3.7.1. Permission to conduct the study
The commencement of the study was predated by the formal application and granting of the clearance certificate by the Turfloop Ethics and Research Committee (TREC) at the University of Limpopo (UL). The clearance certificate of the study is therefore attached under Annexure 3.
3.7.2. Academic fraud
All the collected secondary and primary materials indexed and/or cited in the current research report were exclusively used for academic intentions and/or purposes only.
An extra effort was actualised to ensure that unless expressly articulated, all the collected secondary and primary materials cited in the PhD thesis were duly acknowledged. All quotations marks adopted were utilised accordingly in line with the unmediated interpretations in a way that the main writers’ integrities were duly guaranteed.
3.7.3. Informed consent and voluntary participation
With regard to informed consent, the current researcher ensured that participants were given consent forms to sign before partaking in the interviews. This was done to ensure that the participants could be fully aware and had an understanding of the study, methods applied and expectations. The research participants were notified of their right to either choose to partake or not to partake in the study. This was also extended to their right to withdrawal from the study should any disturbing circumstance arise
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including unfair language or unfair treatment or when they feel that they cannot proceed due to their engagements.
3.7.4. Confidentiality and anonymity
Where direct quotations have been used; the researcher formulated and utilised pseudonyms as testimonials during the writing-up stage of the entire study. In the context of the use of indirect quotations or pseudonyms; the researcher abstained from utilising characteristics that may, unfortunately, be utilised to implicate or trace any respondent. For those participants who wanted complete identification, such request was honoured with kindness; since the current study was not a classified or secretive one. The foregoing ultimately implies that the researcher had asked all the informants if they desired to have their identities revealed or to remain anonymous when reporting the findings of the study.
3.7.5. No harm to the participants
Whilst the researcher upheld the view and considerable significance of being adherent to the above outlined ethical research principles; it is without a doubt that the study’s nature did not pose any threat to the ethics. The foregoing is subject to contestation amidst the likelihood that some of the key informants could have been victimised by some of the research questions since the entire research project is a political study.
This notion is dependent on personal and/or an individual stance in respect to other issues; although made sense when the entire political environment is characterised by high levels of censorship and intolerance. This escape clause has been addressed by the cautious selection of key informants that are intellectually and politically mature.
The key informants had a good grip on the general foreign policy issues and academic research and were chosen based on their understanding of the study motives, which was not to promote the provocation of any sensitivities but to produce a broader comprehension of the Chinese foreign policy towards Africa. Therefore, this was a substantially acceptable political discourse to analyse foreign policy issues in an academic context in so far as academics and diplomats are concerned.
45 3.8. Conclusion
The foregoing chapter has discussed the meaning of all concepts adopted for this study including a clear distinction between research methodology and research design. The chapter has also identified data collection, sampling methods, sources of data, analysis tools of the study and advanced various reasons for their choice of use.
Critical to this, ethical issues in the study including concerns relating to credibility, dependability and confirmability of the findings have been explained. Subsequently, the decision of the current researcher to triangulate both the written data and interview results shows that the written and spoken word were not linear and there is a long- standing close collaboration between them as argued in Buthelezi (2015).
The next chapter critically explores China’s historical international relations with Africa:
case studies of Angola and the DRC.
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CHAPTER FOUR
China’s historical relations with Angola and DRC 4.1. Introduction
This chapter discusses China's foreign policy towards Angola and DRC within a historical and broader context of China's Africa policy. The study follows the sequential presentation in terms of China-Angola relations and China DRC relations. A discussion on China- Africa relations is also important as China interrelates with Africa at the continental level. However, this will be preceded by a discussion on how China has interrelated with the two individual countries historically. The focus on China-Africa relations gives an outline of how China rose in Africa and what motivated China’s rise in Africa. This is followed by a general continental observation on China’s Africa policy particularly in the twenty-first century; with a special look into the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). A synoptic highlight of various FOCAC conferences is also done to explore how China engages with Africa and/or individual African nation-states in the twenty- first century.