It becomes clear after only one or two questions that Zheng Zhuqiang will not be fighting fire with fire. With his demure expression behind a pair of academic professoresque spectacles, the Chinese Ambassador to Botswana exudes a Zen-like calm as he dispenses carefully measured utterances about the “cordial relations” between the two countries.
I had been looking forward to meeting the man who only two months after presenting his letters of credence to President Ian Khama finds himself neck deep in abuse and vitriol. Zheng Zhuqiang has hardly completed a round of courtesy calls on counterparts in Botswana and is already battling to put out an anti-Chinese bonfire. Venting of spleen against China, by Batswana ultra-nationalists presenting themselves as patriots standing up for ordinary citizens in the face of crime and corruption has become run-of-the mill.
One local newspaper columnist recently wrote: “It is possibly high time that we thank the Chinese for the useless and abusive friendship we have had with them and ask them to leave our country.” Ngwaketse West Member of Parliament Mephato Reatile has, in the past, 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 was 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, and assistant minister, Patrick Masimolole, has 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.
What does the incoming Chinese Ambassador make of this growing national rage against Chinese? When the question is posed, there is a pause of fully 10 seconds, at the end of which he draws a deep breath. “The more I stay in this country, the more I like it. Batswana are a gentle and loving people who are proud of their country. Their pride comes from the country’s political stability and economic success. I must admit that I have seen some negative comments against China. For the past two months I have been trying to find out why there are negative sentiments against China. I am however confident that the country to country relation is very cordial and will ride out the negative sentiments.”
Zheng Zhuqiang believes that to focus on the divisive nature of the debates around Chinese relations with Botswana is to do an injustice to the majority of Batswana who seek to find common ground with their Chinese counterparts. That the roar of the heavily partisan contributors should not drown out the offering of olive branches by those looking for constructive engagement. “We should not allow these things to jeopardize our relationship.” It is hardly surprising that Zheng Zhuqiang instincts are more conciliatory than retaliatory. The Chinese ambassador is hoping to rescue a happy ending to a tale that began so promisingly over four decades ago. He sits up straight on the black leather couch as he relates the story: “In 1971 the founding president of Botswana, Sir Seretse Khama visited the construction site of the TAZARA Railway.”
TAZARA ÔÇô a major Chinese-funded railway link between the Copperbelt province in Zambia and the Tanzanian port of Dar el Salam ÔÇô revealed the subtlety of China’s relationship with Africa. Mao was still alive and on the sun-baked and mosquito-ridden construction sites Chinese workers referred to their African counterparts as ‘friends’. The Railway line gave a second wind to the frontline states’ fight against white minority governments in the region.
“President Seretse Khama was so impressed that when he came back to Botswana he decided to cut diplomatic relations with Taiwan and establish a relationship with mainland China. On January 6th of 1975, the Chinese embassy in Botswana was established. It is an experience we Chinese cannot forget. Our relations are built on a very solid foundation” says Zheng Zhuqiang.
A year later, in 1976 Sir Seretse Khama made the first official visit to China which was almost disrupted by the Tangshan earthquake. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit the sleeping city of Tangshan, in northeastern China. The very large earthquake, striking an area where it was totally unexpected, obliterated the city of Tangshan and killed over 240,000 people – making it the deadliest earthquake of the twentieth century. China in mid-1976 was in the midst of political upheavals as Chairman Mao neared death, and many people saw the quake as a sign from the gods that political changes were imminent. The chairman died six weeks afterwards, but neither the world biggest earthquake nor Chairman Mao’s falling health could stand in the way of a burgeoning friendship.
While Chinese officials were running around to change Hua Kuo-Feng’s diary following the national disaster, the Chinese Premier kept his appointments with the visiting Botswana president. Premier Hua Kuo-Feng even made time to see Sir Seretse Khama and lady Khama off at the airport where a grand send off ceremony was held.
The diplomatic relations between Beijing and Gaborone paved the way for hundreds of millions of Chinese foreign aid into Botswana. The aid money went into the upgrading of the 587 km north south railway line, construction of the 200 km Letlhakeng Kang road, construction of 717 residential houses, two primary schools and the multi-million Pula Gaborone Multi ÔÇô Purpose Youth Centre.
The Chinese government has also sent 13 teams of 373 medical personnel who have treated more than 2 million Batswana patients since the programme started in 1983. The 13th team has 46 professionals attached to Princess Marina hospital and Nyangabwe Referral Hospital financed by the Chinese tax payer. The Chinese government also sponsored the 2011 Brightness Action” project in which three Chinese ophthalmologists where flown into Botswana to provided free surgeries for 200 cataract patients.
The Chinese government has also financed the Confucius Institute at the University of Botswana in 2009 which has 12 Chinese teachers and volunteers and more than 3000 Batswana students. This is over and above the 60 scholarships which the Chinese government extends to Batswana student every year between 2012 and 2016 to study in China. So far 260 Batswana students have benefited from the scholarship fund. An additional 500 Batswana have benefited from the China human resource training programme.
Zheng Zhuqiang explains that Chinese companies and nationals in Botswana are mainly in the infrastructure, trade and service industry. “Chinese companies made a great contribution to Botswana’s upgrading on infrastructure since 1990s and most construction projects were finished on time with good quality workmanship”, he says.
The 15 000 or so Chinese national in Botswana constitute a very diverse and loosely connected community. Doctors, small entrepreneurs, workers and experts from State-owned and private companies reach Botswana from every corner of China and end up living in a scattered assortment of closed enclaves, usually with their families or with their employers. This limits the ability of the Chinese in Botswana to produce their own united response to local narratives, and impacts the way in which they react to the orchestrated campaign against them.
Chinese presence is mostly the result of uncoordinated actions undertaken by various parties: states, enterprises and individual migrants. These remarkably distinct actors are all subject to the homogenizing discourse of unity and friendship generated in Beijing and also to a more hostile but equally undiversified rhetoric produced in Botswana.
Since the first Chinese Construction Company, China Civil opened shop in Botswana in 1984 the attitudes expressed by Batswana elite towards China and the Chinese have tended to oscillate between admiration and suspicion. Admiration and suspicion towards China constituted one of the major dividing lines between the Festus Mogae regime and the current Ian Khama administration.
Mogae who stepped down as president of Botswana in 2008 saw China as an eager investor and a model economy. British journalist, Lindsay Hilsum, who interviewed Mogae during one of his visits to China, recalls how she was struck by the president of Botswana’s love for China and his loathing for the west. Mogae told Hilsum, “I find that the Chinese treat us as equals.
The west treats us as former subjects. Which is a reality. I prefer the attitude of the Chinese to the west’s, but there’s bugger all I can do about it!” Mogae said, chuckling away in his hotel suite.
Mogae related how Botswana’s first president, Sir Seretse Khama, was greeted at Heathrow Airport by “some old man from the Colonial Office”, while even back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Chinese would roll out the red carpet for any high-level visitor, however small a country they represented.
“They treated Sir Seretse just as they treated Richard Nixon!” he declared, possibly with a little exaggeration. Richard Nixon was the American president who was forced to resign after being shamed by the Watergate scandal.
Current president, Lt Gen Ian Khama on the other hand recently stated that the Botswana government may no longer award government contracts to the fast-rising economic powerhouse. At the very least, Gaborone will be much more selective in granting infrastructure projects, especially those on which Chinese companies have placed bids. Botswana’s harsh criticism of what it believes to be China’s sub-standard building practices is notable, given Chinese investor’s rapidly expanding presence in Africa. Additionally, this may also be viewed as an expression of growing dissatisfaction with China’s presence on the continent.
Khama said that, were it not for delays and problems with Chinese-constructed power plants that we would “be totally self-sufficient if we hadn’t been let down by the Chinese.” The Chinese embassy in Gaborone did not respond to a request for a response to these recent allegations. It is important to note, though, that in 2009 when Khama became president relations with China were strong and it was involved in eighteen construction projects in the country. The future ability of Chinese investors to win contracts in Botswana will be played out in negotiations over which firms come out on top in the bidding negotiations for rights to build railways to transport Botswana’s untapped coal reserves to ports in Namibia and Mozambique.
Zheng Zhuqiang, however insists that President Khama is committed to the relationship with China, and “has even gone on record on a number of occasions stating how important Botswana’s relationship with China is.”
Sometimes some of the anti-Chinese rants by Botswana opinion leaders are informed by stereotypes, lack factual support and pander to xenophobia. “To hell with the Chinese….! We can’t let ourselves be a Chinese colony” screamed a headline in one recent newspaper column. They sell drugs and use our country as money laundering channel. Millions of Pula have gone missing at our Palapye Glass Project which we have naively agreed to be called Fengyue Glass Manufacturing… The Chinese have once again deceived us with the Morupule Power Station… Batswana in a position of power and authority continue to be rumoured to be colliding with these Chinese to defraud, corrupt, loot and steal from this innocent nation. Such happens to be part of the Chinese culture; to loot, corrupt, steal and defraud.” The columnist then goes as far as culinary xenophobia:” We are better off not eating dogs, cats and snakes.”
In another diatribe, the columnist charges that, “I have always wondered about the categorisation of Oriental Plaza in trade laws. The Chinese literally stay there, they sleep, bath, cook and make babies in those apartments at night and use them as shops during the day.”
Zheng Zhuqiang says “the spirit of the articles is not constructive. The columnist used strong words to give vent to his hatred. This has the potential to poison the people to people relation between China and Botswana, which is the foundation of the two countries relationship. Most Chinese citizens are law abiding and a few of them infringe on the law. We support Botswana government that those who violate the laws of the country should be punished accordingly. Sometimes the problem has more to do with language problems that with the moral fiber of the people. The language problem creates a communication barrier resulting in Chinese not understanding the laws and regulations of the country. The Chinese Embassy will encourage Chinese contractors to fulfill their contractual obligations. The embassy is carrying out educational campaigns to encourage Chinese nationals to follow the rules and regulations of Botswana. Sometimes there is a lot of scape-goating when government projects go wrong. We tend to forget that Chinese are working in partnership with Batswana citizen partners, project supervisors and consulting engineers. In other cases the problem lies with the designs but it is the Chinese contractors who always bear the brunt.” In the case of the Fengyue Glass Project, our investigations revealed that at the time the company shareholders entered into an agreement with Botswana Development Corporation, they had long renounced their Chinese Citizenship and taken up the citizenship of another country. Besides, the company was registered in the Virgin Island. It was not a Chinese company, it only had a subsidiary in China just as it now has a subsidiary in Botswana”, he said.
As he leads us out of his office, Zheng Zhuqiang pointed up and said, “Look at the clear blue sky, feel the fresh air and the crisp breeze” these are some of the things I like about Botswana.
