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Mercy Madhake Correspondent

THE reality of the strength of co-operation between Zimbabwe and China is fast dawning on the world, and causing anguish in detractors.

On May 16, China’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mr Guo Shaochun, wrote an editorial in The Herald describing the success of the relations, notably, against significant odds.

Mr Guo stated: “In 2022, some of the biggest fruits of China-Zimbabwe co-operation will be ready for picking, as Zimbabwe’s new Parliament building and national pharmaceutical warehouse built with Chinese grants are only months away from completion of construction and handover.”

In particular, the new Parliament building, which is the largest project in Southern Africa built with Chinese aid, has a lot of symbolism and significance, not least being the centre of a new capital city around which, as Mr Guo noted, “a boom of infrastructure construction and commercial activities will emerge”.

Essentially, this means that China is helping Zimbabwe recalibrate both its politics and economy in ways that had not been imagined previously.

This reality is dawning on many now, with the imminence of the handover of the Parliament building, itself a well-designed, immaculate and imposing state of the art structure.

This would ordinarily be a good cause to celebrate, just like a harvest — in Mr Guo’s words — would be celebrated.

However, this has sent panic among Zimbabwe’s detractors, especially the United States of America, with indications that it now seeks to undermine the development through several local actors linked to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The NED is a nefarious US institution that uses the power of money to destabilise states whose governments America doesn’t like, and it has been active in Latin America, Eastern Europe and in Africa, undertaking a number of activities including civil unrest, sponsoring instability, ideological infiltration, mass protests and colour revolutions as well as regime change.

The US throws money wantonly at organisations that are willing and capable of organising, mobilising, orchestrating and fomenting disorder, civil disobedience and unconstitutional change of Government.

Zimbabwe has been a fertile ground for this over the past two decades, and NED has been involved with a number of organisations in a closely-knit civil society space that acts as prop and appendage to the opposition.

In 2022, a close investigation will reveal that NED is sponsoring over 20 organisations in Zimbabwe that are ready to be mobilised for nefarious reasons.

These organisations include youth and community groupings, legal activism, human rights, political participation, natural resource governance, regional or external lobbying, among others. They have received amounts of up to US$400 000 from the grants by NED.

What is also worrying is that NED has also sought to infiltrate Government institutions in the name of “reform”.

According to a memorandum by the NED last February, under “Government Processes”, the institution “will strengthen the capacity of institutional leaders to carry out peaceful conflict transformation and protect human rights defenders through a series of consultations and workshops on methods of conflict resolution. The training content will be cascaded and will inform a formal training curriculum.”

This note implies that the NED will seek to bribe top bureaucrats (institutional leaders) to be lenient with, or “protect human rights defenders”. This is a serious security issue that authorities should take note of.

Further to this, NED has invested in emasculating the country’s security forces so that they can be soft on protesters or anarchists.

NED claimed that it sought to strengthen transparency and accountability in the security sector in Zimbabwe.

“The organisation will build the capacity of the security services to improve community relations and reduce the use of violence in policing. Working with senior leaders in government institutions, it will carry out a series of trainings in five provinces on community relations and conflict resolution.”

Reading in between the lines, the US is seeking to eliminate the use of force or hard power within the security services, while arming and building the capacity of the anarchists in the civil society. Interestingly, this is coming at a time when there have been reports in local media that the opposition in the country is training armed or vigilante wings, which could pose a serious threat to the security of the country. If true, both prospects could severely undermine Zimbabwe’s stability and erode its gains made under difficult conditions, including through the help of China.

A harvest under threat: Why China is the target of NED in Zimbabwe

There are credible reports of Americans mobilising civil society, media and politicians to try to protest the presence of Chinese interests in Zimbabwe.

Already, this year a number of such actions have been undertaken directly, mostly targeting companies or businesses.

The ultimate prize would be to strike directly protest at or attack the new Parliament building, which will assume iconic status once it is commissioned. This will likely be done in the name of ordinary Zimbabweans, hiding the dirty hands of America and its covert operations under NED.

A number of bases or reasons have been drawn up to mount a case of anger against this development and may be subject to anger-mongering and hostile actions by the Americans in NED through their local civil society proxies.

It is understood that some of these excuses to attack the institution include:

1. Smearing China for saddling debt on Zimbabwe through funding this project and ignoring that the project was funded through a grant, and not a loan.
2. Maligning China for “spying” or “snooping” on deliberations in the building and ignoring the fact that an independent security examination will be done before handing over to, and supervision by, Zimbabwean authorities
3. Maliciously accusing China of “colonising” Zimbabwe’s democracy through the institution and ignoring that Zimbabwe is a sovereign country and its governance is decided by Zimbabwean people.

It’s a false flag operation.

The US will likely use its network of sponsored agents to trigger and sustain a campaign against the Chinese in Zimbabwe.

On the other hand, the Americans have also been pinning hopes on regime change in Zimbabwe as the ultimate way to get rid of the influence of China, against waning fortunes of Western countries.

This makes the next 12 months very critical to stakeholders.