGGp-Fvnfuf-UNj8nEfe-CjwXCcUDA6IDvoM8TWXNamLdac/s400/china-anyuf-jiang.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 280px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" /> He can afford to. Mugabe is orchestrating his campaign of terror from a 25-bedroom, pagoda-style mansion built by the Chinese. Much of his estimated £1billion fortune is believed to have been siphoned off from Chinese 'loans'. The imposing grey building of ZANU-PF, his ruling party, was paid for and built by the Chinese. Mugabe received £200 million last year alone from China, enabling him to buy loyalty from the army. In another disturbing illustration of the warm relations between China and the ageing dictator, a platoon of the China People's Liberation Army has been out on the streets of Mutare, a city near the border with Mozambique, which voted against the president in the recent, disputed election. Almost 30 years ago, Britain pulled out of Zimbabwe - as it had done already out of the rest of Africa, in the wake of Harold Macmillan's 'wind of change' speech. Today, Mugabe says: 'We have turned East, where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West, where the sun sets.' Despite Britain's commendable colonial legacy of a network of roads, railways and schools, the British are now being shunned. According to one veteran diplomat: 'China is easier to do business with because it doesn't care about human rights in Africa - just as it doesn't care about them in its own country. All the Chinese care about is money.' <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266206986971799170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ9qsJDV5XGczng8IM932bRfUlkSn5GGEW9xS-R0Jv0NYCq_qMqy8nKePlyAvfJ7QvYiJe8ibUwFipC-EJs3UNEU3C17kPdsuUAcPRP8MK83JQr5pGlQGKd0fnO4OUKhe5SYcLnFSrFOM/s400/china_sudan_big.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 224px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" />Nowhere is that more true than Sudan. Branded 'Africa's Killing Fields', the massive oil-rich East African state is in the throes of the genocide and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of black, non-Arab peasants in southern Sudan. In effect, through its supplies of arms and support, China has been accused of underwriting a humanitarian scandal. The atrocities in Sudan have been described by the U.S. as 'the worst human rights crisis in the world today'. The government in Khartoum has helped the feared Janjaweed militia to rape, murder and burn to death more than 350,000 people. The Chinese - who now buy half of all Sudan's oil - have happily provided armoured vehicles, aircraft and millions of bullets and grenades in return for lucrative deals. Indeed, an estimated £1billion of Chinese cash has been spent on weapons. According to Human Rights First, a leading human rights advocacy organisation, Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and ammunition for rifles and heavy machine guns are continuing to flow into Darfur, which is dotted with giant refugee camps, each containing hundreds of thousands of people. Between 2003 and 2006, China sold Sudan $55 million worth of small arms, flouting a United Nations weapons embargo. With new warnings that the cycle of killing is intensifying, an estimated two thirds of the non-Arab population has lost at least one member of their families in Darfur. Although two million people have been uprooted from their homes in the conflict, China has repeatedly thwarted United Nations denunciations of the Sudanese regime. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3BO_lIpQR2IOOJvkrrPvcPlFYMD5zeA2Tw3suXQYUAqSLnS44KKe2fwFDZ_ONw-h-ZcObHZYTl6yRkzvZ0ppHrsAZd6gORE4f3axD8a_bZIXR2L5c7J_MRLLbHtOFxdSOmuSd4C0wm_8/s1600-h/china-angola-oil.jpg"></a>While the Sudanese slaughter has attracted worldwide condemnation, prompting Hollywood film-maker Steven Spielberg to quit as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics, few parts of Africa are now untouched by China.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz-kbhb6kpm8ICw-cwh6iYx6Nhm390WtZ0-TggJDPoIkCMGPZp2UMZe3WfJr-QlkUYgCTxYFCYHoDLwMIi11tdfyJPyNZZl0wGAWJBW1h41ic06RPytrof6EIRXZacnK3niYLPPLCk8YY/s1600-h/china-africa-oil.jpg"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0SPAWmdYZr90tiL8C9QdjYf7ycskUrsfcUejKYCOSxnsaDT_BsuL_WpAZvtLQuqVKCr_NLEDVATuVGIoq7iOQpXI_UuIZ8Is0WCiIj5ey5Bee8ClhRBB7xCnTtIFD8atQoxm3Y6Vber0/s1600-h/china-africa2LG.jpg"></a>In Congo, more than £2billion has been 'loaned' to the government. In Angola, £3 billion has been paid in exchange for oil. In Nigeria, more than £5billion has been handed over. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhev_gfL3RCY8vfjWPnrzGQpLz172UQ8d40Y9yX52iX3srH529u7eb8SyuFdsxil0xKQjxxL8X69nm0_HPE19yv-EFdRvi44cr6ef6TOILn3XJCmkouwP0V5Y3cXkys9dqJsOD9CSWJJSk/s1600-h/china-equatorial-guinea.jpg"></a>In Equatorial Guinea, where the president publicly hung his predecessor from a cage suspended in a theatre before having him shot, Chinese firms are helping the dictator build an entirely new capital, full of gleaming skyscrapers and, of course, Chinese restaurants.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguLXdoRE7l-VOeIg34mdjM9fhtRQ-Cft3LEgPBXiPwUWiHVo7Bc3Wj_8lBuAo-PmqTwkYu90RhvSqSW1mpfll3ET4Wf1WOosKRTrry4veFC8yUyFV83RAUaOaq8L8nag1EEon2N4lnwLM/s1600-h/china-equatorial-guinea.jpg"></a><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352699315606139186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvkTOkmYr-z6nvCdROVX2FZ5cMj0-3oF1Z-N9qXL3AqD2eR4ou9o-u5x0LuiHdt2yWq2Qtazk4DFx2o6QPKfFmf2pIs5nz8kfFca___u-NiiKmJP_EDlzNB_5R0C17zZT5HrfUdL7Mb-I/s400/china-africa01.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 276px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" />After battling for years against the white colonial powers of Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, post-independence African leaders are happy to do business with China for a straightforward reason: cash. With western loans linked to an insistence on democratic reforms and the need for 'transparency' in using the money (diplomatic language for rules to ensure dictators do not pocket millions), the Chinese have proved much more relaxed about what their billions are used for. Certainly, little of it reaches the continent's impoverished 800 million people. Much of it goes straight into the pockets of dictators. In Africa, corruption is a multi-billion pound industry and many experts believe that China is fuelling the cancer. The Chinese are contemptuous of such criticism. To them, Africa is about pragmatism, not human rights. 'Business is business,' says Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong, adding that Beijing should not interfere in 'internal' affairs. 'We try to separate politics from business.' While the bounty has, not surprisingly, been welcomed by African dictators, the people of Africa are less impressed. At a market in Zimbabwe recently, where Chinese goods were on sale at nearly every stall, one woman told me she would not waste her money on 'Zing-Zong' products. 'They go Zing when they work, and then they quickly go Zong and break,' she said. 'They are a waste of money. But there's nothing else. China is the only country that will do business with us.' <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-29eXs3rYusCA6nhpOSQzZGThLjgxELC-yXOXUwnmESt8Lr8dSTBC69_5J6owWeItKDJmRecaFzR8LlaLQ8j7D4KKlIDiGB_HGvD-pfEPBp1TWNKNo3s-J0EkU3aAnv4wHF-6exe1-YM/s1600-h/chinadeals1102.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352704809551290386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-29eXs3rYusCA6nhpOSQzZGThLjgxELC-yXOXUwnmESt8Lr8dSTBC69_5J6owWeItKDJmRecaFzR8LlaLQ8j7D4KKlIDiGB_HGvD-pfEPBp1TWNKNo3s-J0EkU3aAnv4wHF-6exe1-YM/s400/chinadeals1102.gif" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 272px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 230px" /></a>There have also been riots in Zambia, Angola and Congo over the flood of Chinese immigrant workers. The Chinese do not use African labour where possible, saying black Africans are lazy and unskilled. In Angola, the government has agreed that 70 per cent of tendered public works must go to Chinese firms, most of which do not employ Angolans. As well as enticing hundreds of thousands to settle in Africa, they have even shipped Chinese prisoners to produce the goods cheaply. In Kenya, for example, only ten textile factories are still producing, compared with 200 factories five years ago, as China undercuts locals in the production of 'African' souvenirs. Where will it all end? As far as Beijing is concerned, it will stop only when Africa no longer has any minerals or oil to be extracted from the continent. A century after Sir Francis Galton outlined his vision for Africa, the Chinese are here to stay. More will come. The people of this bewitching, beautiful continent, where humankind first emerged from the Great Rift Valley, desperately need progress. The Chinese are not here for that. They are here for plunder. After centuries of pain and war, Africa deserves better. Here is a rundown of all the agreements signed so far:-<a href="http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/economy/artikel.php?ID=106028">Ghana, China sign agreements to boost economic cooperation</a><a href="http://za.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2006-06-19T144055Z_01_BAN952832_RTRIDST_0_OZABS-GHANA-CHINA-DAM-20060619.XML">Ghana confident China to finance $600 million dam</a><a href="http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-06-19-voa35.cfm">VOA: China, Ghana Boost Trade Agreement</a><a href="http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2006/june/06_21_4.html">China Egypt Sign Energy Accord</a><a href="http://www2.chinaknowledge.com/news/news-detail.aspx?id=3429">China Gives Egypt $50 Million Loan</a><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2006/gb20060607_581473.htm?campaign_id=nws_insdr_jun9&link_position=link10" target="new">A Bidding Frenzy for Angola's Oil</a>. <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=68&art_id=qw1150884001300B255">Chinese PM wraps up Angola agreements</a><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,,1798605,00.html">Guardian: China deal gives Zimbabwe ÃÂ£700m boost </a><a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/200606120054.html">Zimbabwe: Govt, China in $1.3 Billion Power Deal</a><a href="http://english.people.com.cn/200606/20/eng20060620_275432.html">Huge potentials for China-Congo cooperation: communique</a><a href="http://www2.chinaknowledge.com/news/news-detail.aspx?id=3454">Premier Wen visits Republic of Congo to enhance economic ties</a><a href="http://za.today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2006-06-21T170450Z_01_ALL161477_RTRIDST_0_OZABS-TRADE-CHINA-SAFRICA-20060621.XML">China to cap textile exports to S.Africa</a><a href="http://www.sabcnews.com/politics/government/0,2172,129784,00.html">14 bilateral agreements signed between SA,China</a><a href="http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/eng/news/today/?show=88434">China Gives Angola Fresh $2bn credit</a>

How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried

On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own...

12:47 PM

SA Navy R30m PR stunt will deplete most of navy's budget

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjbSGQweqX4L5sk3EvoduMd4DjPlcPia2DjW-0yVEBbznHcDkvY3fDb3KHSrny0Mxkeq_H_oj3fHAl8eW2CxXsCfsaGi92-1eIAu0rr3TxIxvmQVFavtlcKhwEhnM_Dv9o1r6ZrMXsYao/s1600-h/SAS-SPIOENKOP.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230562522918549618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjbSGQweqX4L5sk3EvoduMd4DjPlcPia2DjW-0yVEBbznHcDkvY3fDb3KHSrny0Mxkeq_H_oj3fHAl8eW2CxXsCfsaGi92-1eIAu0rr3TxIxvmQVFavtlcKhwEhnM_Dv9o1r6ZrMXsYao/s400/SAS-SPIOENKOP.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" /></a> Simon's Town - The navy is going to dedicate its only extensive visit abroad this year to supporting the government's diplomatic relations in China and other eastern countries, at a cost of about R30m. In the past and due to the navy's limited budget, these types of visits usually focused on training and joint exercises with naval allies. SAS SPIOENKOP The third of the South African Navy VALOUR Class Frigates "Strategically seen, the saying is that you keep your friends close and your enemies closer," said military analyst Helmoed-Römer Heitman. "China is a future colonial power in Africa and it makes sense for South Africa to seek favour now. This will mean that South Africa will become a client rather than a colony of China in the future. "This is really the only alternative for South Africa, seeing as it regards the USA as an enemy and Europe as an officious entity in Africa." Inter-continental ties Navy spokesperson Captain Lisa Hendricks said one of the navy's brand new frigates, the SAS Spioenkop, will support the government's diplomatic initiatives. The ship will also visit Vietnam, India, Mauritius and Singapore. The trip will last from October until December and will deplete most of the navy's budget for these kinds of deployments. "The aim of the visits is to create inter-continental ties with the East and the Far East and to develop co-operation," Hendricks said.

SA Navy R30m PR stunt will deplete most of navy's budget

Simon's Town - The navy is going to dedicate its only extensive visit abroad this year to supporting the government's diplomatic rel...

12:23 AM

Ivory sale a 'green light' for poachers

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhId-Bs1ZzC49UvVwa8AveatCOnmwLEFXpP73_u-JdRHeHNl057wAup4J2whd1bsKCH75zwp4lXXe99TP7tInQCi6ChlFUOrEMOV_4C8V0GL_SgwhSY1DDwA1oimvPUpfpkInX1HhQsU0/s1600-h/ivory.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225618651956196050" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhId-Bs1ZzC49UvVwa8AveatCOnmwLEFXpP73_u-JdRHeHNl057wAup4J2whd1bsKCH75zwp4lXXe99TP7tInQCi6ChlFUOrEMOV_4C8V0GL_SgwhSY1DDwA1oimvPUpfpkInX1HhQsU0/s400/ivory.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" /></a>A Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) standing committee decision allowing China to import more than a hundred tons of elephant ivory gives a green light to poaching syndicates, Animal Rights Africa (ARA) warned on Wednesday. At a meeting in Geneva this week, the Cites committee approved China as a fit buyer for 108 tons of ivory put up for sale by South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. ARA says the controversial decision - according to experts, China is the world's largest illegal ivory market - includes the sale of 51 tons of elephant ivory from South Africa. In real terms, the 51 tons represented the death of an estimated 7 699 South African elephants, the Johannesburg-based organisation said in a statement. "This sale has literally given the green light to the international poaching syndicates and organised crime, and will present a nightmare to poorly-resourced wildlife enforcement agencies in Africa. "The international wildlife trade is worth billions of US dollars annually and has been responsible for the decline of wild populations of a number of species of animals. "Annually, more than 20 000 elephants are killed for the illegal ivory trade, and Chinese nationals have already been implicated in illegal ivory seizures by law enforcement agencies in 20 African countries." ARA said it was "shameful" the South African government was one of the main proponents for the continuation of the ivory trade. "China's lack of human rights, its support of repressive regimes and extreme oppression and exploitation of animals are well known, and should be cause enough for other countries not to trade with it," ARA said. - Sapa

Ivory sale a 'green light' for poachers

A Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) standing committee decision allowing China to import more than a hundred t...

4:47 PM

South Africa P.I.G.