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An African story

In Africa,Jacques Bwira,Migration on June 12, 2010 by admin Tagged: , , , , , ,

author: Jacques Bwira

Escaping from Congo

My name is Jacques Bwira, I was born thirty-seven years ago in Kitchanga, Nord-Kivu Province of former Zaïre, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Son of Nsii Theresa and Kyamwami Eduard, I am member of the Bahunde-Banyanga tribe, who occupies the Territoire de Walikale. I am a Christian Jehovah’s Witness by religion. I am married to Sarah Lubuto Bwira, eight years younger than me. We have two children, a boy and a girl, both attending primary school.

In 1992, ethnic tensions bursted in Walikale, my home territory, forcing my family to seek refuge in neighboring areas. I had to abandon school for six years and finally managed to complete secondary education in 1998, qualifying as a teacher. Since I strongly wanted to pursue higher education, I sought and obtained admission with a local university but failed to meet the financial requirements, as our family lost all investments during the war.

Soon after completing my secondary education, I became an activist of Action pour la Defense des Droits de l’Homme au Congo (ADDHOC), a local human rights NGO then based in Goma town. My work consisted in denouncing to the International Red Cross and to neutral local media any human rights violation committed by all sides involved in the conflict, guiding victims on how and where they could find psychological and legal help to recover from post war trauma. Unfortunately, due to economic pressure some of my former colleagues decided to use fire-arms to earn money: they deserted ADDHOC and enrolled as soldiers in the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD), a Rwanda-assisted rebel movement. As a consequence, they started to view me as an obstacle to their activities.

In the same period, three sons of my paternal uncle stubbornly grabbed my father’s land. As members of the RCD rebel military force, they became powerful and influential. My father obtained a favorable judgment over the matter at the provincial court in Goma, but they refused to concede to the court pronouncement and started to abuse their position in the rebel army threatening to kill me and my relatives.

They hired Interahamwe fighters to exploit our land, with dramatic consequences for my family. My father and mother went displaced and could never resettle; my young twelve years old brother Bikumba Evariste was kidnapped to slave for the army and my other brother Guillaumes was forced to escape, leaving our parents even more vulnerable.

The situation became so tense that I ended up in hideouts and lastly in a prison cell in Katindo. The local International Red Cross finally negotiated my release and helped me with money to run to Kampala (Uganda) for my safety.

Life in Uganda

In 2000, I was granted the refugee status in Uganda, where I started a school for refugee children named Kampala Urban Refugee Children’s Education Centre (KURCEC), which later became HoPE Primary School. The school started with the eleven families living with me in a flat I rented from a Catholic priest in Kampala. We started with no books and used French as the main teaching language, since the majority of the children were Francophone from Congo, Rwanda, or Burundi. Our school now only has English-speaking teachers and follows the Ugandan national Curriculum.

I later worked with my fellow refugees in the creation of a community based organization called Helping People of Ethnicities, HoPE. The mission of HoPE is to integrate and reconcile the refugee and national communities in Uganda through formal education, skills training, income generating initiatives and recreational opportunities that foster peace and development. I noticed that by working and studying together in a united community and by engaging in positive recreational activities such as sports and arts, people develop appreciation for one another, despite cultural barriers. With legal assistance from the Refugee Law Project and the UNHCR, the centre is now an established primary school.

Young refugee, HoPE primary school

This has been my main occupation in the last eight years in Uganda. Unfortunately though, life here wasn’t always easy.

A difficult environment

In 2002, I was falsely accused by Mr. Mavambu Charles that I was involved in the death of his wife. He vowed to avenge his wife against me and he even reported me for murder at the UNHCR, but he failed to support his claims. When I in turn appealed to the UNHCR for protection against Mavambu, I received a negative response in a letter dated 11 December 2002. Mavambu is associated with a religion that teaches that a person’s death is always caused by his neighbors. Also, he is in the group of my fellow Congolese who hate me for my refusal to share with them the funds of KURCEC.

* * *

KURCEC qualified to receive support from the Social Development Fund of the French Embassy in Kampala, which allowed us to legally purchase land for the classroom construction in the Kampala suburb of Ndejje. This caused jealousy among some of my fellow Congolese that wanted me to share the project’s resources. They went to Ndejje and tried to turn the local people against me, claiming that I received huge amounts of money from Museveni’s government and donor agencies to buy land and that my main purpose is to eventually occupy the area and send away the residents.

* * *

Problems also emerged during the school construction. The French Embassy wanted to connect me with a local company called Rukararwe, but Abel, the company engineer that was to supervise the construction, betrayed me with Mr. Tusiime and Muhofa, respectively headmaster and land-owner of a school that KURCEC was about to take over. He exaggerated the grant amount we had received and alleged that refugees are not supposed to run institutions like schools in Uganda, so they should make sure the school is built in their names. These men gave me hard time! They reached an extent of using an army officer to threaten to repatriate me forcefully in case I built the school elsewhere. They secretly visited our new site and kept on sending me oral threats.

* * *

On the evening of 7 June 2007, while heading home from our church, I was attacked by unidentified men who spontaneously started beating me up alleging that I was trying to steal a motorcycle in the darkness. They beat me heavily and were about to pour petrol on me to burn me up, when two brave ladies appeared shouting for help and people came around and stopped my assailants. They checked my bag to see if it contained a weapon the aggressors claimed I used to intimidate them – only to find a bible and other religious texts. I was abandoned there bleeding from my nose, swollen all over the body with heavy backache, until someone arranged for me to be taken to the nearby Lufuka clinic. I took the matter to the area local authorities, but the residents who helped me did not show enough cooperation to denounce the attackers, fearing repression from the gang. The fact is still under investigation at Katwe police station, but with no results.

The good of others

Fortunately, these problems didn’t compromise the success of HoPE. We now have more national children than refugees: locals don’t just see HoPE as a refugee school; they see it as a school in the community – and refugee children know that they are pupils like any others at any school. When the Ugandan government wanted to collect taxes from us, it was the community that said, “No, this is a school which is not charging as much money as other schools, so we think that they are not supposed to pay taxes.” That showed me that we have gotten so much support from the community.

This work has impacted my life. When I came to Uganda, I was seeking resettlement to a different country. A number of my fellow refugees were resettled to the United States, Canada, and other Western countries. I realized that if I sought my own interests and the interests of my family, I could leave this project. But all the children who have benefited from this work would not have access to education. So I had to change my goals. This work has taught me how to sacrifice for the good of others.

Our students are doing very well, better than most students at other schools. When refugee children meet people who love them, it starts to level their past memories of the machetes, guns, and terror that they have seen in their home countries.

An interview with Jacques Bwira can be found in Harvard Educational Review Vol. 79 No. 1 Spring 2009.

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China, environment and civil society

In China,Giulio Morello,Politics on June 11, 2010 by admin Tagged: , ,

author: Giulio Morello

Chinese mine workers - photo by Song Chao

While the world-acclaimed economic miracle is turning China into one of the leading global polluters and greenhouse-gas emitters, an environmental public sphere is now emerging within the country itself.

Different types of social organizations are currently operating in China, occupying different positions in the continuum between state domination and societal autonomy. There are registered Government-NGOs (GONGOs) and grassroots organizations, non-profit organizations that work under a business license and unregistered groups.

Lu Ying is a committed Party member who works for CEPF (Chinese Environmental Protection Fund), a government-sponsored organization founded in 1992 by Prof. Qu Geping, the first administrator of China National Environmental Protection Agency. Lu has a pragmatic opinion on  the relationship between CEPF and the government: “Registration is like a fee to pay for our privileges,” she says – in other words, the price of government support. “At CEPF, we educate people and school children on environmental protection and energy-saving practices”, she adds, concluding that “educating the people about their future is a way to achieve the Communist ideal state”.

Matthew comes from the world of Chinese registered grassroots organizations and recently moved to a British NGO after receiving training in Malaysia, Italy and the UK. As such, he keeps himself distant from the government and does not praise communism. However, Matthew would not call himself an activist: he works in cooperation with government officials (“even though some of them are corrupted, many of them are good”) and tries to avoid political conflicts.

Tom is an activist from Greenpeace, whose Beijing office operates as a branch of the Hong Kong headquarters, thereby circumventing bureaucratic problems but giving up any fundraising activity as they lack formal registration. “People in China are starting to mobilize themselves”, he says, adding that the role of Greenpeace is to assist them by providing a rational rather than emotional approach to their problems. While talking about the strategies of Greenpeace, Tom shows me pictures of Shanxi, his home province: sheep with coal-dark wool grazing on coal-dark grass in front of a coal processing factory. “Growing up in such a context is what triggered mine and other people’s environmental consciousness”, he explains to me.

A variety of competing actors is simultaneously working on China’s environmental cause. The country’s success in tackling these problems depends on the strength of all of them: from government environmentalists to common people; from registered organizations to activists and the local media.

An extended version of this article will appear in the first Issue of the Oxonian Globalist.

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Postmodernism and the Italian Left

In Giulio Morello,Politics,West on June 6, 2010 by admin Tagged: , , , , ,

author: Giulio Morello

Postmodernism and the political Left are tricky definitions in their own respect, put them together and you enter a slippery ground you better steer clear of, if you want to escape a web of endless debates – which I don’t. Well, not necessarily.

I’ll try to make things simple by adopting a formal definition of Left and a general definition of Postmodernism: I include in my notion of Left any political organization that self-defines itself under such label and I use the term Postmodernism as a synonym of cultural relativism. Without too much loss of generality, I will limit the scope of analysis to political parties: it’s already enough of a mess without considering the vast universe of civil-society organizations.

Now, please forgive (or forget) these assumptions and get down to the nitty-gritty.

Moving away from the “Centre”, the Italian political Left is composed as follows: Partito Democratico (PD, raising an average of 30-35% electoral preferences), Sinistra e Libertà (SeL, <5%, increasing), Federazione della Sinistra (FS, <5%, decreasing) and a bunch of Trozkyst formations (<3%). PD is a “cold-fusion” of christian-democrats from La Margherita and repentant pre-1989 communists (read: social democrats) formerly in the Democratici di Sinistra (DS); SeL started as a union of left-wing former DS members and few “moderates” of Rifondazione Comunista (PRC). While hardcore PRC members, together with the majority of the Partito Democratico dei Comunisti Italiani (PDCI), joined in the communist FS.

To make things clearer, before 2007 we had (again, in increasing order of “leftism”): La Margherita, DS, PRC&PDCI. The post-2007 situation evolved into: PD, SeL, FC. What provoked these political landslide back then? The sparkle of the whole process was the creation of the PD, in fulfillment of a long-requested political simplification stance coming from the Italian Centre-Left establishment (intellectuals like Michele Salvati, journalists like Eugenio Scalfari, influential names of industry and finance like Carlo de Benedetti). The fall of Prodi’s government urged political leaders to accelerate the creation of the PD without much debates and thoughts, hence the expression “cold-fusion” used by some critics. The area at the left of the PD reacted with an almost equivalent attempt of unification, but SeL soon left the alliance and even attracted some dissatisfied former-DS members.

And here is where Postmodernism enters the game. The PD, as a fusion of social-democrats and catholics, is Postmodernist in nature but not in its political program, which is de-facto nonexistent to date. The FS, as an attempt to recreate some sort of communist party, is a clearly premodern fossil. The only Postmodern formation in the Italian left is SeL, both in nature (as a fusion of social-democrats and communists) and in action: they buried their hammer and sickle and embarked in the creation of a new political platform seeking to interpret the needs of a disoriented working class without giving up their radicalism. Their aim is to generate a new political discourse that could stand as an alternative to the all-pervading one coming from Berlusconi. The leader of SeL, Nichi Vendola, often insists in the need of “finding new words”, claiming that the PD “lost the words to talk to its people”. Vendola is himself a Postmodern man: he is simultaneously homosexual, catholic and leftist. A distinctive multiple identity, where all sides contradicts and enrich each other.

What is the relevance of this analysis? Easy answer, this time. The ability to generate a convincing political discourse is the key to electoral success. Now, since the premodern communist and social-democrat rhetorics are forever defeated, the only way the Left can build its own discourse is to follow the path of SeL – read: the PD should creatively and critically follow the trail opened by SeL. Nichi Vendola, after defeating PD’s candidates in primary elections, became the President of Puglia, a traditionally conservative feud. And he did it twice. The root of this success was a political discourse based on words (and facts) like poetry (“la poesia è nei fatti”), green economy, labour; together with a political action that finally showed a clean and transparent government to a southern region that was used to the darkest face of power and politics.

In the case of Puglia, political Postmodernism was a game-changing factor. The same experience could be extended to the rest of Italy. Note that I’m using the word Postmodernism in a rather neutral and a-political tone. Berlusconi is also a Postmodernist (neo-fascist, populist, subversive, authoritarian, catholic, a-moral, anarcho-capitalist). What is important to understand here is that an election-winning political discourse cannot stem from a premodern political mindset.

A simple political recommendation follows: the PD should seek its political identity starting from an honest and firm refusal of any meta-narrative utopia. Nor should they focus on the long-debated issues of internal leadership and unconvincing centrist alliances. Rather, they should look inwards to their own mistakes and outwards to people’s demands and proposals, aiming at solving problems without the need of any new ideological superstructure. Amartya Sen brilliantly wrote on the idea of justice refusing any dangerous attempt to define justice, the Italian left should similarly build a credible alternative without debating on how “the ideal alternative” should look like. And in order to do so, they should abandon their fears and lack of confidence and jump into a risky and rewarding search of new problems, new solutions, new words.

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Italian politics for dummies

In Giulio Morello,Politics,West on March 13, 2010 by admin Tagged: ,

author: Giulio Morello

This is an imaginary and rather paranoid dialogue, where I both act as interviewer and interviewee. The topic, for sure, is also paranoid, but unfortunately is not imaginary.

Q: Why should we bother about Italian politics at all?

A: Italy is an example of how the delicate equilibrium between media and power, business and politics, may explode and deprive of meaning the normal functioning of democratic institutions. As such, it is a living warning to other western countries, where similar strains exist on a smaller scale. All the more relevant if we consider that the Italian Constitution is the “best and more clearly republican among all European Constitutions” (Jacqueline Risset on Le Monde).

Q: Your answer indirectly points to Mr. Berlusconi. How could people still vote for him?

A: This is where the media come in. In Italy, a large portion of the population – the elderly, the lower class, the poorly educated – relies on television as the only source of information. Italian television, arguably the worst in Europe, consists into two major groups: Berlusconi’s Mediaset and the public-controlled RAI, with a roughly identical market share. Berlusconi normally controls half of the television market, and the whole of it when his coalition is in power. As a result, the imaginary world of his populistic rhetoric becomes real through television discourse.

Q: Can you give examples?

A: On 26 February, the most popular Italian newscast reported that the British lawyer David Mills was acquitted from the accuses against him, while the court only declared the offence to be prescribed by law. One step back: David Mills was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months for accepting a bribe from Silvio Berlusconi to give false evidence on his behalf in corruption trials in 1997 and 1998. On 25 February 2010, the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation ruled a sentence of prescription, meaning that Mills “had committed the crime but was no longer punishable for it” (Wikipedia). However, the average Italian public was told the Mills was acquitted, and that Berlusconi did not pay any bribe at all: a plain lie. A further important aspect needs to be explained: Mills could not be sentenced to jail because a 2005 law approved by Berlusconi’s government significantly shortened prescriptive periods for corruption cases.

Q: Do you mean that Berlusconi uses the Parliament to pass bills that prevent him to be put on trial?

A: Indeed. According to La Repubblica (23 November 2009), the Italian Parliament passed eighteen bills that directly or indirectly favour Mr. Berlusconi. Three of them were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Q: What is the role of Centre-Left Parties in this quasi-fascist scenario?

A: Italian Centre-Left is a nebula of parties, stretching from communists to moderate catholics. They are unable to stick to a common political program and lack strong leadership. The central role should be played by the Democratic Party, a fusion of post-1989 reincarnations of the Italian Communist Party and a mild and moderate centre, still in search for a precise identity. Because of a relevant catholic presence, the Democratic Party did not join the European Socialist group, as would appear natural by looking at political affiliations in most European countries, where some sort of Socialist Party runs against some sort of People’s Party.

Q: What differences exist between the Centre-Left and and Berlusconi’s Party in terms of political ethic?

A: The Left is in theory committed to the respect of law and constitutional values, which should stand above the government and limit its action. On the other hand, Berlusconi’s idea of power is based on the superiority of electoral legitimization over non-elective bodies. In other words, Berlusconi thinks that the one who wins the popular consensus has the right to stand above law and its non-elected representatives, notably judges. This rather bizarre claim relies on a persecution rhetoric, by which a bunch of subversive judges led by a communist conspiracy is trying to overturn a legally elected government. Television control allows Berlusconi to instill these ideas into people’s mind. The recent incident of “electoral lists” is the last example of this discourse: Berlusconi’s Party risked to be excluded from elections in two important regions because of procedural errors; rather than bearing his responsibility, Berlusconi preferred to delegitimize those procedures and judges who check over their compliance.

Q: What strategies does the Centre-Left use to cope with Berlusconi’s control over the media?

A: The Centre-Left coalition is seriously guilty of not having addressed Berlusconi’s conflict of interests when it was in power, and is now struggling to communicate its shaky and woolly political programs to the general public. In two weeks, Italians will vote for many of their regional governments. Surveys on electoral intentions are incredibly informative on Centre-Left communications problems: while the vast majority of citizens in Centre-Left-ruled regions have a good opinion of their local government, electoral polls report a much narrower margin between the two coalitions.

Q: We mainly talked about political parties and the media. What does Italians think about Italian politics?

A: Many of them don’t think about it at all. This is indeed the greatest victory of Berlusconi’s televisions. Some others became deeply disillusioned, which increased abstention figures. While leaders of the Democratic Party are mostly concerned with winning the votes of the “moderates”, they do not seem to recognize the importance of regaining the votes of the disillusioned. The greatest of all problems is that Italians are too tired even to express public indignation. Yet, some encouraging sign of civil awakening is emerging: a grass-roots movement named “Il Popolo Viola” (The Purple People) set up a milestone demonstration called “NoB.Day” last December 5, asking Berlusconi to resign. The Purple People does not limit themselves to protest: they wish to “build a renovation project for Italy, supported by all members through their proposals and ideas”. Following the success of that initiative, a new public demonstration is taking place today in Rome and 18 other Italian cities, with Centre-Left leaders and supporters defending the Constitution against the attacks of the Prime Minister.

Q: Can we say that Italians deserve the ruling class they have, or that Berlusconi is popular because he represents the stereotypical Italian citizen?

A: This an easy albeit wrong conclusion. In the 1996 and 2006 elections, the Centre-Left won over the Centre-Right. In both cases, the winning coalition was led by Romano Prodi, whose personality is poles apart to the one of Mr. Berlusconi. The stereotypical Italian does not exist, or it would be impossible that a country led by Prodi could later be led by Berlusconi. The overall quality of the ruling class is a different issue. I would say that the political consciousness of post-1989 Italians is too shy: voters tend to forgive and forget too much. Southern Italy – with the exception of the well-governed Puglia – deserves a chapter on its own. Take Sicily, for instance: votes there are totally unrelated to political performances or achievements. The Centre-Right wins easily despite mafia-stinking corruption scandals and a per capita GDP that is half the one of Northern regions. The reason is very simple and is called nepotism: Sicilian public administration has 21,000 employees, more that Northern regions altogether. In such extreme cases, I would admit that people get the rulers they deserve.

Q: Do you have any thought on 28 March regional elections?

A: I think people should go to vote. Like Eugenio Scalfari, founder of La Repubblica said, abstaining from vote on the basis of a not well defined moral superiority is equal to desertion. In order to solve the problems of Italy we should first get rid of its emergency, which has a name and surname: Silvio Berlusconi. A defeat of his coalition in the next elections would reinforce the credibility of an alternative to his rule and would urge Centre-Right politicians to stand aloof from their maraja.

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Swine flu business – A documentary

In Corporations,Giulio Morello,West on March 7, 2010 by admin Tagged: , , , , , ,

author: Giulio Morello

With a pandemic emergency roughly every year, pharmaceutical companies won’t suffer any economic crisis whatsoever. Year 2009 was particularly lucky: apparently, our debilitated organisms have been hit by a severe form of seasonal influenza, commonly known as swine flu. Yet, after nine months since the WHO declared the emergency, the real impact of the virus on people’s health is still under chaotic debate.

The epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, who chairs the European Council’s Health Committee, took a strong stance against the handling of swine flu by the WHO: “In my view, the WHO undertook an incomprehensible action which cannot be justified by scientific evidence. The Council of Europe should investigate this to see how the WHO can undertake this kind of dangerous nonsense” (speech at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, 29 January 2010). Dr Keiji Fukuda, the top flu expert at WHO, replies that “the world is going through a real pandemic. The description of it as a fake is wrong and irresponsible.” In the meantime, BBC News (Feb 10, 2010) reports that “the Department of Health in Northern Ireland still has half a million swine flu vaccines which remain unused.”

How do people react to such contradictory information, and how do they perceive the emergency, if there is any emergency at all? This short documentary I shot in Oxford is an attempt to answer these questions.

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Being Chinese in Zambia

In Africa,China,Giulio Morello,Migration on January 17, 2010 by admin Tagged: , , , , ,

author: Giulio Morello

Lusaka (Zambia), January 2010. Fifteen years ago, the chief of a hospital in Henan Province, China, announced to his young assistant, Dr Zhang, that he had been selected for going to Africa as a volunteer. Dr Zhang did never apply to such a post, nor did he immediately realize that his life changed on a sudden in that very moment. “I was not happy, I was not unhappy. I simply was selected so I had to go”, he told me, trying hard to communicate his Oriental aplomb in his elementary English.

Dr Zhang came to Zambia for two years as a volunteer, and fifteen years later he is still here, far from his motherland and from his friends. “I put all my money in this activity, I can’t come back now”. The activity he talks about consists in a clean small clinic in a dusty and busy street in central Lusaka. He works here all days with his Chinese wife and no local employees. They have a son at one of the city’s Secondary Schools.

Dr Zhang cannot speak Nianja, the most common language in this part of Zambia. His poor English is of little use; I wonder how he manages to talk to his patients. Indeed, his relationship with patients does not seem smooth: he keeps complaining that many of them often fail to pay.

The world of Dr Zhang is all here: a wife, a child, his clinic and his poor patients. He doesn’t hang around with other Chinese and he doesn’t mix with locals. He doesn’t belong in Zambia but he probably won’t ever live in China again. Yet, he still feels Chinese in the deep of his heart: as I mention Zambian relationships with Taiwan, he immediately overheats and starts an exited and ill-formed monologue on the territorial rights of the People’s Republic over her small Republican sister, while his worried wife clumsily tries to stop him.

Paul is 32, he also comes from Henan and he works at his uncle’s Chinese restaurant in Lusaka. He came here after having spent six years in Beijing trying to enter University, changing dozen of jobs and finally settling to be a tourist guide. He hopes to start his own business in Zambia as well, but would never take a local wife, his parents would not accept it. Zambian people, he tells me, may not be hard workers but they are honest and friendly. Problems may only come from the Police, which seem particularly skillful in finding reasons for charging small fines to the restaurant.

Paul is young and has been in Lusaka for one year only, but he is wise. “This is not China,” he tells me, “we must adapt to local conditions and to the local way of working and doing business”. He is sharp and speaks good English, his relationship with the African waiters of the restaurant doesn’t seem hampered by language and cultural barriers. This is pretty rare: it often happens here to see African workers making fun of the dodgy shyness of their Chinese employers and striving to use an overly simplified English to talk to them, especially when they are old.

Paul is the only Chinese I interviewed who accepts to talk about Michael Sata, a Zambian political leader who ran for the Presidency in 2006 on a violent anti-Chinese campaign, losing the elections for a handful of votes. In his opinion, Sata’s campaign was financed by Taiwan, which explains the aggressiveness of his xenophobic stance. Paul argues that Zambian should better complain about the “Whites”, who imposed their own culture and religion, while the Chinese only came for working. When he mentions the western cultural domination over Zambia, he proudly adds that “no one could ever do something similar to China.”

As Dr Zhang, he also perceives his Chinese identity as based on an imaginary and legendary notion of Chinese superiority. Tiziano Terzani noted a similar type of identity perception among the Chinese expatriates in South-East Asia: “they feel proud – he wrote – to be part of the great Chinese civilization [...] but whether that China actually exists, is unclear”. In Lusaka, this shared sense of belonging to China seems confined to a private and psychological domain. Paul admits that the expatriates community is quite loose here: chances for meeting with other Chinese are few, as everyone is focused on his job and comes from different Provinces.

Michael, from Guangdong, represents an entirely different face of Chinese presence in Zambia. He works for a large Chinese company, his offices are in a tall glass building in the centre of Lusaka. He has already worked in India and Egypt for the same employer. “Zambians”, he declares, “are the best people”. Michael came here one month ago and will stay for three months only. His main concern is safety: “here you don’t feel as safe as in China, it is dangerous to go out when it’s dark”, he complains.

Michael lives in a compound with his Chinese colleagues, they have a Chinese chef and evening “amusements” organized by the company. His only ties with Zambia are a passport visa and the mosquito repellent: he couldn’t ever settle here, but it’s a good place to be for a short period, he tells me. As I say goodbye and leave his office, two local attendants enter with a box of Chinese packet-lunch, duly prepared by the Chinese chef for all the workers.

Zhang, Paul and Michael: three different types of China, three different relationships with Zambia. Lot is being written on Sino-African relationships, and African politicians often debate on Chinese interests in their respective countries. Yet the variety and complexity of these interests and presences is rarely recognized. Who was Michael Sata trying to kick off the country: was it Zhang, Paul or Michael? And why?

All names are pseudonyms.
For an excellent source on the Sino-African debate, I recommend the blog of Aleksandra Gadzala.

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