Ngwaketse West Member of Parliament (MP) Mephato Reatile recently complained to Parliament that the Botswana construction industry has been taken over by Chinese contractors.
He said this was an indication that government has completely ignored Batswana contractors to the benefit of Chinese contractors. Reatile’s comment is just the latest foray into the dark world of Botswana’s growing xenophobia against Chinese investors. The attraction of anti-Chinese rhetoric has become a new outgrowth of the shrinking cake in the construction industry. Mogoditshane MP, Patrick Masimolole has in the past also complained that Chinese contractors are taking over Batswana jobs. “You go to the Sir Seretse Khama Airport expansion project, the proposed senior school in Mogoditshane and the three ministerial houses near the Parliamentary Village, they are all being done by Chinese contractors,” he said.
Despite Botswana’s image as a peace loving country, a deep-seated strain of disdain for Chinese investors simply runs through the Batswana character. Citizen contractors are watching in anger as their Chinese counterparts snatch government contracts from under their noses. ?The Minister of Infrastructure, Science and Technology, Johnnie Swartz, revealed at a consultative meeting with Chinese contractors earlier this year that, “currently there are about 24 Chinese construction companies engaged in major government projects at an estimated total cost of P20 billion”.?For most of the eighties and nineties Botswana was the fastest growing economy in the world, faster than that of the Asian Tigers. With the construction industry riding the crest of a boom, Botswana attracted a flood of Chinese construction companies. Construction sites with an occasional Chinese construction company board was not the most immediate problem, but the influx of Chinese companies offering cheap construction rates began to attract attention. Botswana, which was going through a construction boom, began to witness the birth of citizen empowerment campaigns thanks to citizen contractors who were being priced out of the industry by Chinese competitors.??With the boom over and the business cake smaller, most Batswana investors are being frustrated by the increasing control Chinese immigrants have taken of the construction industry, clothing retail stores and other small businesses traditionally owned by Batswana. The conflict between the Chinese investors and Batswana is spilling into factory floors and construction sites where Chinese investors are increasingly coming into conflict with citizen workers who approach work and the workplace with very different attitudes. Batswana workers are anxious over changing work patterns and debates are already brewing over working on weekends and late night hours.
Minister Swartz complained that Chinese contractors are not utilizing local skills.┬á He said the use of locally produced materials was minimal despite government efforts to encourage them to source supplies locally.?Chinese contractors, on the other hand, took the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs (MLHA) officials to task over a directive urging them to treat Saturday and Sunday as rest days. The contractors complained that the directive carved out of a recent Industrial court judgment has led to most workers demanding to be allowed rest on weekends, and to be paid for the weekends they have worked in the past.?It emerged during the meeting that one Malawian citizen employed by unnamed Chinese contractor had lodged a complaint with the Industrial Court for unfair dismissal following his refusal to work on weekends.?The Court then ruled in the employee’s favor, that both Saturday and Sunday are rest days. The court further ordered the company to back pay the aggrieved worker for all the weekends that he was made to work, which led to compensation in the range of P 20, 000.00.
Grievances in the construction and textile industry against Chinese investors are currently at the forefront of public debate in Botswana, from politicians in parliament to investors in boardrooms and workers at construction sites and factory floors. A few weeks ago four Chinese were arrested after they assaulted their Batswana colleagues on the Francistown stadium construction project. The Batswana workers allegedly earned themselves the beatings after revealing their miserable working conditions to some visiting parliamentarians.?Interviews with labour union representatives, Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs officials and reports from the Industrial court reveal that the policing of health and safety regulations and employment law in Botswana lags behind the aggressive campaign to grow diversify the country’s economy. And unscrupulous investors are having a field day.?Investigations by the Sunday Standard a few years ago revealed that Zheng Ming Knitwear, which operated a sweatshop in Ramotswa, was part of an international trade in modern day slavery.
Industrial Court Judge, Elijah Legwaila, would later rule that “it appears that Chinese nationals pay large sums of money to recruitment agencies who send them abroad with all sorts of promises and that some Chinese nationals even leave China with promises of work in developed countries and that by the time such people land at any destination they have neither the money nor the bargaining power to protect their rights.??“These Chinese nationals are then housed and fed in compounds at the pleasure of the employer. Their passports, air tickets, work and residence permits are retained by the employer.”?Legwaila was passing judgment in a case in which Bin Quin Lin, a Chinese national working for Zheng Ming Knitwear, was held in forced labour without pay. Chinese investors are the biggest investors in the textile industry which exports garments to America under the lucrative AGOA agreement. Such incidents are constantly presented in the media as a reminder of the Chinese ‘otherness’, whilst providing excellent grist for the anti Chinese mill, that sees Batswana shaking their heads at “the unethical investors” we are allowing into the country.
It is tempting for most Batswana to bandy such stories around, and smile cynically at how rotten the Chinese investors are. Perhaps it explains why a country like Botswana with a reputation for peace sometimes gives in to spasms of mass intolerance.
