Front cover of the book, La Chinafrigue
The PUNCH
editorial of Thursday, September 27, 2012 is the motivation for sending
this previously written article for publication in the same newspaper.
The editorial details how there is little to show for the billions of
dollars in contracts which have been awarded to a Chinese firm for the
rehabilitation and construction of several rail lines in the country.
The photograph on the front cover of the
book, La Chinafrique: Pékin à la Conquête du Continent Noir, depicts an
African soldier, in full uniform, his left hand clutching a gun, while
the right hand holds a green and yellow umbrella over the head of a
Chinese man in a T-shirt and knee-length shorts. The Chinese man is
holding a cell phone to his ear with his right hand, while the left hand
appears to be tucked into his belt. He exudes confidence and control.
The soldier is almost standing at attention, with his face looking
slightly downwards. Both of the men are standing at a location which
obviously is a construction site, a housing estate, with a row of
identical houses behind them. The photograph is said to have been taken
in Nigeria.
The book itself was published in 2008
(Paris: Bernard Grasset) by two French journalists, Serge Michel and
Michel Beuret, who travelled around 11 African countries (Algeria,
Senegal, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Angola,
Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia) investigating how the Chinese were conducting
their various businesses and what kind of relationship obtained between
them and their host governments and communities. The book should
ordinarily be a must-read for every African leader as well as all those
desirous of conducting business with China, if not for the fact that
most of our leaders as well as we, the led, are not known to be that
enamoured with reading anyway. Also, the fact of the book having been
written in French makes it inaccessible to the non-Francophone segments
of the continent.
In the book, the authors provide pretty
damning details of how Africa is being pillaged by the Chinese, who are
arriving by their planeloads and are dealing with Africans in probably
the most disrespectful and dehumanising manner since the slave trade,
going as far as physically assaulting African workers on their
construction sites and practising a system of “apartheid” between these
ones and their Chinese counterparts. The Chinese businessmen are said to
enjoy unusual perquisites from our governments, as can be deduced from
the photograph described above. A Chinese businessman in Nigeria is said
to drive around in a car, his personal car, bearing a police
registration plate number! The free trade zones being established all
over Africa are also normally exempted from accountability as to the
impact of the business on the environment.
There are those who suspect the real
motivation for writing the book, claiming that it stems more from the
fact that Europeans are smarting due to the stiff competition that China
is giving them now in Africa. That is, China is gradually edging Europe
out of Africa, undermining the Europeans’ age-long privileged presence
on the continent. Indeed, Chinese companies are all over Africa now,
constructing roads, stadia and dams, setting up power stations, laying
railway tracks, building bridges and housing estates. And Africa has
welcomed China with open arms, impressed by their hard work and the
speed with which they are able to deliver on projects. In the book
referred to, the authors begin their prologue with a statement credited
to a Congolese civil servant, and which probably sums up Africa’s
attitude vis-Ã -vis China: “The Chinese offer us concrete things, while
the West come with intangible values. What is the use of transparency of
governance, if the people don’t have electricity and there are no jobs?
You can’t fill your stomach with democracy.” (My translation)
Poor, poor Africans! There we go again!
Centuries after our shattering experience with the slave trade, we are
still being told that part of the reason for the continuing
underdevelopment of our continent is the fact that we have not come to
terms with that infamous legacy; namely, that we have not faced up to
the fact that we connived with the Westerners to sell our own kith and
kin into slavery in foreign lands. At least, that is the opinion
expressed in an article by Tunde Obadina entitled, “Slave trade: A root
of contemporary African crisis”, in which he states categorically that,
“The root of the crisis facing African societies is their failure to
come to terms with the consequences of that contact” and that “the vast
majority of slaves taken out of Africa were sold by African rulers,
traders and a military aristocracy who all grew wealthy from the
business.” More significantly, coming to terms was equally implied in
the important speech delivered by the former President Nicéphore
Dieudonné Soglo of the Republic of Benin when he launched the UNESCO
“Slave Route” Project on September 1, 1994 at the old slave port of
Ouidah, when he said:
“It would serve no purpose also to cover
up our own responsibility in the disasters which have befallen and
continue to befall us. Our complicity in the trade has been well
established, our meaningless divisions, our collective wrongdoings,
slavery as an endogenous institution…” (My translation)
History may be repeating itself again,
now with the Chinese. If the accounts in La Chinafrique are even only
partly true, then Africa might be entering another period of
enslavement, the only difference being that this time around, we are the
ones solely responsible for our plight, tying the noose and putting our
own necks into it to hang ourselves. For example, we are allowing the
Chinese to help us wipe out our forests, and they do so with utmost
efficiency, carting off the logs to feed their humongous furniture
industry back home – and we gladly import the furniture made from our
very own trees back from them at exorbitant prices. Foolish Africans!
So, transparency does not fill our
stomachs, and democracy cannot be fed upon, abi? I guess our stomachs
are being properly filled now that we have China dumping upon us all
these useless third-rate-quality goods which have now taken over our
markets! Crooked African businessmen are finding in the Chinese the
crooked partners they need to make easy money, and they are flooding our
continent with garbage – from senseless children’s toys to gaudy,
badly-sewn clothes (not to talk of fake and adulterated products), and
treating us like dirt on our own soil! Africa, beware! We are being
colonised all over again!
