Reading the accounts in various media of about a 77 tonnes arms consignment from China to Zimbabwe really makes an average person wonder about the sanity of the governing body of the Peoples Republic of China, the host of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Why would any country which claims to deserve the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing choose to want to invite further world censure about its human rights philosophy by sanctioning deadly weapons to be sent to a nation whose tyrannical leader will use them against an unarmed and destitute population?
Is this act of double standards an appropriate occasion for pressure by the International Olympic Committee to remind China of the terms and conditions agreed to on the part of a host country; or will the IOC turn away from possible acts of genocide as though it was not happening?
According to a British newspaper report the arms cargo was sent from China to the port of Durban in South Africa where swift and determined resistance by the port workers not to unload the cargo of about 77 tonnes of weapons and ammunition.
This collective humanitarian action ensured that the ship had to leave the port and drop anchor off-shore, while its captain waited for further instructions from the ships owners as to where he should go next to unload his arms cargo.
This boycott of the container vessel’s cargo of weapons means that the ship could perhaps be sent to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. Mozambique is on the eastern side of Africa and borders on part of Zimbabwe to the west.
However, The Daily Mail further reported:
Earlier this week, Chinese troops were seen on the streets of Zimbabwe’s third largest city Mutare.
This made me think that the ships owners would prefer to dock at the Mozambican port of Mutare, north of Maputo,which has, (or used to have) both a rail link to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, and a road link from Beira to the town of Mutare just across the border with Mozambique.
The road link is a wide fairly straight stretch of gravel road. I was personally familiar with both the ports in Maputo and Beira having worked in each location during Mozambique’s civil war (1975-1992) from 1986 for an American aid agency to ensure the aid items on the ships’ manifest were actually unloaded.
My use of the road from Beira to Zimbabwe was to take a few days respite from the war conditions in Mozambique.
While this was the only road then to Zimbabwe its gravel surface was stable and I could drive quite quickly on its reasonable surface although I wonder today if, during the years of the Mugabe regime, there has been any effort made to keep the road in a fit state of use for heavy duty trucks.
I raise the point about the condition of the road because transferring the containers filled with ammunition and weapons means that trucks would have to be driven slowly with the risk of them sinking to their axles on dirt roads. Added to which the road is cut through dense bush for more than a hundred miles without any “services”. Night-time travel is discouraged, there is no lighting, nor evidence of nearby communities, and the cargo could “disappear”.
It took me four hours of fast driving to make the journey from Beira to Maputo, and quite a bit of time at both ends of the road to attend to military/customs details. A heavy truck would take much longer, for example, its cargo might disappear completely, a common enough event for trucks carrying humanitarian goods.
And by train from Beira to Harare? The success of transferring containers depends upon the infrastructure and security in place in both countries, and one could not guess at the state of the rail yards in Zimbabwe after 22 years of Mugabe’s rule.
So returning to the question of why were Chinese troops in Mutare? Are they in Zimbabwe to officially hand over the weapons to the Mugabe military ? Or:
Are the Chinese instructors in country to teach the Mugabe military the finer points of crowd control with deadly weapons?
Have the Chinese military been sent as “advisors” to Mugabe’s military commanders?
How to hone the finer points of causing people to disappear?
How to divide families?
The Mail does raise a further interesting point in that:
Three years ago, Mugabe signed extensive trade pacts with the Chinese as part of his Look East policy – forced on him after he was ostracized by western governments over alleged human abuses.
The deal gave the Chinese mineral and trade concessions in exchange for economic help – mirroring other deals Beijing has signed with regimes all over Africa.
Perhaps the arms deals by the Chinese as economic aid throughout Africa and elsewhere is a sign of their global, and continuing practice of Imperial policy much as the western world is currently engaged, Olympic Games human rights policies violation, or not.
Tags: Beijing | Beira | China | MAPUTO | mozambique | Mutare | Zimbabwe | 2010 Olympic Games | International Olympic Committee | Mugabe | Mugabe regime | Peoples Republic of China | port of Durban | weapons and ammunition | World
