A vessel of controversy

I woke up smiling this morning without knowing when my breakfast would be ready. I did not win a jackpot either. But the news of the rejection of the Chinese ship loaded with assorted arms for the desperate Mugabe government elated me the most. It made my day.
The controversial vessel, An Yue Jiang, like a bad product, has been drifting like a shaft driven by the wave, since South African workers unions protested the shipment. The workers had threatened not to offload its contents ferried in by a Chinese firm. It was laden with ammunition as well as rockets, mortar bombs and mortar tubes ordered by the Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Defence.
The shipment weighed 77 tons and was valued at $1.245 million. The invoice was dated Jan. 21, and the goods left China on March 15, two weeks after the Zimbabwe general elections, whose result is now being unduly delayed. Angered by the shipment, Rubin Phillip, the Anglican archbishop of KwaZulu-Natal, and Gerald Patrick Kearney, public activist, aided by the Southern African Litigation Centre, approached a South Africa’s High Court to halt the transportation of the arms across South Africa and the court granted the request before long.
But on Friday evening, when the authorities went to serve the court order on An Yue Jiang, it pulled up anchor and sailed away. It is being said that the ship might be heading for Congo, Maputo or Beijing. But the Chinese government says it might recall the ship with its contents.
As things are, the best destination for the ship is Beijing and that should be done at once. Zimbabweans need the result of the vote they cast on March 29, 2008 and not weapons of destruction. Enough of Chinese arms build-up in Africa in the name of economic transaction.

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China’s aiding Africa’s despotism

America and Britain very often disappoint many of their followers and incur their wrath for obvious reasons. They most often talk but do little to curb the excesses of some tyrannical regimes. Take the case of China and the Olympics and then come back to look at the way China is making unhindered forays into African markets and beyond despite its awful human rights records.
If Beijing’s brutalisation of Tibetans is not worrisome enough to both nations, then one would have expected them to rise up and confront Robert Mugabe who woefully lost last month’s general elections but defiantly and shamelessly sat on the results. But painfully all we got was an oral vilification from Washington and a terse rebuke from London a few days ago. All that looks like pouring water on the feathers of a hen- it falls away leaving the hen to fly away safely.
Because China and Zimbabwe are being treated by the big powers with kid gloves, China has gone ahead to ferry deadly weapons into Harare while the controversy over the election results is yet to be resolved. China remains the largest supplier of arms and weapons to Sudan, thus escalating the killings in Darfur while at home it is suppressing any voice of dissent against the hosting of the 2008 Olympics and Tibetan autonomy.
Expectedly, with this type of lackadaisical attitude from the leading nations, China will continue to saturate despotic African nations with arms to fight their opponents and destroy democratic structures as long as no one shouts against its impunity. Nigeria for instance, has already signed a multi-million dollar oil and rail deal with the despotic regime. It stands to gain from China what the democratic nations have denied it. What a shame and dishonour to the colonial powers that once dominated the black continent?

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International Herald Tribune

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Usatoday

International Security Energy

Timesonline