Africa
is a battleground for the geopolitical interests of China and Europe. But
despite Beijing's and Brussels' claims about the distinctive features of their
respective approaches to developing countries, Chinese and European companies
treat African workers badly in equal measure. Meanwhile, transnational crime
syndicates and criminal gangs are spreading from the Old Continent and the
Middle Kingdom to many African regions.
Thirty-four miners shot dead by police at a British-owned platinum mine in South Africa; a Chinese manager killed by local workers at a coal mine in Zambia. Alongside the emerging heft of "Made in China" criminality in Africa's Chinatowns are the dramatic advances of criminal organizations from Europe throughout the African continent. Notwithstanding theoretical disputes over distinctions between Western colonialism and Chinese neo-colonialism, it seems that Europe and China alike are exporting to Africa some of their worst pathologies.
Demands for better pay
At the Marikana platinum mine in Rustenburg, South Africa, miners were killed during a strike over pay on August 16, while asking for an increase in their minimum wage from US$545 to $1,500 a month. The strike had begun a few days earlier and 10 people, including two police officers, had already died after fierce clashes.
The Marikana mine is owned by London-based Lonmin, the world's third-largest platinum producer. South Africa is the largest platinum producer and its mining sector is worried that the latest unrest could affect the national output in the short run. Apart from the Marikana situation, Johannesburg-based Anglo American Platinum, the world's top producer of the metal, is also grappling with demands for pay raises. Similar pleas have come from workers at the Royal Bafokeng platinum mine just north of Rustenburg.
It is worth noting that the crisis blasting South Africa's mining sector also springs from uncertainty surrounding the domestic political situation, notably infighting between two trade unions, the National Union of Mineworkers, which cultivates strong ties with the ruling African National Congress, and the recently formed Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union.
The Chinese supervisor at the Collum coal mine in Sinazongwe, Zambia, which is run by a private company from Jiangxi province in China, was killed in August by mineworkers during a strike, again over wage demands. In 2011, the government in Lusaka dismissed charges against two Chinese managers who had fired on miners at the Collum mine in the wake of an earlier salary quarrel. In his successful campaign for the Zambian presidency last year, Michael Sata seized on the popular discontent over the nature and measure of Chinese investments in the country.
South African and Zambian mineworkers are asking for the same thing: better working and living conditions. Speaking to the European Parliament on February 21, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, underscored EU support for the "Zambian government's commitment to ensure compliance with domestic labor laws", not least with regard to the mining sector.
Baroness Ashton was bluntly referring to the activities of Chinese mining companies in Zambia. However, looking at the latest events in South Africa, it would appear that the EU had better focus on its own back yard as regards the implementation of international and European labor regulations. In reality, even in the case of a stricter oversight of Brussels' institutions over corporate social responsibility practices by enterprises from the Old Continent, a British company like Lonmin might make a narrow escape if the Euro-skeptic Tories in the British cabinet succeed in restoring an opting-out from EU social policy, which is part of Britain's efforts to renegotiate the terms of its membership in the European Union.
Ashton co-chaired on August 24 the 11th Ministerial Political Dialogue between the EU and South Africa. The European foreign-policy chief expressed deep sorrow at the deaths of South African mineworkers and police officers, but she had no word against Lonmin for what happened at the Marikana mine. Indeed, it is business as usual for the EU, which is the main trading partner of Pretoria (overall trade worth US$49 billion in 2010), the first foreign investor in the country (77.5% of foreign direct investment) and its most prominent development partner (70% of all external assistance).
Exported gangsters and traffickers
In addition to reproducing in Africa the labor environment characterizing its own mining sector, with low wages and hard and dangerous working conditions, much as elsewhere in the world, not least in Europe, China is witnessing a growing expansion of its home-made crime syndicates across the African continent - an unintended consequence apparently inherent in the global projection of modern powers.
Angola recently extradited to Beijing 37 Chinese nationals under allegations of extortion, kidnappings, hold-ups, prostitution and pimping. China's Ministry of Public Security sent a special police team to Luanda in July to help investigate Chinese criminal gangs, the British Broadcasting Corp reported on August 25.
However, the most dangerous challenge for Africa in terms of foreign criminal penetration is coming from Europe. The organized crime groups in Italy provide Somali warlords and pirates with small arms in exchange for permission to dump waste off the coasts of Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea, according to French criminologist Michel Koutouzis. The EU special envoy for Somalia, Alexander Rondos, would be looking into the case, the EUobserver reported on June 20.
But there is much more. The 'Ndrangheta, at this moment the most powerful crime syndicate in Italy (and perhaps in the world), has large interests in the trafficking of coltan (a metallic substance used in mobile phones) in Congo and diamonds in South Africa, as well as in controlling - along with the Colombian drug cartels - the transit routes in West Africa, which couriers use to smuggle Latin American cocaine into Europe.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency is training an elite unit of counter-narcotics police in Ghana, and similar units will be created in Nigeria and Kenya as well, the International Herald Tribune reported on July 21. But Jeffrey Breeden, the chief of the DEA section for Europe, Asia and Africa, remarked that US security forces would not play a greater operational role in Africa against drug smuggling and that this task might be up to European police forces for historical reasons.
To minimize financial and political losses, Washington sees the African continent as a promising field for the outsourcing of security duties to Europe. Yet the first testing ground for this strategy, intervention in the war in Libya, laid the EU's military unpreparedness bare. Furthermore, there is yet another problem: In light of the elusive nature of criminal organizations, the fight against transnational organized crime in Africa could prove a much more complex job than a military campaign against a diplomatically isolated dictator such as Muammar Gaddafi.
Thirty-four miners shot dead by police at a British-owned platinum mine in South Africa; a Chinese manager killed by local workers at a coal mine in Zambia. Alongside the emerging heft of "Made in China" criminality in Africa's Chinatowns are the dramatic advances of criminal organizations from Europe throughout the African continent. Notwithstanding theoretical disputes over distinctions between Western colonialism and Chinese neo-colonialism, it seems that Europe and China alike are exporting to Africa some of their worst pathologies.
Demands for better pay
At the Marikana platinum mine in Rustenburg, South Africa, miners were killed during a strike over pay on August 16, while asking for an increase in their minimum wage from US$545 to $1,500 a month. The strike had begun a few days earlier and 10 people, including two police officers, had already died after fierce clashes.
The Marikana mine is owned by London-based Lonmin, the world's third-largest platinum producer. South Africa is the largest platinum producer and its mining sector is worried that the latest unrest could affect the national output in the short run. Apart from the Marikana situation, Johannesburg-based Anglo American Platinum, the world's top producer of the metal, is also grappling with demands for pay raises. Similar pleas have come from workers at the Royal Bafokeng platinum mine just north of Rustenburg.
It is worth noting that the crisis blasting South Africa's mining sector also springs from uncertainty surrounding the domestic political situation, notably infighting between two trade unions, the National Union of Mineworkers, which cultivates strong ties with the ruling African National Congress, and the recently formed Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union.
The Chinese supervisor at the Collum coal mine in Sinazongwe, Zambia, which is run by a private company from Jiangxi province in China, was killed in August by mineworkers during a strike, again over wage demands. In 2011, the government in Lusaka dismissed charges against two Chinese managers who had fired on miners at the Collum mine in the wake of an earlier salary quarrel. In his successful campaign for the Zambian presidency last year, Michael Sata seized on the popular discontent over the nature and measure of Chinese investments in the country.
South African and Zambian mineworkers are asking for the same thing: better working and living conditions. Speaking to the European Parliament on February 21, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, underscored EU support for the "Zambian government's commitment to ensure compliance with domestic labor laws", not least with regard to the mining sector.
Baroness Ashton was bluntly referring to the activities of Chinese mining companies in Zambia. However, looking at the latest events in South Africa, it would appear that the EU had better focus on its own back yard as regards the implementation of international and European labor regulations. In reality, even in the case of a stricter oversight of Brussels' institutions over corporate social responsibility practices by enterprises from the Old Continent, a British company like Lonmin might make a narrow escape if the Euro-skeptic Tories in the British cabinet succeed in restoring an opting-out from EU social policy, which is part of Britain's efforts to renegotiate the terms of its membership in the European Union.
Ashton co-chaired on August 24 the 11th Ministerial Political Dialogue between the EU and South Africa. The European foreign-policy chief expressed deep sorrow at the deaths of South African mineworkers and police officers, but she had no word against Lonmin for what happened at the Marikana mine. Indeed, it is business as usual for the EU, which is the main trading partner of Pretoria (overall trade worth US$49 billion in 2010), the first foreign investor in the country (77.5% of foreign direct investment) and its most prominent development partner (70% of all external assistance).
Exported gangsters and traffickers
In addition to reproducing in Africa the labor environment characterizing its own mining sector, with low wages and hard and dangerous working conditions, much as elsewhere in the world, not least in Europe, China is witnessing a growing expansion of its home-made crime syndicates across the African continent - an unintended consequence apparently inherent in the global projection of modern powers.
Angola recently extradited to Beijing 37 Chinese nationals under allegations of extortion, kidnappings, hold-ups, prostitution and pimping. China's Ministry of Public Security sent a special police team to Luanda in July to help investigate Chinese criminal gangs, the British Broadcasting Corp reported on August 25.
However, the most dangerous challenge for Africa in terms of foreign criminal penetration is coming from Europe. The organized crime groups in Italy provide Somali warlords and pirates with small arms in exchange for permission to dump waste off the coasts of Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea, according to French criminologist Michel Koutouzis. The EU special envoy for Somalia, Alexander Rondos, would be looking into the case, the EUobserver reported on June 20.
But there is much more. The 'Ndrangheta, at this moment the most powerful crime syndicate in Italy (and perhaps in the world), has large interests in the trafficking of coltan (a metallic substance used in mobile phones) in Congo and diamonds in South Africa, as well as in controlling - along with the Colombian drug cartels - the transit routes in West Africa, which couriers use to smuggle Latin American cocaine into Europe.
The US Drug Enforcement Agency is training an elite unit of counter-narcotics police in Ghana, and similar units will be created in Nigeria and Kenya as well, the International Herald Tribune reported on July 21. But Jeffrey Breeden, the chief of the DEA section for Europe, Asia and Africa, remarked that US security forces would not play a greater operational role in Africa against drug smuggling and that this task might be up to European police forces for historical reasons.
To minimize financial and political losses, Washington sees the African continent as a promising field for the outsourcing of security duties to Europe. Yet the first testing ground for this strategy, intervention in the war in Libya, laid the EU's military unpreparedness bare. Furthermore, there is yet another problem: In light of the elusive nature of criminal organizations, the fight against transnational organized crime in Africa could prove a much more complex job than a military campaign against a diplomatically isolated dictator such as Muammar Gaddafi.
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