By Olakunle Agboola – Zambians working for Chinese companies complain about low wages, poor working conditions of service, general mistreatment and racism.
Howard French states in his interviews with Chinese settlers in Africa, that the racist feelings are so apparent in their mouths and minds. He states that the Chinese describe Africans as lazy, dishonest, stupid and unwilling to work hard for eventual reward.
Intelligent observers are looking beyond the nose of China’s interest in Africa. The subtle and informal colonization of the Zambian economy is a think-thank scene for Africans to rise to the occasion of knowing the kind of contract they signed. Unlike the formal colonization, which occurred through the Berlin Conference of 1884 when European imperialist bandits partitioned Africa in a formal agreement, China is doing it informally and deceptively; but the motivation is the same which is: access to raw materials, providing markets for their goods, providing a home for their citizens to settle through emigration, as well as a long term strategy for achieving geopolitical power and influence which China feels it deserves given its population. This strategy appears not to be so apparent to naïve African leaders or if they do, they decide to look the other way for a few pieces of silver and for short term personal gain instead of safeguarding future generations’ interests.
As the Nigerian Central Bank Governor, Lamido Sanusi openly admitted in his article in the London Financial Times in March, 2013, “China takes our primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This is meant to be a wakeup call to our leaders about the consequences of the current trajectory in Zambia with regard to foreign investment and immigration. Kabiki, Zambian journalist is of the opinion that the unprecedented and uncontrolled influx of the Chinese has escalated and accelerated since 2015 following the death of President Michael Sata. The concerns of Zambians about the Chinese influx are numerous but the major ones are over land, loss of employment opportunities, lawlessness, and corruption, crowding out Zambian SMEs by the Chinese, lack of benefits by ordinary Zambians from Chinese foreign direct investment, environment degradation and racism by Chinese nationals.
There is a serious bitterness among Zambians that the Chinese and other foreigners are being allowed to acquire large tracts of land so easily in Zambia both on the primary and secondary markets. It appears that at the rate things are going there will be little land left for indigenous Zambians. This is a genuine concern and the earlier it is addressed the better. One does not have to carry out research about what is going on, because it is so apparent.
Kabiki opined that the Chinese have started depriving Zambians jobs as they are engaged in activities which in normal societies should be reserved for locals. The Chinese are involved in street vending by selling second hand clothes, rearing Chickens, selling roasted maize on the streets and a myriad of other activities thereby competing with Zambians and depriving them of self-employment opportunities.
The ideal situation, therefore, is that Zambia as a host country is supposed to benefit through gaining access to advanced technology through skills , creation of quality employment opportunities, contribution to the tax revenues, promotion of local businesses to supply inputs and/or render services needed by Chinese companies to support their operations, development of technical and managerial talent.
There is no denying the fact that Zambia needs Chinese trade and investment as the numbers do not lie. Zambia-China trade was estimated at $2.6 billion in 2016, Chinese investment in Zambia is approximately $4billion; whereas Zambia is said to be indebted to China by a tune of $5billion. The debt-traps by the Chinese is a way of commanding height and in the case of Zambia, it is ticking time bomb.
Zambia became the first Africa nation to become Chinese colony. Zambia defaulted on a couple of loans and they lost their major power company, ZESCO which is now taking over by Chinese. Also, is the Zambia Broadcasting Cooperation, ZNBC which is now fully owned by China. Would any African nation be allowed to run China Electricity Company or control their Police? This shows China’s newly strategy of colonizing Africa is taking a nice shape having a deep tentacle that needs pragmatic measures if African leaders could wake up and see beyond their selfish acts of not selling the future of Africa.
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