Zimbabwe: Beware of Chinese Dragons

Has anyone noticed the looming beautiful artistic scenery of the Chinese dragons put up around the Heroes Acre/National Sports stadium area and at some spots around the city of Harare? If you think those artistic dragons are simply gestures of friendship by the Chinese to beautify your city to heighten aesthetics, you have been too blindfolded or  dazzled to see reality. Actually, those dragons will become part of your future nightmares and you will wish you had never heard about the Chinese, their food or culture. After all, all that glitters is not gold.
The current mantra in Zimbabwe by President Mugabe and his cronies is that "Zimbabwe shall never be a colony again!" This is a respectable futuristic approach to national sovereignty and dignity of a State and its people. With that is the indigenization and empowerment exercise that seeks to make the Zimbabwean citizen economically independent through viable ventures that garner welfare security, dignity and peace. This could be well if the very messengers of the patriotic message were not manifested hypocrites.
In the said mantra, the Chinese have been approached by Zanu PF to serve Zimbabwe through a delivery guns and other military hardware, technical expertise on diamond mining at Chiyadzwa as well as the assistance in the construction of the military college in Northern Harare. The new capital city, Zvimba with its state-of-the-art infrastructure and amenities, will be a hand of the Chinese with barely minimum contributions by our own engineers, architects or skilled human capital. It seems like all our lives in Zimbabwe are now falling into Chinese hands for direction by the hour.
Soon, the people of Zimbabwe will look at these catchy works of art in the form of dragons and regret they had never invited China into Zimbabwe to set camp. The dragons resemble the Chinese culture and they go a long way back into their history as the Manchurian Kingdom. This could be the very first step by the Chinese towards setting a modern colonial base that exploits the educated, the conscious and the self-proclaimed champions of modern day black consciousness and empowerment. This friendship between China and Zimbabwe may sound sincere and well-intended for now but in the long run, smart thinkers will remind Zimbabwe as she cries cry foul after being colonized or swindled by these folks. Mark my words.
Already, the Chinese are advising the government of Zimbabwe to explore ways into censoring online newspaper publications so that the gospel truth about the gross conduct of Zimbabwean politicians remains suppressed especially among the Zimbabwean folks. Only to imagine that these online publications have worked tirelessly to expose corruption and bad governance and the Chinese are now targeting the online media to be silenced! These are the same folks who bring the cheap stuff to Zimbabwe stores and markets that include shoes usable for a day or for a limited distance before they get torn and yet they send real label stuff to Europe and America. Zimbabwe has become a dump-yard for cheap perishable Chinese clothes and people continue to be exploited. As such cheap stuff is dumped on Zimbabwe, our local clothing manufacturers are crying foul. And we claim that we are now in the drive gear for empowerment. Then the gods must be crazy for real.  Anyone who tries to voice about a flooded market with Chinese goods has not been handled well. Even the trinket word "zhing-zhong" has set some folks into serious trouble in Zimbabwe.
In Chiyadzwa, the Chinese have set a decent base through their company Anjin. They are the masters of the program and their friendship is well-appreciated by the Zanu PF leadership because the partnership is meant to benefit the two as the majority of Zimbabwe is left imagining and wondering as to what the deal is all about. People have been killed in Chiyadzwa for illegal diamond mining. For displaced communities the graves of their beloved family members have been casually desecrated to pave way for mining explorations; bones discovered or exposed from shallow graves for murdered illegal panners have been labeled "donkey bones" by the Chinese. This is because to the Chinese, the bones they discover around Chiyadzwa have no link to their own blood and as such why not just brush off the issue using the "donkey bones" excuse.
In that same Chiyadzwa diamond zone is the place where modern slavery is allowed or encouraged by our own government. People are overworked and underpaid and they have no recourse to the law. Those who have tried to air their labour relations concerns have easily been fired from work and left to suffer as the diamond production wagon of Zanu PF pushes on. It is no longer a matter of ethics and the law but it's simply a matter of how China and Zanu PF can enjoy the harvests while they still can and before any other potential government takes charge.
Many other allegations have been noted against the Chinese presence in Zimbabwe. The Chinese use their own experts in situations where even local skills could be utilized to create jobs and promote national welfare interests. In some instance, allegations of forced sodomy against local employees have been raised against some Chinese individual bosses but the issues have been swept under the carpet. In the neighborhoods, some folks have also lost their lovely dogs as they have been butchered by the Chinese contract workers for meat. All they have been doing has mainly been to take the law into their own hands and they have done so with impunity because they exploit the lawlessness and corruption in Zimbabwe especially given the gullible nature of some Zanu PF heavy weights who only care about their welfare and interests regardless of what will happen to the nation at large. As long as the interests of those at the top ranks in Zanu PF are served, all other complaints have been taken for childish trivia without effect or consequences. Those who have worked with the Chinese contractors complain of many other serious aspects like being looked down upon through acts of rabid racist conduct, being punished or ill-treated and also being exploited and threatened with martial arts-induced physical assaults.
The Chinese experience in Zimbabwe resembles the very acts that sent Zimbabwe to take up arms against the colonial rule in the sixties. While we have chased Europeans using the front door, now we have invited the Chinese via the back door. It sounds like we cannot do without someone from Europe or Asia telling us what to do in our own country. Regardless of the cheap propaganda that the Chinese are sincere friends who are coming in to replace the Western block and build our infrastructure, the effects of their presence equated to that of the just jettisoned European descendants. Regardless of political rhetoric, the truth is that Zimbabwe has a higher appetite of maintaining a colonial presence somehow. The dependency-syndrome is quite interesting in that there is always a justified explanation as to why now Zimbabwe needs the Chinese to cover the gap left behind by the British descendants that just got chucked away after the farm invasions.
Instead of natives being forced off their lands by the British; now it is a matter of minerals going into the Chinese hands in exchange for guns and advice as contracts to mortgage Zimbabwe are signed at top levels. The other year Malaysians took over the Hwange thermal power station and it seemed normal. The looming heavy-handed trends to thwart free media, citizen liberty, freedom and democracy among the Zimbabwean folks could only be the tip of the irresistibly burdensome iceberg ahead.
In the military college that was constructed in Harare, the Chinese became contemporary slave drivers to the local citizens they overworked, manhandled and underpaid. Upon complaints being aired by the Zimbabwean employees, the Chinese defended themselves stating that their culture was that of working so hard and they had no time to waste so the complaining Zimbabweans were simply whiners and lazy men. The unjustified human rights abuse was never accounted for or checked. To our government leaders, all was well because the Chinese are deemed the best friends of Zimbabwe at the moment.
While such a partnership was deemed worthy by the government, here is the catch: The Chinese do not visit and return without any meaningful reason. They secure long term interests and exploit every situation to their ultimate economic and political advantage. In the case of post-colonial Africa, such friendship is taken for granted. Zimbabwean leaders have religious faith in the Chinese but what they are overlooking is that trading with the Chinese or trusting them too much may be costly to the Zimbabwean welfare in the long run. As they kiss each other, they may need to keep checking on the mirror if all their teeth are still in place.
When the Rhodes and Founders Day was abolished in Zimbabwe together with the destruction of the related statues in the City of Harare gardens, we thought Zimbabwe was heading the right direction to eliminate traces of colonial propaganda that had been harbingered by Charles Rudd, Cecil Rhodes and the missionaries who set the path leading to the colonization of the Mashona and Matabele people.
Skipping forward, history would tell us Zimbabweans that our ancestors "sold" the Zimbabwean land to the Europeans in exchange of slaves, sugar, gold, mirrors, spices, whiskey and other trinkets brought by the Europeans. Today such a version of history may sound distorted or on the fairy-tale side but that is what actually happened. A century later, we have fallen to the same trap. Instead of the Europeans now we have the Chinese. In place of the trinkets, the sugar, sweets and spices, now we are trading our diamonds and other minerals and people's freedoms for guns. These are the same guns that will be used to silence dissenting voices and strengthen other people's forts as any disgruntlement is contained through the barrel of the gun.
With the determined presence of the Chinese in Zimbabwe, I challenge the mantra that "Zimbabwe will never be a colony again". The truth is that Zimbabwe has gone out of her way to find promisingly great colonizers to step into the shoes of the gone Europeans. History will return to hound Zimbabwe as poverty is and arbitrariness is promoted amid such plentiful resources and a promisingly-enlightened citizenry.
More of this alanysis on Chinese presence in Zimbabwe is on www.zimeye.org