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Lesotho: Anti-Chinese Resentment Flares
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UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
24 January 2008
Posted to the web 24 January 2008
Maseru
For 14 years, Mathabo Mabekhla was one of Lesotho's most successful entrepreneurs. Her ladies' clothing boutique sold dresses, blouses and slacks imported from neighbouring South Africa, and boasted a client base that included cabinet ministers and their wives.
But dwindling sales forced her to shut down last year, for which she blames the country's growing community of Chinese retailers. "Chinese are selling very cheap and not good quality things, and they are killing Basotho businesses," said Mabekhla, 59.
She now sells cigarettes and beaded jewellery on the sidewalk in the capital, Maseru. "The Chinese, they must go back home," Mabekhla told IRIN. "We don't want Chinese here."
Anti-Chinese sentiment is on the rise in Lesotho, making it the latest site of such ethnic hostilities in Africa. A growing number of Basotho blame Chinese immigrants for the ongoing poverty of the small landlocked country, which has few natural resources and depends heavily on remittances from workers in its giant neighbour, South Africa.
Mabekhla's reaction, stoked by opposition parties and local radio stations, is readily echoed from the streets of Maseru to remote villages. "If this government was not in power and we had a new government, we'd just take all the Chinese nicely out to the airport and send them back home," she said.
"They are killing Basotho businesses all over! Up in the mountains you find Chinese; they are all over and they're killing us!"
China's ties with resource-rich Africa have created a growing class of Chinese entrepreneurs. China is now Africa's third-biggest trading partner; in the first 10 months of 2007, trade between China and the continent soared by more than 30 percent to US$58.7 billion.
The Chinese presence in Lesotho is not a new phenomenon. For more than a decade, immigrants from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have fuelled Lesotho's economy, as apparel manufacturers from Asia were drawn by tax incentives and rent discounts to attract foreign direct investment.
Today these textile factories are the country's biggest employers, providing more than 40,000 jobs, according to the country's Ministry of Trade and Industry.
But the people who came to run these factories have in turn sponsored family members to come to Lesotho, where an estimated 5,000 Chinese now live. Many have set up general stores stocked with low-cost, imported goods, even in the most remote rural villages of the mountain kingdom.
Backed by a formidable supply and distribution network with direct ties to China, these shops often squeeze out local retailers. So, while ethnic Chinese make up less than 0.5 percent of the country's population of 2 million, they have become the country's most successful business community.
That has made them an easy target for dissatisfied locals. A number of Lesotho's residents told IRIN that the main opposition party, the All Basotho Convention (ABC), has been building a populist platform, partly by focusing on the success of Chinese immigrants.
Some say the ABC is accusing the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) party of colluding with Chinese businesses. These comments are echoed on local radio stations, such as Harvest FM and People's Choice FM (PC FM).
Rioters target Chinese businesses
On 26 November 2007, in what was arguably the most public attack on the Chinese, local street vendors, angered by a municipal campaign to relocate them to a designated market place away from the city centre, went on a rampage in Maseru, targeting Chinese-owned businesses.
For years, Maseru's informal traders have set up shop in the heart of the capital, using makeshift stalls to sell everything from clothing to sweets and airtime for cellular phones. They city was brought to a standstill by the rally protesting the decision.
Many informal traders yelled anti-Chinese slogans and threw rocks at the windows of Chinese-owned internet cafes and stores because some of them had stayed open despite calls for businesses to shut their doors in solidarity with the vendors.
One local business owner, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said local radio stations had fuelled the antagonism towards the Chinese. "The day of the demonstrations, Harvest FM and PC FM were saying: 'We cannot tolerate what government is doing. We have to defend ourselves. How can Chinese run their shops while we are turned out of our country?'"
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No one was injured in the unrest, but riot police were called in to restore calm in the central business district, and resentment and tension are still simmering throughout the country.
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