[WEEK IN REVIEW] Who Gets to Tell the China-Africa Story?
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Hello and welcome to another edition of the China in Africa podcast, a proud member of the Seneca Podcast Network. I'm Eric Olander coming to you today from beautiful Singapore in Southeast Asia. And as always, I'm joined by CGSP's Managing Editor Kobus Van Staden in Cape Town, South Africa, and our Africa Editor, Jeronima, joining us from the beautiful island of Singapore.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Eric. Well, we're doing a week in review show today, in part because the pace of news now is

just feels like it's on hyperdrive. So much is going on. Today, we're going to bring you three topics. I'm here in Singapore, as I mentioned, and I've had the chance to be invited by Nanyang Technological University and the Africa Studies Center here. A big shout out to Amit Jain and the wonderful team there, who really does an amazing program here. And this is the only Africa Studies Center in Southeast Asia. And

This center, I have a feeling, is going to be a lot more important now in the days to come as relations between African countries and Southeast Asia become more important. And we'll talk about that coming up. We're also going to talk about some insights that I picked up here on Chinese mining strategy. And we're going to get Giraud's

feedback on this. There's some very interesting insights that I picked up from some Chinese stakeholders here that I want to share with both of you. And then finally, we're going to talk to Kobus about all of the unfolding drama that's going on between the United States and South Africa and how that's going to impact South Africa's relations with China.

China and maybe even more broadly China's relations with Africa. But let's start with the past couple of days that I've been here in Singapore having some fascinating discussions with just a wide range of folks, particularly over at the NTU campus. And midweek, I gave a lecture entitled...

what does China want from Africa? And it was just a lot of fun to have the chance to meet with the students, a lot of Chinese students, a lot of Singaporean students, quite a few researchers from India as well. And let me just walk you through a little bit of what I was saying. And those of you who are watching us on YouTube will have the benefit of being able to see some of the slides. And I'll put the slide deck also in the show notes for you. And so basically what

The point that I was trying to make was to show that when China first went to Africa in the early 2000s, and this is in the modern era, it really was about resources in many respects. It really was about the hunt for oil, mineral, and timber, opening new markets for Chinese companies. There was excess surplus supply on the Chinese side. They needed to find outlets for their state-owned enterprises. And I put a slide up here.

And those of you listening on the audio show, it shows that in the period from 1999 to 2004, China sourced about 30% of its oil from African countries. A lot of that came from Sudan, came from Angola and the Republic of Congo. But then as we move forward in time, China starts to evolve its own economic strategy. And I kind of put to the students a question. I said,

Well, the engagement in Africa really booms until about 2013. And then I asked the students, I said, what happens in 2013? And then, of course, 2013 is the year that the Belt and Road Initiative begins. And this is when Xi Jinping went to Kazakhstan and announced it. And at that time from 2013, we start to see a decline of Chinese oil buying from Africa all the way from 30%. Now it goes down really rapidly.

below 10% today. And we're seeing that across the board in a number of different sectors. And so as you can see from the slides, and again, I'll put those slides up for folks, I kind of laid it out with data, wasn't really trying to put any narratives about whether this is a good trend or a bad trend.

And gentlemen, you know, it's very interesting because in the room, there was a lot of engagement from the students. But over on my left-hand side, there were a couple of delegation of senior African stakeholders who were present as well. And I could tell that they were not very happy with the data and the narratives and the talk that I was giving. And when it came time to do the Q&A, the host of the program deferred to them and said, you know, would you like to say any comments just to kind of get

the conversation going with the students and the faculty who were in the program. And their comment was they were very disappointed in the fact that I, as a white American, was coming to talk about China-Africa relations. And they expressed their displeasure at the program. And of course, Kobus, this is something that you and I have confronted quite a bit over the past 15 years that we've done the show. But I thought it would be an interesting discussion today to

to talk about who tells the China-Africa story. And that was their frustration, was that they wanted Africans to be in Singapore talking to Chinese, Singaporeans, Indians, and other folks about the China-Africa story. And the fact that me as a white American male is coming to do that, they found objectionable. I understand where they're coming from.

And just before I open it up for our discussion on this, I want to take us back to 2018. And I was in Beijing and I had just done an event with one of our partner organizations in Beijing. And afterwards, a group of us with a lot of young African students went for a drink. And I could feel

feel at the table that I was with a lot of coldness from these African students. And I said, is everything okay? Are you, did I do anything to offend you? And they said, you know, and Kobus, you and I had just been doing the podcast and a little bit of the site for about eight years until that point. And they said, listen, we just don't feel that you should be doing the China Africa project. We feel that there should be Africans doing the China Africa project.

And I said to them, I said, I completely agree. 100%. You know that everything that we're doing, all the tools that we're using are free. Twitter, even podcasting, social media, blogger. Why aren't you doing it? You guys are here in China. You have the expertise. I agree there should be 20 China-Africa projects out there talking about it.

And then their attitude was, well, I don't have time. I'm a student. I'm busy. And I was like, okay, I get it. So let me leave the conversation there. Giro, when I told this story to you about what happened at NTU, you 100% understood where they were coming from. Maybe kind of talk about what you think this African delegation was touching on when they expressed their displeasure of the fact that I was the one talking about this.

I think you just, you are finding yourself in a context where you have, you've stacked up many layers that just made your narrative and your presentation not being heard by those African delegation. Because you're coming in a context where it's been for years that Africans have been frustrated to hear non-Africans talking about the relationship between Africa and China.

You had many people expressing those voices, those frustrations. African leaders, for instance, they would be telling you why WTO or the IMF or the World Bank or Janet Yellen or any Western decision makers will come to Africa, telling Africans how they should be dealing with China and everything because it's disrespectful. It's as if we are child for us for you to come and tell us how we should be engaging with China. You had that context already happening there.

And then you have the second layer of making things difficult is the fact that you are white, you're an American, and that's already made things even much more complicated. Americans in a context where you have a China-U.S. tension that we do have right now on the international stage basically makes any Americans who talk about China, Africa, needs to be really careful on the word it's using, how it's approaching the discussion, to be able to be heard, not to be just stopped because you're white Americans, to be first of all heard about your arguments.

the third layers would be like you've been invited in a third party country so we have whites Americans being invited in Asian countries Singapore to talk to Singaporean students about China Africa relations so basically all

the three parts of the triangle, none of you had, quote unquote, the legitimacy to start the conversation without an African being there. So now you have decision makers or stakeholders coming from Africa being there. They feel like, why are we talking about China, Africa here with none of you being Chinese, none of you being Africans, all of you being foreigners, but you're talking about us and other countries?

So only in that context there, any African decision makers or intellectual would be like, I'm not even hearing you. So which means that any kind of sound argument you make about it, especially if those factual arguments are counterfactual, are counterintuitive to what we would like our relationship to be with China, was not going to be heard at all.

It's going to be, no, no, you are trying to downplay our relationship. You are trying to say that we are not important. You are trying to say that we are not valuable. We are trying to say that we're the third, fourth, fifth, sixth wheel of China's priority in the world. Basically, they will hear all of that except the fact that, you know, beyond the appearances, this is what the data are telling us.

And this is the problem. And I think this is the part of the narrative that you find yourself, unfortunately, in a very bad situation. If you were invited in a university in Zambia, in Kenya, in Johannesburg, in any other African country, you wouldn't have that same tension because you'd be on African soil, invited by African university, by African scholars, by African students to talk to African students about Africa.

our relationship with China. You wouldn't have that problem. But all of you find yourself in a third country where none of you was Chinese or South Africans, but talking about China-Africa, I'd be like, yeah, that was recipe for disaster. Not disaster, it was a recipe for a little bit of awkwardness and some tension. Exactly, awkwardness. And of course, awkwardness of a

Just to point out, I 100% agree with everything you've said. But just to clarify, nothing that I was saying was meant to denigrate the relationship between Africa and China. That's what they heard, though, of course. I see what you're saying. But at the same time, I just want to make it clear for the audience, that's not what we do.

Kobus, this is a complex situation for you as well, because you are African, but at the same time, white. So you have part of what the dilemma that I run into, but at the same time, you're African. How do you, you know, you've had this probably the same experience. What's your thoughts on this topic about whiteness and the ability to talk about China-Africa?

I'm busy with a project on this issue that touches, you know, deeply on this issue. So I think there's a few things to keep in mind. So I think just for context, in the first place, I believe the point that you were making in that lecture was that Africa has become less important as a source of commodities for China, but more important as a political partner, right? So that was the larger point. Yes, exactly. The larger point is that for 400 or 500 years,

Africa's value in the international system has been predicated on what comes out of the ground. And initially, that is what drew China to Africa, in part. Not exclusively, but in part. But because of the rise of the Belt and Road, China doesn't rely on Africa as much anymore because it can get oil, mineral, and timber from the Middle East, from Southeast Asia, from South America, and it's got this vast trading network. But what it can't get...

from the rest of the world is the political legitimacy, also the endorsement, the historical alignment between China and Africa, this very deep relationship. And politics have become much more important. And there's a currency in that politics. There's a value in that politics.

And what I'm encouraging African stakeholders in part is to find ways to better leverage that relationship to maximize it because the economic relationship isn't going to produce the dividends that they want. That's a little bit what Jérôme was talking about in part. And just we'll get back to you, Kobus, very quickly. But since we're on this subject, Jérôme, you mentioned that that's not what they want to hear.

this question of that, you know, the cobalt, the lithium, the oil, the timber is not valuable to the Chinese. And let's be clear, $295 billion of trade between the two regions. Very distorted trade, though. 70-some-odd percent of exports from Africa to China are extractives. Most of that's concentrated in just five countries.

This is a highly distorted trade. And again, when you look at Africa's total trade relative to the $6 trillion of global trade that China does, it's a very small percentage. So I was just putting that in the context. But that too, Giro, you were talking about was not really, maybe that's what these stakeholders were responding to as well.

Exactly, because this is a reality that many are struggling with. It's the fact that when you say that we are political actors, we have political value to China, we don't see that. That argument, I've made it last year when I was giving a presentation in the University of Ottawa to African students about China-Africa relations, telling them, you know, there's no, Africa doesn't have an economic value to China, it's much more political. People really kind of, you could feel...

Thank you.

You don't measure votes, but you measure how much cobalt works. You measure how much lithium. You measure chromium from South Africa. You measure all of that. You measure all from Nigeria, from Angola. You can measure, you can see, this is geopolitical tools that we put on the table. That makes us who we are. So when you come and say...

what? It's not about that. Because in fact, when you remove South Africa from Chrome, DRC from Cobalt, you remove those two countries only, only those two countries, everything else that remains, China can get it anywhere else in the world, cheap, less risky, and faster. And when you say that, people are saying, so you're telling me that my oil doesn't have value. You're

That's not what I'm saying. I'm telling you that your value to China is not what you have on the ground. It's basically what you can say for China on international stage. And this is the part where we still have to make the connection that politics is also valuable, that what I'm saying is also valuable. And what I'm saying about Taiwan to China matters way more to what China is going to get out of my ground.

That's the part where we're still struggling to accept, to acknowledge that, yes, I don't need to break my head. I just need to say, you know what, China, I will not vote for you on Taiwan. And China will be like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. We have to find a way to make them happy. But this is a part where we're still not happy about that narrative yet. You know, I think there's a few things to keep in mind. One is that China-Africa Studies as a field and as a kind of a topic of discussion has its own history.

history, right? Like the fact that we as three people are discussing this on a podcast now is partly because of an explosion of knowledge production on China-Africa relations that started from the kind of mid-2000s to now. So there was a very rapid expansion in academic tracking of the Africa-China relationship and a lot of that happened in Western academia.

So particularly in the United States. So for a long time, almost all of the people who really were pioneers in the field were American and European. And then there was a kind of a turn in the field where everyone rightly was like saying we need more African discussion here.

A lot of that discussion then also shifted towards issues of recipient or local agency, like African agency around these issues. And since then, there's been a very rapid expansion of African academia on China-Africa relations. So that knowledge production isn't innocent, right? You know, so what we saw like during the same era was one, like an expansion of actual knowledge, right? Kind of like a

amazing kind of like tools, like, for example, all of these debt trackers, you know, that Johns Hopkins University and Boston University, for example, have put out. So there's a lot of this kind of really hardcore research on key aspects. And then at the same time, in the same era, was also an explosion of wild stories about China-Africa relations, right? The debt trap narrative being the most clear one. And in the middle of all of that, there were us,

Right? Kind of also talking about this, doing a podcast in an era when podcasts were not as common as they are now, featuring and churning up all of this knowledge production and discussing all of these issues. So what you have to keep in mind, right, is when Western academia tracks something, they

They track it because of Western concerns. So whether this is the kind of crazy stories that ended up kind of serving Western interests, you know, trying to scare kind of global South countries about dealing with China, or whether it's actually well-founded, actual solid research, both of those things end up

pushing Western agendas in different ways. So they are simply by increasing Western knowledge and keeping the West as the center of knowledge, right, kind of about the world. So, you know, so you can see there why there's a kind of a chafing, you know, against outsiders telling the story in Africa. And at the same time, one also has to say that there's been a rapid expansion in Africans working on this issue. And many African think tanks now focus on this stuff.

So there is at the same time this kind of like chafing against why are these institutions not being kind of highlighted more. And I myself fit into a very kind of complicated position in this because I'm African, whatever you want to call that, but I mean, I'm African in the sense that my family has been in,

South Africa since the very early 1700s and I don't have any other passport, right? I don't have any other, I'm not, you know, like I'm only South African. But at the same time, my structural position in South Africa is obviously I'm not only white, I'm an Afrikaner, which means I was here as Africa's biggest problem. You're not going to believe

Me and my family were here as part of Africa's biggest problem. So that puts me in a very kind of complicated position, you know, kind of where I'm not one or the other. I don't see myself as from the global north. And in fact, my experience, my lived experience is really over time, it's actually pushed me like...

has pushed further and further, or more and more realizations of how I'm very much not European, I'm very much not American. Just my history of visa applications alone will show you that. So structurally, I am African in that particular way, but within an African context, I am...

I don't count as African frequently, right? Yeah. So let me put a question to you. Both of you have raised very legitimate questions. And Kobus, it's interesting because, you know, you've talked about the Western discourse power.

And Western discourse power manifests itself in all sorts of different ways. It's not just in hard power. It's not just even in Beyonce and soft power, but it's in NGOs. It's in standards. And in many ways, I guess that also includes us as well as an extension of Western discourse power, at least me as an embodiment of that.

And so that may be also something that they're resisting is just the overwhelming power of Western discourse power to set narratives. Okay, so let's put this challenge to you. A university here in Southeast Asia or in Asia doesn't have budgets necessarily to fly people over from Africa to the think tanks, all the wonderful knowledge production that you're talking about, Kobus, very expensive for somebody to come from South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, to come to a city like Singapore. So-

Would it be better not to have these conversations with someone like me, or would it be better, because it's not always, it is a binary thing sometimes. Does that get in the way of having the conversation? Is it better maybe to forego it? Zoom it. Yeah. Zoom it? Zoom it. Okay. That's a good idea. You have technology in our code. Yeah. That's a good point. It's that simple as that. Okay. Yeah. We have technology. Because the problem is you're organizing the event for the message to get across, but

if the message doesn't get across, you're failed. This is a problem because you've put all of that, you've organized everything, but if the audience is not listening, if the message doesn't get across, you have invested that much money for people just to leave frustrated, or people just to come and rightly or during the conversation and saying you don't have the legitimacy to talk about it. So you better not have that person physically there, but Zoom it's

And people see who's on the screen, Corbis Van Stedden, I don't know, Fola Shadi, or any black Africans standing there talking about that than having white Americans being physically present talking about it. That just makes the optics of it just much more awkward and difficult to overcome for many.

And I also want to leave this part of our conversation on a positive note, is that Kobus, as you've talked about in Africa, that there's been a growth of scholarship on this. I was very excited to see how many PhD and master's students from China who I met were doing PhDs in China-Africa relations, PhD in global south studies.

They were exciting. They were fascinating. They were absolutely engaged. It gives you a lot of hope that there's a new generation of young scholars coming up in China who are educated around the world in places like here in Singapore. And I just want to give a shout out to them because I had a chance to meet with a lot of them as well. And they're very excited about the field. And this is not something, by the way, that I see in the U.S. or Europe right now.

And so to see so many people interested in, young people interested in Global South Studies, specifically in Africa studies from China was something very exciting. So really interesting conversations, very good for sometimes to do this self-reflection. I appreciate. And these are, by the way, everybody listening and watching at home, these are the kinds of conversations that we literally have amongst each other. And after the session yesterday, I called up Giro and I called up Kobus and we actually had this very conversation. I said, let's do this on the show because I think it's so important to

talk about these very sensitive, complex issues in terms of who gets to tell the story, how do you tell the story, and all the different dynamics kind of makes us better and stronger. So I do, by the way, have another presentation tonight. So Giro, I

I hope it goes better on that sense. But again, let's see. So luckily, we have a sense of humor and a little bit of humility about this. So anyway, one of the other conversations that I had earlier this week was with a number of corporate stakeholders. And I was giving a chat. We were talking about US, China, US, Africa, US, Southeast Asia. And just it was a general chat with high-level corporate folks. And there were some Chinese folks from the mining industry.

And after our discussion, I went up to these gentlemen and I said, I have a question that I've been burning to ask. And my colleague, Geronimo, and I have been following the company CIMOC Group. And if you're not familiar with CIMOC Group, they are the largest cobalt producer. They own the Tenkaifungurume mine in the DRC. They have operations around the world.

And last year, they produced a record amount of cobalt, even though cobalt is at record lows now, just $11 a pound. Now, back in 2018, cobalt was at, what, Joe, $40, $44 a pound? I mean, huge. And we've been asking the question on the show and in our newsletters and in our analysis, it doesn't make economic sense that CMOC Group,

And other Chinese mining companies would be pumping out so much cobalt when the price is at rock-bottom lows. And the theory that I had, and I think you might have had the same theory, Giraud, was that one of the reasons was for geopolitical reasons, was because by keeping the price low and flooding the market on a critical resource like this, it keeps private companies in the U.S., Australia, and Europe undervalued.

on the sidelines, and it prevents them from competing with Chinese companies. I brought this theory to these two mining executives from China, and they had a wonderful sense of humor. It was a wonderful conversation. And they laughed at me in a very kind of friendly way.

They said, Eric, not everything is about the U.S. Not everything is about Europe. Not everything is about geopolitical competition. Take yourself out of the center of everything. And I was like, okay, then what is this about? And they made the point that Chinese President Xi Jinping has promised that by 2050, China will be carbon neutral, okay?

If China is going to be carbon neutral in the next 25 years, then

it's going to need an incredible amount of battery storage to offset the fossil fuel energy that they've been producing. And if you are sitting in the year 2045 and you are the guy who bought cobalt at $11 a pound when it was at a record low price, you're going to seem like a genius. What they explained to me was that I'm not looking at this in the right timeframe. They're not buying cobalt for today.

or tomorrow, they're stockpiling cobalt for 10, 15, 20 years from now when they're going to need huge amounts of battery storage and maybe other uses for transition minerals. Géraud, when I brought this argument to you, what's your reaction? It makes sense.

It makes perfect sense. It makes economic and geostrategic sense. And it really shows you that how it's a long-term game. And when I told you it was a long game because I just finished reading the report from ADATA talking about how China managed to get a grip on

critical raw materials of the last 20 years, you could see that it was really a long-term game they started to play since early 2001. So this is the same thing that we see now. And when you look into the China energy mix, you look into China's energy demand and consumption, and you look at the fork

it really just makes sense to you that, yes, energy storage is going to be one of the leading industries that's going to require cobalt in the future. And when you look into now the way China is using, because right now, cobalt is much the most, the highest demand for cobalt. We have it in EV batteries. So when you see China buying, buying up cobalt, you'd assume that it's going to fuel into the EV industry. But when

When you go to the EV industry in China, you realize that NMC batteries, nickel, manganese, cobalt batteries are on the low and LFP batteries, lithium iron phosphate batteries on the high and any of the batteries without cobalt are on the rise. And that's not just in China. Just to be clear, the new Chevy Bolt 2025 that's coming out,

is going to be an LFP battery. And LFP batteries now have shorter recharge cycles, they can generate as much power, and they don't generate as much heat, so there's less risk of fire. And so those are all reasons why battery manufacturers are shifting and automakers are shifting to battery makers. But, Jill, you also brought up the point that it's not even just for China, because China wants to build battery storage systems

for power grids in Saudi Arabia, in South Africa, around the world. So this cobalt then that they're buying today, coming out of the Tenkefungurunga mine and elsewhere, may be put into a giant grid-wide battery storage system for Johannesburg one day.

Yes, it's going to be part of what China energy security is about, not only in China, but also overseas. And you see that, as I was saying, that the way China is developing the current market, when you look at the current market, the way it's behaving in Europe, it's still a debate between LFP and NMC. In the US, it's still the same. But China is very much the one driving the seat of like, I'm getting out of cobalt industry in terms of batteries, but I'm still buying cobalt. I'm stockpiling cobalt.

Which tells you that in the next 20, 30 years, when we're going to be really carbon neutral, a country like China is going to be carbon neutral, you're going to need much more energy storage. China is going to be sitting on a gold mine of all wide range of technology and everything else.

And we're going to be down the line there producing the research that ADET has produced today to understand how in 2024 China was still flooding the market for cheap cobalt to allow it to stockpile cobalt. And that insight they gave, it's really interesting because at the end, the introduction they've made, like it's...

just give you a different perspective. Like, you have to remove U.S.-centered or Western-centered views of the world on those kind of issues. Sometimes it's just about China's own security strategy, long-term economic development. And if it happens that the U.S. is just an accident, like collateral damage in that progress of what they're building, it's not about you, but it's just more about us.

And this is, I think it was really enlightening as Koba and Dave made, but it just makes sense. It totally makes sense. And let me just put a disclaimer out there. These two folks that I spoke with do not work for CMOC Group. They're not affiliated with CMOC Group. This was just their theory. We were just talking about this casually, but Koba's, what I found most interesting was how quick they were to gently, friendly, scold me by saying, it's not always about you and the US. Stop centering yourself in everything.

And that I felt was very, very interesting and helpful as well. Well, yes. You know, I was laughing at us for our kind of confusion because one thing I think it revealed is I think we're so, people embedded in the kind of Western world, I think are so used to governments saying,

not taking their own climate goals seriously, that having a government actually take their own climate goals seriously and invest in it is somehow a startling concept. So that was kind of funny for me. I think I would also add that I think, like, I fully agree with Giraud, it's like this conversation

even though they're moving out of cobalt now, cobalt may well have other values in the future, especially also for other still-to-emerge technologies. So I think China is stockpiling a lot of these minerals, including also rare earth minerals, which I recently saw they're not only producing at home, obviously, most of it, but also importing very actively from other parts of the world, like Vietnam, for example. So all of this has to do with not only...

like proven technologies of the future, but yet as to be, yet to be developed technologies of the future. We should also say that China, for example, has really been, has recently had a, like very underreported, but a very large advance in fusion energy, like,

production like they they managed to kind of make a fusion reaction run doubly as long as anyone else has managed to do it you know so so there's this really kind of very futuristic work being done in china around kind of future energies and in this context i can see why africans are pushing back so hard against this narrative that the commodities are not as important

Because, you know, in this longer term thing, they're like, wait a minute, like, you know, if we're talking about the entire kind of decarbonization of all economies around the world, and we're saying that a lot of those minerals are in Africa at scale, then we can't have a conversation about how those commodities are not important anymore, right? Kind of so. So that seems like... Yeah, but they're not only in Africa at scale. Exactly. I mean, let's be clear, lithium is found everywhere. Nickel is found in Indonesia. A lot of these are found all over the world and not exclusively in Africa.

Yeah, exactly. But also this conversation also goes for other parts of the world, right? Kind of like other parts of the world, which are also devalued because they're seen as just backlots with minerals under the ground, right? So it feeds into a wider kind of longer conversation.

I just wanted to add on that, the part of like those minerals are widespread everywhere. And it's a sobering conversation when you do the research on those topics. And most Africans, you say, when we talk about critical minerals, you say Africa is at the center, but not the whole Africa. Because

So basically, it's just like a handful of countries in one way. It's like South Africa from chrome and platinum, DLC for cobalt, Gabon for manganese in South Africa, Mozambique for phosphate, I believe, if I get my graphite, for graphite, even if not Zambia. Because when you look at Africa's shares of lithium, for example, it's less than 6% of the world.

So basically you have lithium everywhere else in the world. So even in that spot only, you realize that, guys, we have to be humble in a certain extent unless we find new deposits. But based on the current data that we do have, we're important, but we are not that important to believe that we are at the center of the conversation where if we are not there, things will fall apart. This is something that I think that sometimes maybe Africans, we are not pleased to have this kind of conversation when those data are thrown to us.

Well, let's bring it into the present week. And Giraud, China retaliated this week against U.S. sanctions against China. And among China's

measures that it pushed back on the U.S. was to restrict access to four critical resources. Tell us about that and whether or not it's important. Is there any Africa connection to these resources that the Chinese are putting tariffs on and limiting the flow to the United States? And is this the beginning, do you think, of the weaponization of China's command to

of the critical resource supply chain, particularly in processing, that we could see more of. And the last time that China did this with germanium, I think that's how you say it, your compatriots in the Democratic Republic of Congo moved very quickly and said, "Hey everybody, if China's not gonna sell you germanium, we will." So is there a opportunity here in this US-China spat and trade war that's starting to get underway for African countries to backfill on some of these resources?

Yes, because China has put a ban on tank stand, tank stand, terrarium and molybdenum in terms of export to the US because they really want to target or to retaliate, as you said, retaliate against the measure that Donald Trump is planning to take or has already been taken on China. And from China, I'm going to tell you, we are not starting it. We are reacting to it. So when you're telling us that we are the one who started it, we didn't start it. We're just being retaliating.

on what has been done to us. So what African can do, of course, you have many African countries can really try to take advantage of the context of like, you know what, if China is imposing an export ban on them, we can try to take advantage. But the reality is many African can not...

Not African, not many African countries, actually. You don't have a lot of them who can produce tungsten, terrarium or molybdenum to the scale where they can take advantage of it. This is the part where many Africans have been saying, you know what, we need to invest much more in exploration to allow us to discover much more deposits, new deposits of new minerals to allow us to be able to be in that part of the conversation.

And the reality now, you're going to have Brazil taking advantage. You're going to have Vietnam taking advantage. But African countries are going to be... South Africa has a certain extent where you can find tension a bit, but not the scale of trying to scale the balance that has been established.

upset by China's measures on the ground. So this is a part that's going really to be interesting and to see how now African countries in general, not only regarding to that, are going to want to exist in the overall debate on critical minerals in the world in the future.

And they're not processed. So you may get raw minerals from African countries, but China has a dominating share of the processing of these minerals. And this is even the part where China is very much dominating because people try to forget that in the whole spectrum of critical minerals, China dominates except for graphite, except for rare earth. China dominant is very,

very much not in the upstream on terms of mining and exploration, but in the midstream and downstream in terms of processing transformation and manufacturing of the hand product. This is where China really holds an enormous power. That's why, for example, early January, they decided, you know what, we're going to now impose export ban or export control on

on processed lithium to Europe because Europe depends not on raw lithium, but it depends on processed and advanced processed lithium from China. So even when China starts to move on that, on moving on the lithium and also on the technology behind that, this is where you really, many countries are now starting really to grasp how much they're depending on China for the technological advancement on those critical raw materials. Well, let's continue our discussion now on China.

what's going on between the U.S. and China and also, of course, between the U.S. now and South Africa, that too this week has come into the picture. And we're going to talk about this in the context, again, of China. But let me just kind of back everybody up into this story, if you've not been following it. It's

It's not your fault if you've not been following it because there's been 50 different storylines coming out of Washington, making it almost impossible to keep track of everything that is going on. So let me start with a soundbite that came after Donald Trump posted a tweet or what he calls a truth social criticizing South Africa and using a lot of the same language against

in his post that Elon Musk, who of course is a native South African, has been talking about in terms of land. And I'm going to let Kobus get us into the details on this, what it is, but let me just set it up now with a couple soundbites that, Kobus, I want you to react to. So here is Donald Trump this week talking about South Africa, and there's a lot of background noise here because he's on the tarmac just ready to board his plane.

Terrible things are happening in South Africa. The leadership is doing some terrible things, horrible things. So that's under investigation right now. We'll make a determination. They're taking away land, they're confiscating land, and actually they're doing things that are perhaps far worse than that.

terrible, horrible things. He's used very strong language. Now, this provoked a very passionate response in South Africa among a number of groups. It was very easy to find a lot of outrage on social media. People are angry. Julius Malema, who is the head of the EFF, a party there, spoke out today as well on this issue. But let's take a listen to some of the coverage on the state broadcaster SABC. And just to get a

a flavor of what's going on. And then, Kovacs, I'm going to come to you to help us explain. A group of about a dozen civil society organizations have lambasted Donald Trump for his serious allegations about South Africa. The U.S. president claimed, without proof, that the country is confiscating land and treating certain people very badly. He's threatened to cut off future funding.

The organizations, which include Ahmed Kathrada, Desmond Tutu Foundations, and Defend Our Democracy movement, say Trump's allegations are absurd and dangerous. The U.S. president's remarks prompted a response from government and saw the rent taking a massive knock yesterday before recovering slightly. Political economist Mweli Zimbeki says South Africa's response to Trump highlights deeper issues within the government.

The issue is that Trump has been given certain information about people's land being confiscated and so on and so forth. So for us now to respond, threatening to cut off minerals to the United States,

Well, to me, I expect that from high school students. I don't expect from the minister or in the South African government. So that is telling you already that

We have problems in our government where you get a minister in charge of our mining industry, which is our biggest export industry, by the way, and he's now threatened the Americans.

That, to me, it shows that there's lots of problems within the government, within our own government, within the cabinet of our own government. For example, the minister of mine, what was he doing? Commenting on foreign affairs issues. Kobus, before we get to the impact on China-South Africa relations,

Help us understand what to make of all of this and what the reaction is on the ground in South Africa. So, a few things to keep in mind here. So, one of the ways that apartheid worked was to push black people off the land, right? So, black people were essentially declared to be foreigners in their own country, officially citizens of these kind of fake little micro-countries that were created by the apartheid state. And so, they were treated as basically as immigrants in their own country.

And in the process, they were pushed through colonialism, through Afrikaner nationalism and through apartheid itself, they were pushed off land more and more and more. So what the situation is now is that still, you know, 25 years after the end of apartheid, the land ownership in South Africa is extremely skewed. You

You know, the vast majority of particularly productive agricultural land still belong to white people. You know, you're talking about like well, well north of 50 percent, like, you know, kind of like around 80 percent. The last time I saw. This is one of South Africa's biggest political issues. Like this is one of the most like the lack of access to land is one of the most explosive issues in South African politics. And it's a good reason why. I mean, you know, like decades after the end of apartheid,

Black South Africans are asking, like, wait, why are we still not having access to this land? It's our land. So, and keep in mind that they were, when they were pushed off, it's like it was expropriated, you know, in extremely kind of clumsy and unfair ways. You know, people were literally kind of like, like their houses were bulldozed and they were dumped by the side of the road, essentially, right? You know, since the end of apartheid, the government has been trying to fix the situation.

trying to get more black people back onto their land, trying to fix some of these old untreated land restitution crises in different areas. And they've been using a principle called willing buy, willing seller, right? Kind of basically market-based principles, right? Kind of looking for farmers who want to sell, white farmers who want to sell anyway, and then facilitating ways of trying to kind of return some of the original communities back to that

land. That hasn't really worked. It hasn't moved the needle. There isn't really more black people owning that land now than there used to be. So now they've moved to a version of the US eminent domain law. The Land Expropriation Act, the Land Expropriation Without Compensation Act, even though that name sounds quite weighty, is essentially...

almost identical to U.S. eminent domain law, right? Kind of like it says that the state can sometimes force people to sell their land at, you know, like...

using a complicated set of checks and balances to avoid injustice. But, you know, for the larger good, you can sometimes, the state can sometimes force people to sell their land, right? Like, for example, if you're building a huge interstate and there's one person there who refuses to sell their house, you know, and holding up a project. In the US, there are ways, legal ways, to...

to make that person sell that lab, right? Kind of for the greater good, right? So that is essentially what they're trying to use. Over the last few years, and this is where it becomes very trumpy and very interesting. Like over the last few years, there's been a kind of a...

A form of narrative crafting and narrative planting that high levels of crime on South African farms is part of a quote-unquote white genocide, right? Kind of like where kind of white farmers, where crime, like under the pretext of crime, white farmers are being murdered in order to kind of push them off the land.

And this is a campaign, just to pick up on that, this is a campaign that Tucker Carlson has picked up on, and then also, most notably, Elon Musk now, and that Trump is parroting a lot of the language coming out of right-wing U.S. media that's picked up on this and put it into the U.S. culture war.

war. Exactly. So this is like classic Fox News, right? Kind of like the Fox News has been running with this for years. It's also been picked up interestingly by the right wing in Europe. Like I remember like maybe

seven, eight years ago, being contacted by all these journalists from Eastern Europe, being like, oh, tell us about white genocide. I'm like, there is no white genocide. White people in South Africa are still some of the most privileged people in the world. Let's keep that in mind. Like, they're still some of the most privileged people in the world. So now the language of genocide and discrimination, racism, like apartheid, all of this is being used in this fantasy way, right? Kind of in right-wing discourse.

The fact that Elon Musk and Trump picked up on this story rather than on other beasts of South Africa shows, I think, how the US discourse is increasingly being hijacked by this kind of right-wing narrative.

Well, to be fair, but to be fair, Kobus, it's not only this. This is the culmination of maybe at least a year, if not more, of mounting US frustration with South Africa over – and let's just kind of make a short list here – over –

South Africa's participation in the BRICS over the joint military exercises with China and Russia, over the fact that they were not going to arrest Putin if he came to the BRICS summit, potentially, under the auspices of the International Criminal Court. Well, they made him not come. Made him not come.

But again, they waffled and the Americans got upset about that. And then, of course, on the strong position that South Africa took against Israel in the International Court of Justice. And then now recently a headline came out just today that says Taiwan says South Africa has given March deadline to move liaison office from Pretoria. Again, another move that has frustrated Taiwan.

and angered, forcing Taiwan to move its representative office from the capital Pretoria to the commercial center in Johannesburg. And you hear from conservative think tank analysts, namely Joshua Muzervi from the Hudson Institute and others, who consistently say that South Africa is not aligning itself with U.S. foreign policy priorities and then maybe should be chastised for it. And then we had about 10 days ago, two weeks ago,

A column in the Wall Street Journal on the editorial and opinion page, which said that if South Africa does not get its act together, then Donald Trump should sanction South Africa and isolate South Africa. And so all of this has been building up to these tweets where we are right now.

So it's a culmination there. Eric, allow me to add on something. When you listen to the soundbite that Donald Trump has made, the comment he's made, among the things that you've listed, knowing how he's anti-China, anti-Olof. Trump is, let's not say Trump is anti-China, by the way.

Let's be very clear here that we don't know that yet. Let's say he has an entourage of people who have said, who have expressed to be anti-China within his administration, giving that those people are sometimes also part of his foreign policies. You would have imagined that he would have used one of those key points, those key elements to raise why South Africans should be either sanctioned or not receiving U.S. aid. But it did not pick up in

And all those issues that are, quote unquote, I would say international or where the U.S. can say, I have something to say because my interest is involved there. It only picked on an issue that's very much a national, local issue internally. No, no, no. It's a white grievance issue, though, as Kobus was pointing out. And that plays very well in the United States and Europe as well, right? Exactly. But this is the part where Kobus said that the discourse is being hijacked.

about internal politics of the U.S. now using it as an entry point, where actually you realize that, I believe when I heard this comment, I felt that someone was not totally informed completely of the fact of what was happening. It just picked up one issue. That's why the comment was quite vague. Okay.

Some terrible things I've done. They're doing some bad things. But what the specifics are you talking about? This is the part where I say, someone just whispered in his ear, you know, South Africa is doing something bad to us. Well, that someone is, we know who that someone is. I don't speculate. It's not a mystery that Elon Musk is, you know, is doing this. And...

So, Kobus, let's bring this to China, because I'm not sure I always believe in coincidences when it comes to China, but it just so happens that on Thursday of this week, as we are recording this, there was an article in the China Daily newspaper, one of the Chinese state media's most prominent publications, that says, quote, here's the headline, South Africa eyes stronger relations with China in 2025. Love.

let's kind of forecast this down the road over the next three to six months, play this out. It's entirely possible that given what we've seen from the Trump administration and some of the unpredictability and how they've gone after Canada, Colombia, Greenland,

Panama. I mean, these are very close friends. They've clearly laid the groundwork that South Africa is not a close friend. And with what they've done to Canada and Panama, as any indication, you should be prepared to be, you know, whacked in South Africa potentially. Okay?

If that happens, let's assume then that AGOA, which is the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which is a free trade agreement between several dozen African countries and the United States, not all African countries. South Africa accounts for about a third of that, 25% to 30%.

of AGOA is not going to be renewed. It doesn't seem likely in this environment. Does that headline, South Africa eyes stronger relations with China in 2025, matter more to South Africa this year then? Will China become more important if the relationship with the United States sours? Well, firstly, one has to say that the South Africans don't want the relationship with the United States to sour. Right?

The South Africans want a diversified partnership. They've had very good relationships with the US and Europe for a long time. They also want the right to align themselves with who they see fit and the right that every sovereign country has to make its own foreign policy decisions.

So the idea that South Africa is somehow okay to punish a sovereign country for their completely legitimate foreign policy decisions is absurd. So that, the U.S. taking that stance and making clear that, you know, that it has, you know, like if they pick this fight with Canada, then if they pick any fight with Canada, then they'll be, they're willing to pick a fight with anyone else as well, right? Kind of like no one is closer to the U.S. than Canada.

So in that sense, I think South Africa is being made an example of because there's many countries that have...

have close relationships with China. Many countries have much closer relationships with China than South Africa does. I mean, when you speak to Chinese stakeholders in South Africa, they're frequently complaining that the relationship isn't as close as they'd like it to be. So, you know, so the South Africans frequently hold the Chinese at arm's length, actually, in reality, on a bunch of issues around trade, for example. It's not true that South Africa has this outlier, super close relationship with China. They have a similar relationship with China as many other global South countries have.

The reason I think South Africa... Except the BRICS relationship and the military joint exercises, that doesn't happen with a lot of other countries. Algeria, Nigeria, Mozambique, Seychelles, Mauritius, Kenya. Yeah, but it happens with some. Nigeria, Vietnam, you know, Indonesia. Well, those are ports of calls. No, no, to be clear, those are all ports of call. They're not exercises.

No, no, they did exercise. They did exercise with some other countries in Africa. China did some other exercise with South African. Yeah. But in Nigeria, it was a port of call. Yeah. You know, the thing I think is that, you know, I think that one of the reasons why South Africa is being made a scapegoat

So South Africa kind of called out war crimes in Israel, right? In the process, kind of embarrassing the United States for its support there. That can't be separated from South Africa's own apartheid history.

Two things to keep in mind. You know, the apartheid was directly built into Western power, right? Kind of that is what apartheid did, is it served Western power.

There's a reason why the mining company that funneled all of the gold into the Western market in South Africa is called Anglo-American, right? South Africa was in a structural position in relation to Western power. Apart, it wasn't just some kind of like terrible thing happening far away. It was part of Western power. And so when South Africa challenged that and South Africa refused to play that role anymore, it...

change its position, right? And in the process of calling out the situation in Israel, it highlighted the embeddedness of certain systems within Western power. So at a moment when there's a kind of an openly racist turn in the United States, right, kind of like through the elimination of diversity departments and companies, you know, the outlawing of diversity, you know, initiatives in some ways, this issue of diversity

making past racial injustices right, has now put South Africa in the center of a huge culture war within the United States, right? So the symbolic position of South Africa and the symbolic position of apartheid in relation to Western power was something that has never really been unpacked, right? Kind of like how central that has been to Western power has never really been explored. Because it's so embarrassing to Western power, right? Kind of like no one wants to think of themselves as complicit with apartheid, but...

They were, right? Kind of like Ronald Reagan was defending apartheid until literally about three years before it fell down. Same thing with Margaret Thatcher. They were propping up and defending apartheid for Cold War strategy reasons, right? Kind of for decades.

So all of that history has now flown back into the present, all of those, all of that issues that make South Africa so symbolic, you know, kind of in these wider disputes around, for example, the, you know, stuff that Donald Trump was saying about Gaza. Like it just, you know, kind of this is, this I think is the reason why it's, you know, South Africa is actually being targeted. And this is, you know, and that was made clear by the fact that this Fox News talking point ended up being the reason why, right?

It wasn't even about China. Let me just kind of try and pressure you a little bit to answer the question on does this change the South Africa-China relationship? Does China see an opportunity here to deepen its ties in South Africa, to help make up for maybe some of the loss of trade and potentially even of aid with the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the PEPFAR program that was providing aid

up to 17% of some of the anti-retrovirals in South Africa, which, by the way, African governments are rallying right now to make up the funds for themselves on this. Nonetheless, does this provide an opportunity for China to change its diplomacy in South Africa?

I think China sees opportunities, but I don't know that it's particularly crafting a South Africa-specific strategy. I think what we're seeing, actually, is the emergence of a new global trade regime, right? Kind of where, because the United States is increasingly kind of like removing itself from a lot of these relationships...

China is emerging as everyone else's second best choice. And I think that is true in South Africa because a lot of those trade relationships exist already. So South Africa has not been able to depend on only Western trade.

because there just wasn't enough of it. And so it needed to diversify its partnerships anyway. China is a big, important market that wants to buy some stuff that South Africa exports, so there'll be more of that. I don't know that I'd necessarily see that much more close kind of relationship. It's not a kind of an iron brotherhood like the way that China has with Pakistan. I think what it will be is just South Africa is...

desperately looking for alternatives to the United States like everyone else is. Okay, and I'm glad you brought that up. Let me just very quickly mention the fact that just this week, whether again by design or by coincidence, Deputy Minister Tandi Moroka from South Africa held the second ASEAN-South Africa Joint Sectoral Cooperation Committee meeting. And you are going to see a lot more

of these kinds of meetings with Southeast Asia, because I think Southeast Asia is going to emerge as a potential trading partner for a lot of these countries that do want to reduce their exposure to the U.S. market and their dependence on the U.S. market. Countries like Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia are potentially very lucrative markets, and even places like Vietnam that have a large growing middle class. But there was a meeting this week

in Cape Town that took place between South African and ASEAN ministers. And I think those normal diplomatic kind of handshaking kind of meetings now take on a whole different level of importance. Gérard, we're going to give you the last word because we got to wrap up and get out of here. Yes, my only advice to South African would be like to take advantage of the situation in a sense where now, as Kobus mentioned, when we see the United States removing itself from international organization and everything, basically leaving spaces for China or for other countries to really be engaged

in there and shape the narrative to shape the norms of international anything in terms of norms, in terms of regime. And I think that South Africans should be now taking the opportunity to say, maybe we have an opportunity with China and other countries within or outside the BRICS

to shape the international system right now. And I think that, yes, they should definitely go more toward China and really more pushing for BRICS to become much more substantive and really going to the places where, guys, now we have this space. The United States doesn't want to be here. Let us be here. Start to shape what those international organizations should be about. And I think that, for me, would be the advice to South Africans. They should really move on that, lean on that.

And I'm going to add on that, that I think you're going to see a lot of middle power states and upper middle power states, if you will, like the United Arab Emirates and Turkey and others that are going to contribute more to these multilateral organizations to have a greater voice and greater share. So a lot of the impact that people want from the BRICS of a diversifying of the discourse in the global conversation is going to happen

but not necessarily from the major powers, but it might come from some of these upper middle powers as well. Kobus, I said that Jeho would get the last word. I do want to give you one final thought that you can share with everybody before we go. South Africa is a very feisty little country, right? Kind of like it always kind of punches above its weight. And it has a lot of internal divisions and a lot of internal issues.

and a lot of dysfunction. But this kind of external pressure, it was very funny, like really like how angry the South Africans were and how they were kind of pushing back against it. And I think...

All of this is going to have, like, interesting kind of complications on the international stage, right? Because in the first place, this language of punishing South Africa, you know, it's like, okay, great. So, you know, kind of like PEPFAR has now been suspended. So now actual South Africans will die. Is that enough punishment? Great. You know, it really, I think, kind of like put a kind of an anger at the heart, I think, of South Africans in look.

looking at the United States for targeting this kind of particular program where South Africa is a world leader, where it's done so much with the PEPFAR money, like really on another level, and which was a

a very successful and fruitful collaboration, right? Kind of like, and particularly something to target public health in a poor country in this kind of weaponized way. I think that alone, I think, you know. But so South Africa also is, you know, is the head of the G20 this year. There's already rumors that the U.S. might not go to the G20 because South Africans are anti-American. Well, they just don't like multilateral discussions like that.

So it may not have anything to do with South Africa, but just Trump at a multilateral forum in an America first era doesn't really make sense politically. So therefore, it's kind of like post-US multilateralism, right? And then, so another place where the US isn't.

And then South Africa has also recently come together with a bunch of other global south countries as a coalition to defend the International Court of Justice. So it is this kind of interesting thing where South Africa is also, you know, there's this idea of this kind of liberal international order based on institutions, which was always like trumpeted as being, you know, kind of the center of Western enlightenment.

As you know, South Africa is now working to try and kind of build support in the global south for that, right? So we're also looking at a post-west liberalism. You know, that's so in lots of ways, I think this is this is kind of kicking off, you know, the larger kind of processes that will end up really reshaping international power. And I think reshaping US influence in the process. And we don't know how that's going to work.

But, you know, but the thing is, South Africa is suffering, but South Africa also has some of its own cards to play, you know, kind of. So it seems like such an unnecessary, unnecessary kind of ruining of something that was working quite well, actually. Yeah, several scholars that I spoke with over the past couple of weeks

Chinese scholars, I've asked them, I said, how will China respond to this? You talked about South Africa's feisty response. Canada responded very angrily. A lot of passions and protests in Panama City as well. And I asked, I said, how do you think China is going to respond, particularly in the global south? And what folks told me was they're going to wait. You're not going to see a strong Chinese response right now. They're going to see how this plays out.

First and foremost for Xi is not necessarily to expand Chinese influence in the global south. First and foremost is to protect the Chinese domestic economy and to make sure that the impact of any U.S.-China tensions don't exacerbate China's already troubled economy in many respects.

So I think for a lot of people looking for China to throw a punch at the Americans may be disappointed, at least for now. And that may take some time. I think I agree with you, Kobus, that we're not going to see any dramatic moves from Chinese Ambassador Wu Peng in Pretoria to all of a sudden announce that they're going to do these big kind of dramatic things. They have to see how this plays out. This is let's remember, we are we're not even a month into the Trump administration.

Not even a month. So this is, we got a long way to go. And I think they're going to play, it's a long way to go. But one of the things that we're doing at the China Global South Project, as we are doing on this podcast, is trying to figure out this new world order that we're in. The rules have been reset. Everything has been reset. We're in a different era after January 20th.

2025. I've been saying to folks that I think this is as monumental as November 9th, 1989, when young people jumped up on the Berlin Wall and the East German guards opened up the gates, and that was the end of Soviet communism. To me, and it sounds dramatic, but I think we're in a period as monumental as that was. As Kobus mentioned,

The United States is withdrawing from many of these spaces, many of the institutions that the United States built over the past 75 years. It's abandoning, like USAID and multilateral institutions. So we're trying to figure all this out. How does it impact China? How does it impact the global south? That's what

We're doing over on our site, Jiro and Kobus and Johnny and Edwin and Lucy. We have a great team in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East that are thinking and doing all this great work every day. And we're engaging scholars and analysts and journalists from the Global South to write about these issues. Go to chinaglobalsouth.com slash subscribe. If you'd like to follow the work that the team is doing, subscriptions are very affordable.

and we really appreciate your support. And of course, if you're a student or a teacher, you get half off. Email me, eric at chinaglobalsouth.com, and I will send you the links for the half-off discount codes. Once again, I want to give a big shout out to Amit, Jane, and the team at Nanyang Technological University in the Africa Studies Center for their very gracious invitation to invite me to Singapore this week. Next week, I'll be joining you from Jakarta,

Indonesia, not talking about Africa things. So I think it'll be, we're talking about nickel mining, but we're not talking about Africa things. So I think it'll be a little bit safer turf for me on that one. But we'll be joining you from Jakarta, Indonesia. So for Giro and Mauritius and Cobus in Cape Town, I'm Eric joining you today from Singapore. We'll be back again next week with another edition of the China in Africa podcast. Until then, we'll see you then.

The discussion continues online. Follow the China Global South project on Blue Sky and X at ChinaGS Project or on YouTube at China Global South and share your thoughts on today's show or head over to our website at ChinaGlobalSouth.com where you can subscribe to receive full access to more than 5,000 articles and podcasts. Once again, that's ChinaGlobalSouth.com.

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