SA must learn from DRC, China link

I DON'T know what you've heard about China's involvement in Africa. What I heard up to now is that that country is raping the continent of natural resources by bringing in cheap Chinese labour, building things for Africans and leaving behind structures with the possibility of becoming white elephants.

When I first heard and believed this, I had never been to a country with people from mainland China who had been sent there by the Chinese government. So, on landing in the Democratic Republic of Congo last week, the last thing I thought I would encounter were Chinese people from mainland China at work.

But there they were. My guide - who was once in charge of the DRC's reconstruction programme - was shocked by my perception.

No, he said, the Chinese are helping to skill up our people. Chinese engineers, he said, don't, like their European counterparts, insist on expensive hotels away from the workers.

They sleep on site and line up for food like the ordinary workers they work with.

We, he added, have just graduated 300 engineers to work with the Chinese on all our projects here, which include hospitals, roads and bridges.

Our engineers are learning a lot. Look, he pointed at a forklift on one of the building sites, it's being driven by a black Congolese. It might not be much, but we did not have skilled Congolese forklift drivers before the Chinese came here.

Yes, in the beginning it was mainly the Chinese doing the work. But over time they have handed over the reins to locals.

And they leave an incredible work ethic behind. You see this hospital, he said, pointing at a construction site composed of a number of structures. European countries told us that this building, which had been abandoned for 50 years, could not be rehabilitated.

They said we must demolish it and build a new one. Look now, the Chinese rehabilitated it perfectly and added new structures on the site.

We saved money. We saved time. And we learnt how to rehabilitate an old building.

I once told a Belgian minister, he continued, that for years we, the Congolese, ran our economy according to what Belgian advisers told us to do.

When this failed, you said we were too stupid to run our economy. In fact, I said, you have been taking copper and other minerals from the DRC for hundreds of years and we have nothing to show for it.

Today, by engaging with the Chinese, for the first time in centuries we have roads that are proof that we have mineral resources underground.

The DRC, together with the Chinese, is slowly but surely rebuilding. This begs the question: how many black African engineers were trained through the building of stadia in South Africa for the Fifa 2010 World Cup?

Maybe it's time to learn from the Congolese?