The Government has barred the main opposition party from attending ceremonies marking the visit of Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, because of its anti-China stance.
Zambia has witnessed some of Africa’s most public expressions of unease over China’s growing power, most notably when workers at a Chinese-owned mine rioted over pay.
Vernon Mwaanga, the chief government spokesman, told reporters from state media that the Patriotic Front was the only opposition party not invited to meetings between Hu and Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president.
The Patriotic Front has accused the government of selling out to Beijing.
“We have invited opposition party leaders to attend public functions like the state banquet for the Chinese president,” Mwaanga said.
“But … we have not invited any leader of the Patriotic Front because they do not recognise the Chinese people.”
Bilateral ties
Hu, who arrived on Saturday, faces a delicate task in copper-rich Zambia because of widespread local feeling that China is attempting to dominate and ‘colonise’ the local economy.
Zambian officials however said Hu’s visit will spur trade and foreign investment and make Zambia a hub for China’s economic expansion on the world’s poorest continent.
Ng’andu Magande, the finance minister, said that Zambia aimed to strengthen its bilateral ties with China in order to learn from the Asian country’s success in boosting its once-moribund economy.
“The most important thing for us is that China is the fastest growing economy and we are also growing. These relations will help us to find winning ways because China was an [economic] underdog just a few years ago, but they are now performing well,” Magande said.
China did not respond to the opposition’s claims.
“I’m sure that this visit will serve to take China-Zambia relations to a higher level,” Hu said in a statement.
‘Colonise Africa’
Hu and Mwanawasa were due to hold private talks later on Saturday and will then issue a joint communique.
The government has said journalists would not be allowed to ask questions during a joint news conference by Hu and Mwanawasa on Sunday after the two leaders sign trade and economic co-operation agreements.
The Patriotic Front, which narrowly lost elections last year after running on an openly anti-China platform, criticised Hu’s visit.
Guy Scott, Patriotic Front general secretary, said: “They are out to colonise Africa economically and also to get Africa’s solidarity at the United Nations.”
Hu’s trip to Zambia dropped a planned stop in the Copperbelt region, apparently out of fears he might be targeted by protesting families of workers who died in a 2005 explosion at a Chinese-owned mine.
Chinese President Hu Jintao on Saturday offered Zambia a multimillion dollar investment package aimed at boosting ties. Facing mounting accusations of Chinese exploitation of African labor and resources _ an issue during last year’s Zambian presidential elections Hu Jintao stressed that Beijing was motivated by partnership rather than purely profit.
Zambia is poised to have a maize surplus this season but it is still unlikely that the food will reach many of the 58 percent of Zambians that are classified as extremely poor. The ministry of agriculture recently released a national food balance sheet showing that the country will have a surplus of 160,000 metric tonnes of maize during the 2006/07. In the 2005/06 season the output was 63 percent above the previous season and 54 percent above the five-year average.
Zambia’s anti-corruption drive is failing because the government has been concentrating its resources on investigating the corrupt practices of the previous regime, allowing present graft in the public service to flourish, a corruption watchdog said in its latest report. Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Indices [CPI] has consistently ranked Zambia as one of the most corrupt countries since 2001.
In a stirring speech punctuated with applause, Zambia’s former leader Kenneth Kaunda set the tone Monday for Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha centenary commemoration here by lashing out at the US and Britain for unleashing a war in Iraq.Kaunda, who mesmerised the packed Vigyan Bhavan auditorium here with his powerful speech that ended with a song to purge Africa from the scourge of AIDS, asked all those funding terrorism to channel the money to fight tuberculosis and AIDS.