First the Brits, then the Asians. China had better beware, says hugh russell |
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When President Hu Jintao flew out of Zambia after Friday's protest by local copper miners, he must have been asking himself how a dirt-poor people like the Zambians can say 'boo' to a Chinese goose that lays such golden eggs. He should have asked Michael Sata.
Sata (right) is a maverick. He's leader of Zambia's opposition party, the Patriotic Front. But to a greater extent he's a law unto himself, ever ready to pick up a populist flag and run with it. In recent elections, which he nearly won, he promised to repossess all Chinese projects in Zambia, give all Chinese-owned market stalls to Zambians and deport the Chinese ambassador.
But it was a more restrained union spokeswoman who put her finger on what may lie at the heart of the opposition to Mr Hu. The Chinese, she maintained, were "socially exclusive". Social exclusion is nothing
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| At the election, opposition leader Michael Sata promised to repossess all Chinese projects |
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new in Zambia. Before independence it was the Brits who were 'socially exclusive', with measures to keep Africans under foot so severe that they still shame us today.
When the Brits left - and even the hardiest have departed now, defeated by the daily struggle of life under an African administration - the Asians remained. They're still there, running the businesses, owning the shops, and keeping themselves entirely to themselves.
Then, God help us, there are the 'coloureds' or 'kalalas', products of mixed marriages of years ago, today clustering together in the fear-tinged belief that a trace of white blood renders them somehow superior.
And now the Chinese have arrived. One hears increasingly of rudeness, lack of respect, injustice, even assault. It's as if the bad old days have returned, only with a change in skin tone. The result is that your average Zambian believes he is being 'socially excluded' yet again. And after some 100 years of history, he's had enough.
FIRST POSTED FEBRUARY 6, 2007
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