Africa’s New Colonial Power

While Robert Mugabe is uprooting millions of his people, most nations have become increasingly hesitant to back up his regime, with one notable exception:

While the talk is of democracy sweeping the continent, some experts believe that China’s rising influence here may power its blend of free-market dictatorship, particularly among African leaders already reluctant to turn over power democratically.

“We might see the Chinese political system appealing to a lot of states whose elites and regimes are more in line with that sort of thinking,” said Chris Maroleng, a Zimbabwe expert at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. “It’s really a conflict of two systems, one based on regime security and the other, almost Western, which talks of human security – good governance and human rights.”