It is hard to fathom, but Zimbabwe is sandwiched between the ambitions of two super powers to extend their influence over the African continent. Both China and the United States see Africa as the strategic focus in an ever-tense game of vying for hegemony. The recent outrage by the Bush administration at South Africa’s refusal (some would euphemistically call it ‘SA’s failure’ to support the resolution, but really, it was a conscious calculation of the pros and cons from the standpoint of ongoing trade relations with China) to support a UN resolution against Mugabe had nothing to do with some sudden realisation of moral backbone or rising to the need to provide moral leadership against a man (read Bob) pulverising his people; it has everything to do with America’s concern over rapid growth of Sino-African trade. We must look at this more closely.
Way back in the year 2000, Chinese trade with Africa was almost too modest (it was in the region of $10 billion a year) considering world standards. Last year it rose to a staggering $70 billion a year, making China the second largest trading partner of Africa after the US. And as we all know, the increase of trade signifies an increase in influence. The particular detail of this trade includes oil transactions (a third of China’s oil comes from Angola and Sudan whilst an agreement with Nigeria is pending). Large quantities of bottom priced consumer goods are supplied to Africa in return. This development is particularly worrying for the US.
When the Bush administration created Africom last year, it was, in the words of George Bush, “to strengthen our security cooperations with Africa and help to create new opportunities to bolster the capabilities of our partners with Africa”. This obviously means first and foremost developing the military outfit to ‘professional standards’ and by the US’ own standards elsewhere (Latin America, for instance) it can only mean creating a counter-weight of US friendly dictatorships to Chinese influence in Africa.
What does Zimbabwe, scorched and almost completely atrophied, have to do with this Sino-US tug-of-war? Firstly, Zimbabwe is strategically located between China’s two largest trading partners, South Africa and Angola. Secondly, Zimbabwe is next to China’s biggest infrastructure projects in Africa, a railroad linking the east coast of Angola (oil) with Zambia (copper) to the east port of Tanzania. Thirdly, China is reported to import considerably in the areas of tobacco, chromium (probably for steel manufacturing) and platinum. It is not far-fetched to wonder whether China’s recent weapons shipment to Zimbabwe had something to do with Beijing’s concerns of US intervention in Zimbabwe.
The US outrage against Mugabe is not as a result of the man’s political gangsterism or as a result of Mugabe-sponsored violence prior and post that country’s rigged elections (who does not remember Kenya’s elections in December last year and the US government’s acceptance of the elections results?). We can go further afield, but the trouble we’ll have is repeating instance after instance of adverse meddling and US support for totalitarian interests and regimes when it safeguarded its interests. There are examples where the US support for individuals whose names begin with “Mu” is tied to like atrocities as those committed by Mugabe (the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Musharraf of Pakistan). Zimbabwe is the chosen field to engage in the current phase of the battle for hegemony in Africa between the US and China.
The wrangle between China and America for influence in Africa is not devoid of a moral tussle, but neither of these imperialist powers has morality in their bookkeeping; they cynically tap into the moral outrage of ordinary people across the world to the human tragedy in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe, and pretty much all of Africa, has pretty close to zero value for the USA now that they’ve won the Cold War.
@Jon
Hardly! The US is looking to Africa for most of its oil imports, never mind Africa already being the main holders of gold, iron, copper and countless other important metals and minerals. The competition has only just begun
Wow, the United States interest in Zimbabwe saw Heinz getting out of Zimbabwe. Really?
I have been watching the US’s interest in Zimbabwe over the last seven months. They simply do not care. Infact the Americans were rather obsessed with their primaries and later on China’s earthquake, the natural disaster in Myanmar. Even the attacks on foreigners in South Africa played 6th fiddle to issues that could interest Americans more. Britain and the US simply wish that the Zimbabwe problem could just go away and they continue with their lives undisturbed to concentrate on more important issues like the Middle East etc.
Simply put those who understand the economic and political relationship between the US and China will tell you that at the least the US does not really care (as much as it does not care about China’s human rights abuses) and at the most it has left Zimbabwe to China. What Zimbabwe boasts of are the minerals and they are the preserve of South African and Eurasian companies part owned by Asian investors and sovereign wealth funds. The only real big miners from North America are Canadian not United States and at the moment rarely register on the radar of the fund gurus and corporate power brokers. Talk oil then the US comes alive otherwise the goal of the American capitalists is to ensure the growth of capitalism and free enterprise. By and large the race issues seem only to concern white American rightwingers (scared of losing jobs to globalisation) and Africans.
The global capitalist movement is converging, the Asians,Arabs, Europeans, Ameericans are sharing the wealth of this country as members of the club. Africa well is vacillating and trying to remember its golden ages of pre colonialism. In fact it has even forgot that all it currently stands as is a destination for investment not an investor. Or dare I say the lot that is sitting on minerals that others need for their industry.
The tragedy about exaggerating China’s influence is that China rarely invests to creates jobs. It donates. It will donate buses, airplanes, stadiums and monuments. Or else they will win paying contracts at reduced bid prices and bring in their labour from China. It does not import finished products from Africa. It does not care about food production in Africa. The Chinese have been happy to pay Zimbabweans in advance to produce tobacco not food.
In two weeks time China will have its coming out party and George Walker Bush and his friendly competitor and host will sit at the high table, reflect on a decade of wonderful decade of not criticising each other. After all ideologically they have more in common than diferences on Middle East policy.And ahem Africa overestimating its importance will continue trying to play the major powers against each other for donations only now there is no Cold War.
Way to cycnical I think. As Jon and all reports I have come accross have said, the US is not very focused or interested on Africa, certainly not enough to engage in the kind of tactic you accuse them of. I also dispute your claim that the US simply accepted the Kenyan election result. Firstly, I think we are dealing with a very different set of circumstances there – there has been a democratic change in government not that long ago. Secondly, the UN got involved and eventually resolved the situation. Did Kofi Annan achieve this without the support of the US?
Jon, if I follow your logic you mean to tell me the ideological warfare between the US and the then USSR was an expedition to its own ends? I don’t think that’s what you wish to say here, for if I’m wrong about it you will prove to be more fantastic than you wish to appear. The tools (read ideological warfare) at the disposal of classes and their institutions (and here I mean to refer to the American ruling class and its expression, the US government) are always put to use in aid of its interests; the struggle for influence anywhere in the world is never an end in itself – you should know that. Capturing markets and shaping the entire world after its own image. You should go to specsavers…
Have to go with Steven on this. Apartheid was only tolerated by the USA as it was better than having a Soviet puppet communist government here is SA. Once the Soviets collapsed, apartheid was not far behind.
Also Cuba did not evict us from Angola, the USA having OK’ed our incursion there failed to accept that we could take Luanda which forced us to withdraw.
So the US does ‘play’ in africa.
@ Shootmeup: “democratic change in government not that long ago”? I suspect we talk about the same time, which is December 2007. I invoked Kenya knowing fully well that there are substantial differences between the countries; the point here is about the scale of the atrocities and the post elections atrocities are not dissimilar. There were 300 reported dead as a result of this post-election violence, fanned by Kibaki and Raila.
The US ambassador to Kenya made the point that although ‘there were problems with the elections’, they (the US) will abide by the re-election of Kibaki. This might sound familiar: after the elctions, Kibaki banned live television and radio broadcasts and instructed the army to put down demonstrations and other outbursts (as we’ve seen in Zim) with force. Check out a report written by the Heritage Foundation ( a US right-wing think tank) on January 8 of this year…dispute that if you would.
Prince
Could not be said better…i’m 100% behind you
Ever since the early 19th century and the adoption of the “Monroe Doctrine”, it has been the case that the USA sees the two Americas as its chief “sphere of influence”.
Europe and Africa and Asia have always been someone else’s burden. They didn’t enter WW1 until 1917, and they didn’t enter WW2 until the end of 1941. In both cases, it was because someone else’s war had finally come to tug America’s tail.
America doesn’t act in the defence of some or other IDEOLOGY. America acts in the defence of parochial American interests — be it military, commercial, strategic, whatever.
Mess with America and Americans, and the US government will mess back with you. And they will mess back big and hard and settle the quarrel with every means at their disposal — and that is considerable.
Leave America alone and they’ll leave you alone. If Kenya or Zimbabwe or Burma or Bananastan want to have totally crooked elections, the USA will butt out completely.
Unless and until actual US interests come under threat.
Then America will step in and do what’s best for America. Not what’s best for Kenya or Zimbabwe or Burma or Bananastan. For America.
The Monroe Doctrine lives on.
So African intellectuals want to get in on the America-bashing that is so popular the world over?
Jon is correct. This article is pure paranoia. America is too DISinterested in Africa if anything.
Steve, I cannot believe that the US takes Zim seriously except as a background moral issue while it concentrates on oil, Iraqi’s and Afghans. Much like the SA government doesn’t take AIDS, education, unemployment and service delivery seriously as it concentrates on self glorification and getting to the trough of taxpayers money.
Somebody complaining about the big bad Satan again?
I am afraid that this is more of Steven’s black and white analysis of the big bad imperialists, with their fingers in every pie. Poor Africa the victim of the greedy wolves!
The only thing is – Africa is sooo remote and uninteresting that most Americans don’t even know what or where Zimbabwe is (and I include the President here).
If capitalism is greedy and selfish, then like Jon and others, we have to accept that, sad as it may be, Africa is nothing but a wart on America’s/Europe’s bum!
Perhaps it hurts Steven more to acknowledge Southern Africa’s insignificance than to theorise about it being wrangled over by the powers that be. In the latter case at least Southern Africa counts.
@ Lisa: Unless you mean here that this is yet another presentation of mine where things appear as either/or, I simply have say this: it simply will never happen you pinning the silly race card on me. Two reasons: 1) whenever race is considered in capital’s drive for profits, I look at the peculiar expression thereof (as in the case of South Africa and my conception of the inextricability of race and class), 2) it is analysis I’m interested in, not emotional responses to the function of forces in the world.
Imperialism knows no colour (it might use ethnicity and skin colour to further its aims, but its subjugation knows no texture of pigmentation).
‘Jon and others’ have no overwhelming urgency to see the needs of planet’s people placed above profits, and your despair (‘accept it, sad as it may be’) sits well with that approach to the world and how it functions.
If Africa was this ‘wart’ – and here the entire choir may sing together – there would be no need to create Africom, would there? Oh, I see, it’s just America’s favourite pastime getting its generals together, discuss plans to protect its interests and curb others from extending their influence…
@Jon
“Leave America alone and they’ll leave you alone” That’s crazy talk man! Tell that to Lumumba, Ho Chi Minh, Cambodians, Laotians, Somalians, Saharwis living in refugee camps in Algeria, the East Timorese, and every single liberation movement in Africa that first asked the US for help, were downed coz the US had cozy ties with established dictators, and then branded the movements communsits/terrorists.
The US ambassador to Kenya made the point that although ‘there were problems with the elections’, they (the US) will abide by the re-election of Kibaki. This might sound familiar: after the elctions, Kibaki banned live television and radio broadcasts and instructed the army to put down demonstrations and other outbursts (as we’ve seen in Zim) with force. Check out a report written by the Heritage Foundation ( a US right-wing think tank) on January 8 of this year…dispute that if you would.
Okay, point taken on the US, but I meant the change in government when Moy (sp?) departed not the 2007 election. The recent events may be similar, but the history of the countries is very different. No 20 year despot stealing elections several times, no massacres that I am aware of. That said, I do find the US’s response on Kenya of concern. I suppose economically, the Kibaki regime did not affect US interests or was pro- US so they chose to acknowledge him, while the opposite prevails in Zim.
Steven
Whilst your analysis is essentially correct, there is an underlying implication which is way off beam.
No nation state acts (in terms of ‘foreign policy’) in response to moral outrage. It acts out of serving its own geopolitical interest.
This is totally independent of the political ideology of that state, and is only constrained by the power to act, nothing else.
When such a state is a ‘superpower’ the service of geopolitical interest and ‘imperialism’ become one and the same. This occurs whether such a nation state is supposedly driven by the profit motive or not.
The only ostensibly socialist worker state to ascend to a superpower was the former Soviet Union.
While their ascendancy was short lived, the avarice with which their imperialist ambitions were pursued was no less than any other.
The adoption of one particular political ideology over another will not make a nation state philanthropic. History stands as evidence.
Entering politics will not suddenly cause an individual to lose greed, selfishness and personal ambition and start graciously serving the needs of the people. All the political posturing by individuals and nation states pretending to occupy a position of moral high ground is just that; a pretense.
The misanthropic woes of the world cannot be laid at the door of ‘capitalism’ or ‘the profit motive’ but at that of human avarice. Evolution has ‘hard wired’ this tendency into the genome to ensure survival of the species, not the contentment of the individual.
A fair and equitable society has never existed because life itself is a competitive process.
Such a society cannot be engineered merely because some bright spark has an ideological theory about how life ‘should’ work.
I’m afraid you might be lamenting the injustices perpetrated by individuals and states for a very long time to come.
Wow Lamini, you’re not as stupid as i though. Don’t get me wrong. You are pretty dumb, just not as dumb as i thought. One just has to use simple logic to determine that the only reason America would pay attention to a certain country is to safegaurd it’s own interests. America could care less about Africans, unless it is to their own benefit.
Making a profit is a GOOD thing. Everyone should try doing it. If we all did so on an ongoing basis, poverty would be eliminated.
And it’s the GOVERNMENT who should referee the profit-making game. Also, to tax and “exploit” those profits by spending the tax money on uplifting society.
Of course, they first of all need to encourage and assist the whole profit-making process if they hope to draw off taxes for general social benefit. That pretty much removes socialism as a viable political option — socialists loathe profit-making like vampires loathe crucifixes and garlic.
What the hell does the USA or China have to do with the fact that Zimbabwe’s own policies have screwed up the country and made their ‘democracy’ a joke?
The farms were rendered unproductive because of Zimbabwean politics, nothing else. Even if it had to be done, surely even an idiot could see that if it wasn’t done properly the whole country would suffer?
Zimbabwe has been ruined by the short-sighted politics of a vain party trying to cling to power – and in doing so they have left their country open to opportunists and vultures. These sorts thrive in every country the world over.
Steven,
I had not realised that the race card was so predominant in your mind, that my use of the term “black-white” would immediate mean colour to you. I had meant bad-guy good guy, victim-perpetrator, rich-poor i.e simplifiations and not colour (otherwise the yellow chinese angle would have ben lost anyway). Perhaps you should look at the race card lurking as one of your issues.
I beleive that Perry said it best. Whether Jon and others, or humble little me, have a “overwhelming urgency to see the needs of planet’s people placed above profits” is IRRELEVANT. We do not rule the world. Perry said it best. We are all selfish pigs. It is our nature.
As to Africom – huh? what? where? who really cares?
@ Perry: I have stated my view (albeit in elementary form) in another post (The flight of rigour)regarding this ‘human nature’ argument and do not believe the same argument surfacing here warrants a restatement of the entire thing. This much I say here: your reflection on different elements social life (entering politics, etc) and my analysis of same phenomena (post refered to) start from the opposite end of their (phenomena) historical development – so much so that we view them as part of the ‘natural order’ of things. Our behviour is conditioned by the impression these phenomena make upon us and is therefore also a product of these selfsame historical processes that are ‘hidden’ from observation.
Greed, selfishness, etc are not innate, part of the human genetic structure. They are learnt-on, adopted behaviour. They only appear to be from human impulse by origin. Your view that “[e]ntering politics will not suddenly cause an individual to lose greed, selfishness and personal ambition and start graciously serving the needs of the people. All the political posturing by individuals and nation states pretending to occupy a position of moral high ground is just that; a pretense” is an uncritical acceptance of this common sense notion that social organisation and behaviour are eternal phenomena. Take the issue of taxes, for example. Nothing seems more ‘natural’ than people having to pay for financial transactions. Not to do so seems rather ‘unnatural’, yet it was not always like this. There was a time in human history when severe punishment was meted out for usury practices. This, to give a pre-emptive historical setting (if wars can be pre-emptive, so can an argument in defence of its own premises!) was hundreds of years before the existence of the then USSR, in fact, before the dissolution of feudal society…Of course individuals entering states as candidates of parties aiming to present another form of managing the majority of people’s exploitation and subjugation will never serve people’s needs, let alone propagate the idea of needs above profits. I am not unmindful of that. My contention with you on this element of your comment is that greed and other such behaviours are lodged within the very fabric of the system of individual appropriation. Dismantle it, set a new set of social organisation in its place with a different focus in relation to what is central to society’s functioning and after years of ‘living with the alternative’ we’ll see new habits forming, but this time around with all the opportunities for a remarkable and harmonious blossoming of all human gifts and talents, cultures, technology and relations between persons.
The former Soviet Union could pursue its aims with the same savagery as America/Britain/France/Australia, etc precisely because it was a negation of socialism, not its consummation. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that what’s important is not what people/states/politicians say, but what they do that mark them particularly apart. This simple test applies with the same vigour to the USSR before its implosion.
We see things differently on the issue of ideology as well. Ideology forms the bedrock of the policy outlook, particularly so with foreign policy.
Strange, I agree with you on your last paragraph. It won’t simply work because someone holds it ‘should’. There must be a tenacious struggle to place this vision at the head of society and for that one needs a party committed to that aim. Such a party does not currently exist in South Africa and no-one in government will welcome this. This is not about any moral argument about how wrong capitalism is; it is all about the historical necessity of a higher form of social organisation.
@ Liansky: …and you figured that out all on your own? Small step for humanity, giant step for Liansky…
@ Craig: I think we had something lost in translation…
@ Lisa: there were two prongs to the point I made. Lisa. You seemed to have pounced on the more developed element of the point (and thereby committed the same crime you accuse me of). No silly, it is race as the basis of reproducing capitalist relations that is predominant in my analysis of politics in South Africa, not the race card.
Your defence that “[w]e do not rule the world” does not stop you from standing alongside Perry (sophisticated in his defence of the system) and Jon (rather algebraic in his crude defence of the system) in defence of the way the world is currently ruled.
Steven
Firstly, the race issue was not one I raised in this debate, but one that you did. Which surprised me. I simply pointed this matter out. mperialists, we agree, come in all hues.
Secondly as far as I can ascertain, neither Jon, nor Perry, nor myself said that the way the world is currently ruled is right or good. I do not know why you seem to think that stating the obvious is tantamount to defending the morality of the obvious reality that one has simply stated.
The worls has never been “just” has it? It never will be so.
oops that one from CyberMama was from me
@ Lisa/CyberMama: hmmm. Jon is known for defending the way the world works – he’s not defensive about it at all. Perry’s notion (and yours, for you buy wholesale into this thing) of ‘human avarice’ being at the core of society’s drudgery is nominally a defence of the system; it is a defence, for counselling one that it is human nature, is using one of the oldest tools in the intellectual arsenal of capital – the common sense notion of a world with its social organisations and relations between people as part of the natural order of things. It sees privilege as the result of human nature and comes out in defence of this way of seeing the world; he ends up defending privilege in general and so do you. The morality this privilege breeds is also defended, for the defence of a world of privilege suffers from a serious internal contradiction where one accepts the one (privilege) but shrinks in horror from the consequences thereof (the class morality issuing from privilege).
I’m not averse to criticism on my stance on anything, race included. I shall be untrue if I did not hold race to be important in South African politics – the entire nation was reared on a raw diet of the thing, we lived by it (and still do), it conditioned behaviour and forms the rock upon which the world of work systematises its profit extraction. That I brought it up is correct.
By itself the world will never become just. People must change it, make it just. In this challenge I have located my life’s role.
Steven
I shoud have spoken for mysef re: not defending the way the word works as good or right.
I simpy cannot see that it has ever worked any other way. And to be honest, I think that is a sad fact, but the reality, whether you or I like it or not.
It is easy to criticize “capital” or “communism” or anything in between, but isn’t it more sensible to then come up with WORKABLE options? The pursuit of priveledge is older than capital
Oh, come on! The USSR as set up by Marx’s anointed heir Lenin was a NEGATION of socialism and not its consummation? Pull the other leg!
Certainly Trotsky was grumpy at being trumped by Lenin, but socialism really had it all — a one-party communist hegemony. A total end to private wealth. Total control over how the people could and should be “conscientized”. Political commissars everywhere. Gulags for the dissidents.
And,in spite of it all, it flopped.
Steven
I admire your committment and passion about justice.
However are you not one of those few privileged persons, drawing a more than liveable wage from capital? How are you challenging the system really? Living as a well paid specialist advisor is surely not putting your money where you mouth is?
I admit I have not considered giving up my corporate job or my privledge in pursuit of a just world (well…not in the past 15 years since I left varisty and my idealism got knocked for a loop). Do you?
@ Jon: I quite like you running your mind so reckless – it proves, more than anything, your lack of discernment. Tell me this: if that was a socialist state, what accounted for class character similarities with Botha’s repressive regime in 1980’s South Africa? Don’t tell me they shared personality traits – there is only so much personalities can bring to fashion the course of history. The abiding tendencies are cemented in historically determined material. Class interests are one of them.
@ Lisa: I wondered when this one would come…you did not disappoint. I’m not calling on workers and middle class professionals to quit their means of livelihood; that’s not revolutionary, it’s ultra-leftism. I’m very conscious of my social placing, that my salary is drawn from the circulation of capital and that my mental labour informs the manual labour of some people. The question, Lisa, is not which social class you land up in either as a result of education or inheritance; the key issue is which class do you stand alongside in the perpetual battle between capital and labour. Socialism is bound to win elements, significant elements, from classes historically in diametrical opposition to its aims. It MUST win intellectuals to its cause; win them over and refashion their political outlook from individualism to the overriding historical necessity of needs above profits. You could do same. Not quite immediately join the picket line – that sure as hell will scare you off almost immediately. Start small. Read a bit. Question a lot. Locate your life’s purpose in the infolding sequence of political events and you will soon enough discover that happiness is knowing what you want and how to fight for it. It will certainly not go without its contradictions, but that’s ok… How purposeful if it joins with the historical march to place needs of people central to the world of work!
If you shift any ideology out to the extreme edges, you’ll eventually meet up with the opposing ideology moved out to the opposite extreme.
The extreme left and the extreme right share more than they would admit — both embrace intolerance of other opinions, censorship and thought-control, a rigid conviction that opponents are enemies, that the leaders know best.
And the USSR had carte blanche to carry out Marx and Lenin’s purist socialist ideology to the n th degree, untrammelled by opposition. Well, any opposition could, upon mere suspicion, be killed or else shipped off to slave-labour gulags to be “re-educated” and “conscientised”.
PW Botha’s South Africa was easily a thousand times less repressive than Stalin and Kruschev and Breszhnev’s Soviet Union, wasn’t it?