Conclusion

CHAPTER 7: WHOSE IDENTITY, WHOSE CONSTRUCTS AND WHOSE INTEREST? THE SYNTHESIS OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DATA IN

4.13 Conclusion

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responsibility. The Taiwan question has been stated earlier. Pro-democracy protests are likely to increase despite the CCP having consolidated its power after the Tiananmen Square protests and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After embarking on the reform and opening up trajectory, Deng Xiaoping was slow to make such sweeping changes on China’s political landscape. He still believed in tightening the CCP’s hold on power for the Party not to be challenged in its bid to reform its economy and the method and pace of doing this. Thus, economic reform did not lead to political change at a national level. The ruling party retains the communist name and still promotes socialism with Chinese characteristics. These two allusions could be judged as anathema in twenty-first century, a century in which many would want to align with liberal democracy.

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movements that could have relied on China during their struggle against colonial rule in Africa.

While the country sought to promote the identity of being a credible socialist power, those it antagonized perceived Mao’s China as a bellicose warmongering country. Thus China was largely isolated and the events such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution further isolated China from the international economic system. However, China’s innate role in international politics was recognized even during this era. Before heading to China for a watershed visit, President Richard Nixon spoke to Congress thus:

It is a truism that an international order cannot be secure if one of the major powers remains largely outside it and hostile toward it. In this decade, therefore, there will be no more important challenge than that of drawing the People's Republic of China into a constructive relationship with the world community, and particularly with the rest of Asia (Nixon 1971).

However, it was only after the death of Mao (in 1976) and the rehabilitation of the Deng Xiaoping (in 1978) as China’s new helmsman that China started making visible and authentic strides towards being part of the global economy. Anxious to repair the damage wrought by Mao’s Leap and the Cultural Revolution, Deng wanted to modernize China’s economy by embarking on a policy of reform and opening up. The new economic policies manifested market- oriented tendencies, similar to those practised in non-communist states. Though politically China remained an avowed communist country, its new economic reform transformed China into a more acceptable power in the international political system. From being a power that was radically anti-capitalist and anti-Western, the emerging identity of post-Mao China suggested a shift to a more amenable China, pragmatic enough to realise that cordial relations with technologically advanced capitalist powers would help to satisfy China’s interest for economic growth.

By the time China was embarking on economic reform and opening up, many countries that it had hitherto helped - both materially and ideologically - to fight colonialism, had attained their independence. This diminished the ideological basis on which China could stake its international relations. Its zeal to spread communist revolution the world over was thus replaced by its interest to integrate with other powers in the international system in order to attain economic growth.

Deng’s socialism with Chinese characteristics presents China as a modernizing power but with a reference to socialism mainly because the CCP wanted – and still wants - to wield unchallenged power in China. The power that the party wields shows continuity in China’s political outlook, a

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continuity that was not commensurate with the discontinuity of economic practices of the Mao era. Today it is because of the CCP’s reluctance to change from styling itself as a communist party and China as a communist country that causes divergence between China and the West.

The anxiety that China’s rise has provoked in the West has mainly been based on the argument that the interests of communist and capitalist countries are as divergent and conflicting as their identities. It is thought that with its influence, China will spread its political character to more impressionable countries. However, with its growing prominence, even the West will of necessity be compelled to acknowledge China’s inevitable role in shaping current and future global politics and economics. Moreover, China is more nominally than practically socialist.

Africa has been more optimistic of China’s rise. China shares identities of being a country that was under Western and foreign domination and occupation. It has also been referred to as a developing country, another point of intersection with the identities of African states. These identities have historically bred interests of fighting against foreign interference and domination and lessening the global South’s dependency on the global North for development. For Africa, China is a timely and almost irresistible opportunity to seek alternative partners in development from the traditional partners, among whom are erstwhile colonisers. Africa is also of great importance to China because the continent is glutted with energy resources that China sorely needs to maintain its unprecedented growth. Both in action and rhetoric, China and Africa accentuate their shared identity and interests as a way of deepening Sino-African relations in a mutually beneficial manner. The next chapter looks at the Zambia’s identities and interests from the establishment of the Republic in 1964. The chapter is not a history of Zambia; it is a presentation of events and how they have impacted on the identities and interests that Zambia deliberately chose, assumed by default and was given.

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CHAPTER 5

THE EVOLUTION OF ZAMBIA’S IDENTITY AND INTERESTS 5.1 Introduction

The fact that constructivism is the approach used for analysing the role of identities and interests in Sino-Zambian relations entails a number of things. First of all, it implies that social factors have had bearing on how identities and interests between China and Zambia have developed.

Secondly, and related to the first, the impact of social forces on relations can make more sense when different epochs are compared. For example, one can never infer the changes and transformation of identity and interest without looking at how history bears this notion out.

Vincent Pouliot (2007:359) suggests that “a constructivist methodology should be inductive, interpretive, and historical.” This is in line with the methodology chosen for this research and the type of interpretive analysis that was used.

The current chapter will look at how Zambia’s identities and interests have been shaped over time. This, in the spirit of constructivism, will be done in a historical fashion. History is a continuum rather than a watertight separation of one era from the other. For this reason, though there might be some substantial changes in the identities of the two countries from one epoch to another, it is advisable to keep in mind that certain characteristics might defy epochal divisions.

As Tordoff and Molteno (1974:1) assert “every nation is a product of its past”.⁵³ It is also important to note whether or not the constructivist claim of identities and interests as consequences of both domestic dynamics and external vicissitudes is sustainable. Without pre- empting much of what formed the analysis of this research, it is safe at this point to state that, in their interaction, states accentuate certain identities and interests while downplaying others, if they want to forge strong bonds. Conversely, nations that are opposed to each other are more likely to assume identities and interests that differentiate them. In order to present a credible canvass of Zambia’s identities and interests, the current chapter used relevant written and visual material, and the thoughts of Kenneth Kaunda who played a formative role in constructing Zambia’s identity and interests.

53 Specifically referring to Zambia, Miles Larmer (2006:236) asserts that “History matters to Zambia” and that “In the years after independence in 1964, historical studies played an important role in the self-conscious construction of a Zambian identity.”

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This first part of the current chapter looks at Zambian identities and interests. Though most of the ensuing information is based on Zambia’s identities and interests after independence, a paucity of information will be given predating independence, in order to imbue the chapter with a sense of history and continuity. The chapter divides post-colonial Zambian identities and interests along the three republics that the country has witnessed.

The First Republic was ushered in at independence in 1964. It came to an end in 1973 with the introduction of a one-party democracy. The Second Republic ran from 1973 to 1991. The Third Republic started in 1991 wherein multiparty politics were reintroduced in the country and the 27- year rule of Kaunda and his United National Independence Party (UNIP) came to an end. As of 2017 Zambia is still under the Third Republic. During his rule, the manner with which Kaunda doled out positions of leadership in the public service and his cabinet attests to just how powerful and influential an individual he was. His shuffles and reshuffles of cabinet portfolios were also done with the intention of balancing ethnic representation especially after the emergence of the UPP taught him a salutary lesson in political pluralism (Giliomee and Simkins 1999). It is made clear in the sections ahead that Kaunda as a person was influential on how Zambia came to be known and identified in the First and Second Republics. Though not sometimes explicitly stated, the identities that Zambia manifested and forged and the interests it pursued during each of these republics will be discernible.

5.2.1 In Search of a Zambian Identity

Politics in Africa, as any other region, is mainly about power, who wields it, who yearns for it, and who endures its enforcement. The binary between those who have power and those who do not have it is universal, but is influenced by different circumstances. For certain societies, like the West, contestations for power follow ideological lines and, sometimes, religious persuasions, to a greater degree while other influences are less powerful. Sub-Saharan African politics have historically been more influenced by ethnic, tribal or cultural dynamics, religious inclinations, and between military rule and civil leadership. According to Dressang (1974:1605), those who

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prefer to have their ethnic kin in positions of power do so because they assume that bureaucrats apply themselves to their tasks according to their “social background.”

Being a country of over seventy different ethnic groups, Zambia has had its share of tribal politics. However, it is noteworthy that unlike other countries (e.g. Rwanda, Uganda, Lesotho, Swaziland) whose very name is derived from tribal or cultural groups within those regions, Zambia has escaped that circumstance. Dressang (1974) argued that evidence in Zambia seemed to refute the claim that ethnicity was of paramount importance in the distribution of power. He cited the desire for career self-advancement as being one determinant factor rather than the pursuit of ethnic patronage. However, it would be an exaggeration to state that ethnic, tribal or cultural dynamics have not influenced Zambian politics. Like in many other post-colonial states in sub-Saharan Africa, ethnic politics have had some measure of influence on political conduct and control. The national motto, One Zambia One Nation, was a unifying slogan for the different tribal and linguistic groups, a slogan which was crucial to holding the polity together and staving off any sectorial confrontation that might threaten the continued existence of Zambia as one political whole.

Zambia displays a fascinating dynamic of tribal and ethnic politics. There are more than seventy ethnicities in Zambia, but with less than ten main languages. Politics based on linguistic cleavages have often concentrated more on the language that people in power speak rather than their original language. For example, many small languages of the Northern and Copperbelt Provinces of Zambia have been somewhat overtaken by the more dominant Bemba language.

Ethnic dynamics are therefore intertwined with “regional identities” (Giliomee and Simkins 1999:208).

Daniel Posner’s (2005) empirical research dealt with this puzzle. After the reintroduction of multi-party politics in 1991, there was a relentless charge that ethnic politics in Zambia were primary determinants of who wielded power. The Bemba people were often accused of usurping power for themselves, to the detriment of other ethnic and linguistic groups. When the issue was probed deeper, Posner’s study revealed that a lot of people in Chiluba’s government who were thought to be Bemba, actually belong to small tribes. What was causing this enigma is that those who belong to smaller tribes with an affinity to the Bemba language are in fact categorized as

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Bemba. Thus, Zambia in that situation was more divided between the ‘Bemba’ who held power and other groups.

Along ethnic, tribal or regional lines, the biggest challenge to Zambia’s corporate identity and continued survival as one whole has been the Barotseland question. Barotseland is an area traversing the North-western region of Zambia. For a long time before independence colonialists had treated the area as somewhat independent of the region that came to later be called Zambia.

Thus, the first government of independent Zambia had the task of integrating “an artificial colonial entity into a united and stable state” (Caplan 1970: v). Barotseland is predominated by the Lozi people and so the intermittent resurgence of the Barotse dilemma carries with it ethnic undertones. The Barotseland Agreement of 1964 gave the Litunga, who is King of the region, powers to have his own government and to use customary laws that applied to his subjects (Barotseland Agreement 1964).⁵⁴ Prior to and immediately after colonialism (some might argue that it continues to this day) there was also a dimension of class to the conflict as the people of Barotseland were more exposed to Western education and mores than the rest of their future compatriots.