In recent years, the Chinese regime has made massive inroads into South Africa’s social fabric. They have influence over telecommunications and public infrastructure, as well as light and heavy industry. A pertinent example is how the state-controlled entity charged with maintaining our roads has just awarded several major construction contracts to Chinese firms instead of South African ones.
As reported by News24, “The SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) has stunned SA's embattled construction industry by awarding three of the five tenders it cancelled in June to Chinese firms. SA's construction industry is a third of the size it was a decade ago, mostly due to a decline in infrastructure spending by the state. Between 2018/19 and 2020/21, Sanral spent less than half of its government grant, and in 2021/22, it left R8 billion of its R21 billion budget unspent.
“Among the stalled tenders re-awarded last week was one for
the Mtentu Bridge on the Wild Coast, which is to be one of the world's highest
bridges and Africa's longest bridge once built. The R4 billion contract was
awarded to the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) in a joint
venture with a firm called Mecsa. The previous front-runner for the contract
was 100% black-owned Concor.”
To be clear, China’s involvement in this country and on the
continent more generally has nothing to do (in my view at least) with
cross-cultural friendship. As I see it, the Chinese Communist Party recognises
that our leaders are weak and corrupt, so there is great opportunity to strip
this place of its still considerable resources. Gaining soft power through
bribes and diplomacy is far more efficient than an overtly hostile takeover.
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