Re: The government in Beijing, meanwhile, backs Zimbabwe's authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe.
Likewise, the US, France and Belgium propped Mobutu's regime from 1960 to his death in 1997... Hopefully for Zimbabwe's white farmers and their supporters in Britain and the US, Mugabe's grip on power won't last as long as Mobutu's.
Re: "[The Chinese] are all over the place," said Ncube, 43, who owns newspapers in Zimbabwe and South Africa. "If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have come and taken their place."
Indeed... However, the Chinese yoke will be much, much sweeter and less cruel than the European one, not as much because the Chinese are gentler and less racist than Europeans as because China's neocolonialism in Africa will not be labor-intensive but rather capital-/technology-intensive.... After all, much of Europe's cruelty and savagery in her African colonies merely resulted from her need to put hundreds of thousands of natives to work forcibly and inhumanely --whether in gold/copper/diamond mines, cocoa/rubber plantations, or timber forests. Nowadays, modern technologies and tools will allow the "Chinese masters" to alleviate much of their African workers' drudgery.
Gus |
