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Don Garland's avatar

This is great. More people need to hear this. Understand this and be aware that China is a leader in uniting the world and sustainable development and human development. Cooperation and respect if they can save the world

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Berta Nelson's avatar

Thank you for this excellent discussion! Two incredibly knowledgeable guests! China has been befriending Africa for 35 years! So has Russia even longer. I agree that African leadership must take the reins as they choose investments & plan the outcomes of them. However, many African leaders are NOT really in charge of their nation's destiny since many are still under neo-colonial rule. Even so, great strides are being made, thanks to Chinese diligence these three decades!

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Anti-Revisionist's avatar

The BRI in the East and it's competitors (Global Gateway and PGII) in the West require vast amounts of resources and critical minerals, much of which is found in Africa.

South Africa's expropriation act makes provision for the state to confiscate any "property" (that is the wording) if it's "in the public interest", which can be interpreted any way (because it's so vague) the state wants to.

Let's see if we can put 2 and 2 together: South Africa is rich in critical minerals (a lot of those minerals are under farmlands) and even though land reform projects have already been concluded in the country, and although there is already a perfectly fine expropriation act in place, the government decided to amend the act and change the wording t vague wording about "property" while claiming this is all still due to "having to correct injustices of the past" (but more than 90% of claims were already settled).

Moreover, the entire South Western part of the country was settled by white South Africans prior to the Bantu/Nguni groups that migrated south later - meaning that black South Africans have no historical claims on large parts of the country (in the South West of it), yet the new expropriation law covers the entire country ...

The two highly educated and clearly very intelligent guests seem to find it difficult at the end of your interview with them to respond to the question of "human rights abuses", keeping their answers vague. Well, sure they must be aware that there are 143 laws officially discriminating against white people in the country?

https://racelaw.co.za

Remember apartheid and the anti-apartheid movement? Was that not about race discrimination?

The issue is that the BRICS grouping/project does not support human rights by it's (so-called) non-interference policy, but of course, if BRICS is a commodity-based project that might affect minorities such a policy is not too surprising. Nevertheless, it just comes down to imperialism once again, no different from the West.

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Michael Chung's avatar

The fact is that interfering with the internal affairs of sovereign countries even with the best intentions often does more harm than good

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Anti-Revisionist's avatar

This is not non-interference:

"China’s Xi Jinping shows support for SA’s policy on land reform"

http://archive.today/2022.03.15-204421/https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/xi-jinping-support-land-reform/

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Michael Chung's avatar

I don't condone interference on either side, it us up to the people of South Africa both black and white to resolve your internal differences without outside interference, I agree with you that China or anyone else should butt out!

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Tatjana's avatar

Excellent discussion, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us!

I keep my fingers crossed for BRICS and BRI, cooperation is such a beautiful thing!

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