Arthur Mutambara, center-left, in Harare on March 14, 2009. (JEKESAI NJIKIZANA/AFP/GettyImages)
Zimbabwe prepared to celebrate thirty-three years of self-rule Thursday. So perhaps we can ascribe Deputy P.M. Arthur Mutambara’s anti-China remarks a day ahead of the festivities — he warned against taking a ‘romantic view’ of China’s involvement in Africa, stating that ‘China is no longer in the solidarity of the poor with Africa. It is now the second biggest economy in the world’ — to a bubbling up of national amour-propre.
Would that it were so. The prospect of a nation that announced in January it had just $217 left in the bank using an international summit to lash out at one of its major economic backers is as grim as it is hilarious. And Mutambara’s remarks are politicking, not the putting-forward of a serious policy concept. The heavily sanctioned African country has long relied on its ties with China to compensate for the almost complete lack of investment from the West. President Robert Mugabe’s ‘Look East’ policy has been successful at securing greater Chinese economic involvement in Zimbabwe — a mutually beneficial arrangement, as Beijing has come away with lucrative mining deals while Mugabe receives arms shipments to fortify his grip on power.
Yes, there are legitimate reasons to question China’s economic involvement in Zimbabwe. But Mutambara’s pivot has less to do with concerns over ‘solidarity of the poor’ than with the ongoing tensions straining his country’s uneasy ruling coalition. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party’s relationship with Beijing is a convenient site of criticism for his MDC governmental rivals, who are capitalizing on concerns over Chinese labor practices in Zimbabwe to score political points. Finance Minister Tendai Biti, the man who told the world about that infamous $217 and like Mutambara an MDC member, made similar criticisms on April 12: ‘The sad reality is that they are not comrades’. (See what he did there?)
But to what end all this rhetoric? MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s recent trip to Beijing suggests that China’s economic relationship with Zimbabwe could remain unchanged even in the extremely unlikely event that Mugabe were to be voted out in favor of his rivals — as it would in the even-more-extremely-unlikely event of his accepting such a result. The MDC is looking, here, for some credibility: their involvement in the government serves as a fig leaf for Mugabe’s repressive policies, one that has already been used, along with the recent constitutional reform, to justify the easing of sanctions. It’s important to keep that credential fresh ahead of ahead of Zimbabwe’s July elections — for audiences both at home and abroad. Call it a ‘Look Everywhere’ policy.
