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China and Africa
No guns for BobPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 12:05 PM
The 'An Yue Jiang' is a ship owned by China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO); it arrived in Durban, South Africa last week with a cargo of arms and ammunition for Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe. Although the South African government initially said they had no right to interfere in a normal commercial transaction between China and Zimbabwe, the South African dock worker's union refused to unload the cargo. After South African lawyers caled on the government to intervene, a court order was sent out on a launch to the An Yue Jiang, but it had already departed South African coastal waters. It seems that landlocked Zimbabwe will not be able to get hold of the shipment from China. AllAfrica.com reports that the "governments of both Mozambique and Tanzania have refused to allow a Chinese ship carrying weapons for Zimbabwe to offload its cargo in their ports". Nor does it look like the ship will unload its cargo on Africa's Atlantic coastline at one of Nambia's ports. IOL.co.za reports: "There has been no request by a Chinese ship carrying arms and ammunition destined for Zimbabwe to dock in either of Namibia's two ports, Namibian port authorities said on Monday." UPDATE: UPDATE 2:
South Africa's Sunday Times (April 23):
South Africa's IOL.co.za:
AllAfrica.com (April 24): Zimbabwe: China Recalls Weapons Shipment See also this post on This Is Zimbabwe. UPDATE 3:
UPDATE 4: See May 6 news - the shipment may have arrived in Zimbabwe after all. Links and Sources
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Comments on No guns for Bob
looks like Mr. Mugabe is running out of friends.
Old, but still hilarious youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b6BxywQD2c
The Chinese don't need a dock. In classic snakehead illegal immigrant method, they'll merely beach the ship and have hundreds of coolies (be they Chinese or natives) offload the weapons by hand and then truck them inland. The revolution LIVES!!
best news i'll read all week... ... ...and it's only tuesday!
hurray for South African civil society!
Good move by the South Africans, But what's to stop Bob from flying the arms in to Zimbabwe?
These are posts from china.com forum and sina.com.cn (in Chinese):
link, link
They both mentioned "有关合同是去年签署的，与津国内最近的局势变化无关" (The contract was signed last year, and has no relation to recent turbulence of Zimbabwe).
The actual date of signing is not indicated, however.
And it's said that Chinese armymen were seen in Mutare with 70 Zimbabwe armymen. This leads to suspicion and guess about China's role in Zimbabwe. The reason is
"这10个人只是中国国防大学派往津巴布韦参谋学院任教的10名教官。参谋学院按照教学计划的安排，在14日组织该学院来自南部非洲国家的70多名学员（都是高级军官）和10名中国教官开始对津巴布韦的几座主要城市进行参观访问。"
(These 10 army official are visiting teachers from China National Defense University to Zimbabwe Staff College. According to teaching plan, in Apr 14, 70 students (high level officials) from various south African countries and 10 Chinese teaching official begin a visit to some main cities of Zimbabwe).
The information source implies not only army officials of Zimbabwe are there, but also of other countries. I translated it explicitly.
My note: The visiting teachers were sent to Zimbabwe first in 2004-01-12. (Information source: link)
It's more likely an inopportune coincidence.
link
The ship arrived at Angola, and offloaded cargo for Angola.
(beware the sina news is censored, so information is sparse)
link for reference.
Larki in Cloud:
accounts elsewhere suggest that the cargo was NOT unloaded:
@b.
According to information current available, the ship carries cargo for both Angola and Zimbabwe. The sina news implies the cargo for Angola is for construction.
The cargo for Angola is unloaded, but cargo for Zimbabwe is not allowed to unload at this time.
nytimes: "Angola’s decision — it said it had allowed the ship to unload cargo meant for Angola, just not the weapons — brought the latest and the most surprising evidence of success in the international pressure campaign against the Zimbabwean government."
BTW, I feel that one sided consensus is useless and harmful for resolving the problem of Zimbabwe.
"And for the first time since the election, the group said it had also documented instances of retaliatory violence by supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, though they still are far fewer in number than attacks instigated by the state."
The "retaliatory" wording is suspicious.
I think it's wise to delay the delivery of arms to Zimbabwe. But the current pressure to An Yue Jiang will not work. It just hits wrong nail.