A Commentary on Hope, China and Wealth (1)

Preamble: Just an "Audacity" to Hope

Well, sometimes one has to take time away from blogging in order to re-examine the ideas one pushes in light of the trends manifesting within the social sphere which preoccupy one's thinking. My commentary has been one primary centred on what Malawi needs to do in order to maximize its potential for development. More specialized disciplines delimit much of such intellectual conversation to certain specific kinds of interventions. Several of my colleagues find that many of our problems manifest in the economy, others find that there is a disorder in the institutional design of Malawi including such institutions as the Republic's Constitution and so on. I concur with much of their thinking. What provokes my commentary is not necessary the question of growth, because undeniably Malawi continues to be amongst the fastest growing economies in SADC, and even in Africa. What provokes my commentary is what I consider a grave need to see an even more rapid growth (maturity) in the business is done within the social sphere generally. And that kind of growth requires a democracy concept that is deliberately designed to facilitate bargaining which should ultimately result in greater tolerance, more representative national goals, lesser political and economic inequality, better accountability from public and private officials, greater institutional integrity in government as well as it various organs, and so on. There is little doubt in my mind that Malawi will very likely cross-over into middle income status within the next 20 to 25years. That expectation might be utopian but I am more concerned with what size of the population will have been excluded or marginalized from the benefits of that economic growth. What proportion of the Malawian public will directly benefit from that growth?

China and Africa: Chinese Aid and Population Pressure

It was an interesting week of debates within the School of Social Sciences at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, here in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Clearly, the Chinese expansion into Africa is ruffling a lot of feathers. Nowhere do you find a deeper concensus of shared concern from amongst a very heterogenous group of African nationals at the University. Beyond just the day to day tussling around how Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe are grossly misrepresented by the international and even African media - the word China raises shared kinds of apprehensions and anxiety amongst younger scholars particularly. The concensus seems to be that China embodies a type of "colonization" that successfully masks itself from the attention of our old and tired African presidents who seem to see Chinses involvement in Africa as something completely different from early mercantilism, subsequent colonialism, and then the rise of the American emprialism, as a global political and economic hegemonic force, from the later 1940s.

Many of my colleagues see China as a nation that has cleverly played into the embrace of our old leaders by not commenting on the politics of individual African States. China does not even raise the question about democratization. Furthermore democratization is detrimental to the expansion of China on the African continent. The simple argument being that with democracy comes the decentralization of State power, and with that comes the requirement for Chinese investors to deal with several factions of a given nation before a license for business can be finalized. Usually, such a deal will consider the broad issues that surround the sorts of investments that Chinese firms seek to exploit in Africa, and therefore having rent implications on the business venture. To put it short, dictatorships are better for the Chinese expansion because only one person decides if a deal is good or bad for himself or herself and the country at large. This decision, it is alleged, is quickly arrived at with a few cheques paid to foreign accounts held by that dictator.

I agreed totally, or shall I say, the arguments move me because images of Bingu wa Mutharika flashed vividly in my mind as a result of those comments. My addition to the debate was two-fold. Firstly, Chinese investment into Africa is inextricable from population "exportation". The exported population safeguards the Chinese investment and repatriates profits back to the home country. Furthermore, pressure on social amenities is shed away from China into the host regions of Chinese investments. As a result, Africa gives China business and carries the weight of those businesses' heavy entourages of Chinese nationals on its already limited public sectors, such as hospitals, housing, education and so on. Secondly, the nature of Chinese aid is seldom in cash. Its often in infrustractural development or, recently as seen in the American and European cases, buy-ups of bad debts (or presently bad assets). With the poor human rights record of China, infrustratural development is heavily subsidized by labor that is severelly underpaid and overworked (eg, prison labor). Buying up bad-debts or bad assets means Chinese businesses are buying up huge assets in Europe and America for a fraction of the price they were before the credit-crunch and the subsequent financial meltdown. The long term returns from these expenditures by China heavily outweigh the costs they are presently incurring. In a nutshell, Africa needs to rethink the open-door policy it has to China. Our greatest assets to the reconfiguration of relations are the very minerals and raw materials China desperatly needs to feed its rapidly growing economy. African civil society needs to realize that activism is as much about gender and the protection of minority rights as it is foreign policy that are likely to impact in various ways on the lives of citizens.

Keeping Hard-Earned Wealth within the Family: A False and Naïve "Modernity"

This is just an observation. My parents grew up in rural Malawi. They were fortunate enough, and indeed greatly aided by their hard work, to have attained an education and moved into the urban place as professionals in Geology and Sociology. I was twelve years old when my mother died and twenty when my father died. I am forever indebted to them for having been steadfast in raising my sister and myself in line with those very same values that they used to get to where they were.

My father always insisted that it was important to embody both the ability to function anywhere in the world, and that ability to function within your own country. He insisted that my sister and I were to learn and be fluent in Chichewa, the main language in Malawi. At the same time, he had us put in a school that only allowed the use of English during school hours. The result was him and our mother successfully raised two bilingual children. Other illustrations are how he insisted that we learned to walk to school (despite having the means to drive us back and forth), learned to hand-wash our own clothes (despite having washing machines and dryers), and to go outside to play and not be glued to the television and video-games. The icing on the cake came when he put me in a public school so that I could attain the Malawi Primary School Leaving Certificate. While there I learned that life was not all rosy in my country. I realized just how fortunate I was.

When my parents died. My sister and I had been left with the necessary ability to survive. All the skills they had bestowed upon us came to serve as assets for surviving in one of the poorest countries in the world. I don't know how we did it, but somehow, today, my sister is in Europe doing here Masters in Law, and I am here in South Africa pursing a Masters in Social Science.

The interesting thing is this; people work so hard to remove themselves from appalling situations only to refuse to train their children the same skills by which they were able to survive when they were coming up. And not always, but many times you see a family especially in this part of the world quickly lose everything it had worked so hard to achieve because the next generation was denied the skills and abilities to keep that hard-earned wealth within the family. Instead children are raised to be in denial of their surroundings, of their people, of their languages, of their governments, and of their countries. Somehow it is seen as "backward" for a child to associate with a life that is rampant and unavoidable in a country whose population is predominantly poor. What a truly naïve notion of "modernity". Or perhaps I am just biased to my own experience? But who cares?