adminovertaking the United States of America as the world’s biggest economy.
At economic forum after economic forum, world economic think tanks have unanimously pointed to a China that has already started overtaking the US.
And, a China that seems unstoppable.
In Africa, Zimbabwe was the first to adopt the Look East Policy, courtesy of the wisdom and vision of veteran leader President Robert Mugabe, who dramatically changed from the west, when almost everyone did not notice the growing Chinese influence. In fact, no one including many Zimbabweans did not understand what it really was, at first until things started happening.
President Mugabe’s hind-sight saw his country ward off immense — albeit unjustified economic pressure from European Union and US sanctions — and almost within half a decade everyone, Europe and Africa followed Mugabe in the look east crusade.
Today, who is not looking east, including the Americans themselves? If the truth be told, Mugabe leads, the world follows! For the US, President Mugabe should be painted as a criminal, who is influencing the whole world to do the wrong things and the wrongs things are that he has defied American hegemony on Zimbabwe’s natural resources and politics. President Mugabe committed a crime by telling the world that looking east was a good paradigm shift from the imperialistic and exploitative west.
This Mugabe is therefore evil in the eyes of America. But the world is not blind. The world can now see how much good President Mugabe has done for his people in particular and the oppressed in general. President Mugabe is unfortunate to be the leader of a tiny country called Zimbabwe, if he was the President of the United States of America, the world could have been very different, fair, non-interfering, peaceful, stable and compassionate to the poor, small and the minority, given his merciful and steadfast nature, his political artistry, his vision and his composure.
A talk-shop President like Barack Obama would never successfully run Zimbabwe under similar pressure and under similar conditions but President Mugabe has done extremely well, even much better than first world leaders, whose systems run themselves. To date, the US is in a protracted battle to outwit China from Africa’s untapped vast natural resources using regime change as a major tactic. The US regime change has come through imposition of sanctions on government viewed to be untoward, creation of heavily funded Eurocentric opposition political parties and even military interventions, disguised as humanitarian interventions. The opposition parties are aided with funding and at times economic sanctions against sitting governments as the US seeks to topple leaders who do not tow its line.
Where the US imposed sanctions, the Chinese brought food and investments. Where the US sought war via an undignified UN resolution on Zimbabwe, the Chinese and Russians sought peace and investment for the benefit of the people. The US strikes wars, the Chinese strike deals. Us crafts wars the Chinese craft deals.
The US is not stopping at anything to get rid of the Chinese foot prints in Africa but that the US is following foot prints means they are trailing and they will not catch up with the Chinese. Does it not follow that you only see footprints when you are following?
Recently the US sent is secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a tour of Africa. Her mission was simple and straight forward. It was to reduce and thwart China’s influence in Africa, while tightening mutual rivalry with China on the continent. Washington is concerned that China does not only have huge business activity in Africa, but that it also provides significant financial support to African countries for agriculture, mining, medicine, food and social services. The US cannot do this big time because it is a serious financial crisis given the hodgepodge of wars it involved and funding, regime changes it is involved in and general economic decline.
The main problem here is the fact that US, faced with grinding economic difficulties, has no financial muscle to increase investments in African economies and hence the bulk of American promises on assistance and investment, remain words on paper.
During her tour, Clinton showed desperation, condemning the behaviour of some countries, in apparent reference to China, for giving money to Africa without thinking. She insinuated that the money China was giving was getting into the hands of dictators or authoritarian leaders. The simple question to her should have been, “Who determines where someone’s money, goes other than the owner of the money?” — DayAfrica.com
Antonio Antonio is a Mozambican professor of political science, he writes for DayAfrica.com
Online Reporter
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