Nostalgia,Scapegoating,and Alterity Politics. An analysis of the Albatross Undercutting Zimbabwe’s Leverage of Bilateral Relations with China

Abstract

The article explores the interplay of nostalgia, scapegoating, and alterity politics within the context of China–Zimbabwe relations. Grounded in postcolonial critique, constructivism, and psychology, the paper grapples with how identities, historical narratives, memory, and the legacy of colonialism shape state behavior and policymaking. Therefore, this study interrogates the contradictions, continuities, and discontinuities surrounding the ideological frameworks, histories, and power structures as they impact Zimbabwe’s postcolonial policy praxis and maneuvers with China. Pursuant, I foreground the agency of domestic political dynamics in shaping the nature, impact, success, or failure thereof, of China–Zimbabwe relations. Overarchingly, the study brings nuance to the broader salience of identity politics in shaping the Global South relations with emerging powers either as a source of leverage or hindrance.

Introduction

Much of the literature on China–Africa relations has been foundationally moored in interrogating China’s motives and aims in Africa (Wen and Jiang, 2024: 28; Tull, 2008; Alden et al., 2008). Along the continuum, the literature on China–Africa relations remains inundated with narratives depicting China as the giant “Other” engaging in debt trap diplomacy, the abetting of authoritarianism, land grabbing, and latter-day neocolonialism, among many other perverted aspersions (Alden, 2020; Condon, 2023; Moyo, 2023; Moyo, 2016; Peša, 2021; Su, 2017; Sun, 2014; Were, 2018). Indeed, China’s cooperation with Zimbabwe has cast both countries under the spotlight (Alao, 2014). For example, on debt trapping diplomacy, scholars like Hodzi, Hartwell, and de Jager (2012) argue that Sino-aid should come with strings attached or conditionalities so that they promote and engender good governance. Also, on latter-day neocolonialism, the Chinese have been labeled as having “colonized commerce . . . [through] . . . asserting hegemony in African commerce” (Gukurume and Nhodo, 2020: 88) funded by their government (Alden and Alves, 2008). On the contrary, Brautigam (2015) contends noting that Chinese traders enter countries like Zimbabwe as individuals independent of government assistance.

In addition, scholars like Gukurume (2019) delved into how Chinese migrants have immersed themselves and negotiated their multiple identities in Zimbabwe in a Bakhtinian “dialogic” manner (Bakhtin, 1986). According to Gukurume (2019) and Hodzi (2019), such a “dialogic” process has given birth to new forms of “Chineseness” or “tactical cosmopolitanism.” The pith of his submission is that the multiple Chinese identities are conditioned by various socioeconomic and political factors obtaining in Zimbabwe, not something that is innate and obdurately fixated. From another angle An et al. (2023) interrogated Sino–Zimbabwe relations from a “feminist geography” perspective. The crux of their contribution challenges “. . . the persistently masculinized image of China’s presence in Africa. . . ” (An et al., 2023) Along the pendulum, their submission offers an alternative route to understanding China–Zimbabwe relations, because it unravels the hidden or masked “non-state geopolitical agency.” Indeed, this is a refreshing contribution in that while it acknowledges China as an anticolonial vanguard, as a liberal–capitalist market-driven hegemon clad in masculinized garments, their research brings to the fore the agency of the hitherto marginalized feminist geopolitics as a springboard for the de-masculinization of Chinese images in Zimbabwe in particular and Africa in general.

However, while there is an abundance of literature on China–Zimbabwe relations, many if not all do not directly engage with narratives of nostalgia, scapegoating, or alterity politics as it affects Zimbabwe’s leverage of this bilateral relationship. Here, I submit that if by chance these narratives appear in any text on Sino–Zimbabwe discourse, they are cavalier devoid of much nuance. In much of the studies, the agency of these narratives, either by commission or omission, appears impliedly or implicitly, not explicitly. While not perching this research as condoning Chinese excesses or as a riposte to local sentiments deriving from Chinese multiple imagery, this paper goes against the grain. It not only challenges, but also adds nuance to the conventional literature that has predominantly depicted everything “Panda” as treacherous, chameleonic, and devoid of honorable intentions. Much of the literature has traditionally postured Africa with realities of want, deprivation, and dependence. As a consequence, African agency always enters the discourse from a position of weakness, devoid on initiative, originality, and potency. Therefore, the study focuses on African domestic politics and political agency, histories, and power dynamics as opposed to Chinese motivations and gains (Wen and Jiang, 2024: 3).

In view of the foregoing, this study grapples with one overarching question: How does nostalgia, scapegoating, and alterity politics (something deeply ingrained in Zimbabwe’s sociopolitical discourse) impact the country’s leverage of bilateral relations with China? Ultimately the thrust is to bring nuance to the assertion that indeed, if politics is praxis, how do these narratives shape policymaking in Zimbabwe? The selection of the three narratives is very fundamental to this study. While grounded in their own specificities, the study indissolubly interrogates the nostalgia, scapegoating, and alterity politics within the broader historical context of the evolution of Sino–Zimbabwe relations. This research is alive to the distinctive and unique features that separate these three narratives and, wherever possible, the study highlights that. However, what is beyond questioning and, indeed, what constitutes the pith of this research is the fact that they are foundationally grounded in the postcolonial history and transition of Zimbabwe, not only at the macro-bilateral level with China, but also at the microlevel of internal dynamics of the country as a postcolony.

As a postcolony born of war, the memorialization of loss, oppression, otherhood, Empire and various forms of racial invisibility, bifurcations, and compartmentalization is always expected. Such a memory of servitude, herein referred in this study as the “economy of the plantation,” incubates a strong sense of nostalgia, especially within bilateral relations with countries like China that played a huge role in providing material, logistical, and ideological support. Indeed, China’s position in Zimbabwean memory is indelibly engraved as the paragon and bulwark of anticolonial struggles. As this study will reveal, China is portrayed as “an all-weather friend” whose sustained benevolence and magnanimity should be cherished at whatever cost.

Also, Zimbabwe’s rupture of relations with the West and the subsequent ostracization of the country through economic sanctions further provides nuance to this nostalgic engagement with China. On one hand, the pronouncement of the Look East Policy (LEP) in 2003 further reinforced Zimbabwe’s affection for China as a diplomatic alternative, and on the other hand, it ossified the already fossilized memories of colonial, neocolonial, and imperial scapegoating and contempt prevalent in postcolonial states within their global capitalist worldviews. At this juncture, this study foregrounds the insights of An et al. (2023), who posit that before 2003 Zimbabwe’s relations with China and the latter’s accompanying image was that of China as a “Comrade in Arms” against the Empire (something borne out of official macrolevel state narratives. The adoption of the LEP and the resultant rise in Chinese presence in Zimbabwe (compounded by China’s Going Out strategy) catalyzed the growth of multiple images and with its certain conflicted narratives. Here, this study contends that the post-LEP epoch (not highly dependent on macrolevel official state narratives) has witnessed myriad microlevel interactions that have seen the proliferation of various narratives and multiple images about China. Among these and as highlighted earlier are narratives of China as colonialist, engaging in debt trap diplomacy, environmental mismanagement, economic hegemony, dumping practices, the abetting of authoritarianism, and the associated coddling of African governance among many others.

To answer the research question, first, the discussion begins by delving into the ambiguities of contested memory, the multiple nationalisms, and power dynamics bequeathed to the post-colony by the Empire. Within this premise, the article perches nostalgia as one of the “Achilles Heel” circumscribing Zimbabwe’s leverage in its bilateral relations with China. The prerogative is to argue that the nostalgia or yearning of a romanticized past of Chinese friendship and camaraderie, while grounded in historical affirmation, masks the nuances and dynamics of the current bilateral relationship (Morales, 2020; Musanga, 2017). While mindful of, and without downplaying the significances of Sino–Zimbabwe relations, the paper argues that the romanticization, sentimentalization, and instrumentalization of this memory carries the probability of hindering Zimbabwe’s bargaining position and, by extension, her leverage on the diplomatic fora. This is rightly so because a nostalgic memorialization festers a kind of “zombification” in policymaking inertia which is detrimental to national progress.

Second, the article proceeds by noting that Zimbabwe’s limits of engagement with the West and the attendant scapegoating of the latter was born at the turn of the millennium wherein the country’s sociopolitical and economic corpus was under duress (Alexander and McGregor, 2013; Blair, 2002; Bond and Manyanya, 2002; Gwekwerere and Mpondi, 2018; Kanyenze, 1996; Laurie, 2016; Le Bas, 2011; Meredith, 2002; Mhanda, 2011; Raftopoulos, 1996; Stoneman and Cliffe, 1989). Indeed, it was an era characterized by the obtaining “fears, discontentment, uncertainties” wherein the state was “badly bruised by the turmoil of the times” (Davis, 1979: 107). Thus, in view of the West’s “scapegoatable traits,” the imposition of economic sanctions on Zimbabwe by the former provided the pretext for the establishment in the latter to deflect attention and assign blame for Zimbabwe’s economic woes. While not apologetic of sanctions and their role in rupturing Zimbabwe’s “sources of resilience” (Hammer et al., 2003; Hove and Gwiza, 2012; Maguranyanga and Moyo, 2006; Masiiwa and Chipungu, 2004; Matondi, 2012; Muzari et al., 2012; Richardson, 2004), the study contends that an “exaggerated problematization” (Weeraratne, 2010: 3) of sanctions has been instrumentalized to hedge political power and legitimacy (Ojakorotu and Kamidza, 2018) at the expense of rational praxis to address Zimbabwe’s sociopolitical and economic morass. Therefore, this article contends that the foregoing has not only misguided the citizenry on the nature of Zimbabwe’s decay, but it has also over perched China’s significance as the panacea to Zimbabwe’s challenges.

Third, the research goes on to interrogate alterity politics in Zimbabwe, noting that they are rooted in the legacies of postcolonial narratives of victimhood, subalternity, Otherness, belonging, autochthony, and identity (Dube, 2021; Makuwerere Dube, 2021). The argument is that by continuously memorializing “Otherness” in a hegemonic order as refracting in the contemporary the state successfully created a pretext for reactionary policies (Zhang, 2023: 1–2). In this instance, the study propounds that alterity politics within Sino–Zimbabwe relations has fixated the latter with structural feelings of dependency, weakness, and as a site of philanthropy and benevolence. In summation, the study concludes by noting that countries in the developing South are trapped within the conundrum of either replicating or imitating China. While China indeed offers a third way to development, countries like Zimbabwe should strive to embrace all and fashion development to local needs, dynamics, and expectations. Overreliance, dependency, exaggeration of Chinese influence, scapegoating of the West, pursuit of parochial and nativist nationalism, autarkic foreign policies, and the obdurate fixation on self-alterity are counterproductive to national progress.

Research methodology

This study utilized various methods from historical analysis, discourse analysis, and narrative approach. It is vital to underscore that a historical analysis presented the ideal platform to delve into Zimbabwe’s sociopolitical and economic development trajectory by revealing the multiple dynamics of the evolution of bilateral relations between Zimbabwe and China. Along this continuum, government policy statements and media reports provided valuable primary data. Also, the study utilized a discourse analysis to unmask the rhetoric and narratives employed by various stakeholders, from politicians, media, to the general citizenry. Discourse analysis provided a vital pedestal for the analysis of nostalgia, scapegoating, and alterity politics because it interrogated the myriad debates and magnified how these narratives are projected and intertwined. For example, the term “Zhing-Zhong” is pregnant and laden with various meanings that when analyzed reveal the interconnected nature of the three narratives. Along this reasoning, while derogatory, the term foregrounds local sentiments toward Chinese products as poor in quality, which in the long run nurtures negative portrayal and in some ignorant spaces, may result in scapegoating or outright hostilities. From another angle, while the term “all weather friend” depicts the importance of China to Zimbabwe, it does not reveal the dynamics and ambiguities that characterize the evolution of Sino–Zimbabwe relations. It is only through a concoction of discourse and historical analysis that the construction and agency of the term can be unearthed.

In addition, the research also relied heavily on the narrative approach because it is not only grounded in “deep historical processes and subjectivity” but also provide invaluable lenses to analyze “relationships between ideas and their historical origins and the relationship to policy making” in Zimbabwe (Alden and Anseeuw, 2009: 26). In reality with a historical analysis, narratives not only bring together “actions, thoughts and practices (Dube, 2021: 103) to create worldviews, but also reflect on “experiences, deconstruct the behavior of others, and provide solutions to societal problems” (Polkinghorne, 1988; Zelemayer, 1997 cited in Dube, 2021: 103).

Most importantly, the utilization of narratives complements discourse analysis in that they reveal the stakeholders’ “locus of enunciation” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013: 21), which unearths the situational grounding of epistemology and worldviews or the “geopolitical location of the subject” (Grosfoguel, 2007: 213). For this research a narrative approach provides insights into the Zimbabwean government’s liberation worldview that projects the primacy of the liberation war above everything else. Hence, China is nostalgically portrayed as an “all-weather friend or comrade in arms” because of the immense support rendered during the founding event birthing the country. In addition, the narrative approach also reveals the postcolonial government’s penchant for scapegoating, diverting attention, and ducking responsibility for its apparent failure to deliver political goods. Therefore, sanctions in toto are responsible for Zimbabwe’s sociopolitical and economic quagmire and inadvertently China is perched as the panacea. Also, from an alterity politics vantage point, this approach provides nuance to the national memorialization of victimhood, self othering, and pitiable portrayal of the country under neocolonial onslaught. Along the continuum, such tendencies are hatcheries of an unrestrained and ignorant attachment to China that breeds acquiescence even for the grotesque and the undesirable.

In view of the above, this qualitative study utilized various types of print and electronic media and op eds which provided the research with real-time insights into contemporary socioeconomic and political dynamics as they unraveled within the discourse of China–Zimbabwe relations. In addition, because the three narratives (nostalgia, scapegoating, and alterity politics) are moored in various disciplines, the media reports provided a perfect platform that encapsulated their diversity and the myriad perspectives that informed the discourse and its framing. Therefore, against the background of Zimbabwe’s conflicted socioeconomic and political corpus characterized by multiple contested nationalisms, and a ruptured and instrumentalized memory, these media sources provided the ideal gateway critical to the analysis of the evolution of the narratives and perspectives and how they interplayed with power structures and identity politics within the broader spectrum of China–Zimbabwe relations. Most importantly, far from the somehow cavalier theoretical abstractions, media sources complemented and reinforced the study with granular real-life examples which played an invaluable role in the distilling and contextualization of the analysis.

Be that as it may, the research was alive to the inherent biases replete in media sources. Therefore, to guard against such, the study triangulated the data by utilizing extant literature from desktop surveys, journal publications, archival materials from government repositories, and conference proceedings from workshops and seminars. In addition, primary data and insights were gleaned from reports by think-tank organizations, civil society lobbyists, and pressure groups.

Background of China–Zimbabwe relations

Before an analysis of Sino–Zimbabwe relations, it is vital to underscore the fact that any inquiry into contemporary geopolitics or international relations requires as a precursor, an appreciation of history. In view of that, China–Zimbabwe relations have a long history dating back to the latter’s war of liberation in which China extended material and ideological support to the then Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) which was one of the two liberation movements, the other one being the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) supported by the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Thus, during the liberation war against the settler regime, China extended military hardware, training, and ideological and logistical support (Chung, 2006; Edinger and Burke, 2008; Hogwe and Banda, 2017; Morales, 2020; Tendi, 2020; Vhumbunu, 2018). Therefore, it is trite that, “largely because of the role it played in the liberation war, China was the country with the greatest advantage at the time of independence” (Alao, 2014: 7). However, Zimbabwe’s independence came at a time when China was looking inwards, undergoing structural transformation owing to Deng Xiaoping’s reforms that began in 1978. Despite China’s retreat, newly independent Zimbabwe strengthened diplomatic relations with her benefactor with one of the first official visits being conducted to pay homage and extend gratitude to China’s invaluable support rendered during Zimbabwe’s arduous journey to freedom (Alao, 2014; Ojakorotu and Kamidza, 2018: 7). However, at this juncture it is vital to underscore that relations between China and Zimbabwe were mainly rooted within the purview of the “anti-colonial geopolitical alliance” and did not graduate to include other fundamental areas like social exchanges and economic cooperation (An et al., 2023; Fay, 2015).

Forty-four years after Zimbabwe’s independence, China had transmogrified itself to global presence. Such a remarkable transformation remains unprecedented in modern history. Along this pendulum, Lampton notes that:

The China asking to rejoin the World Bank in 1980 borrowing substantially. . . .is now the China that is gaining a bigger say in the running of the organization and related Bretton Woods institutions, The China asking for help in the late 1970s and 80s is now dispensing foreign aid in ever greater quantities. . . . Debtor China is now Creditor China, and the PRC. . . . [has] become a sought-after investor by countries from Argentina to the United States and Zambia. (Rosen and Hanemann, 2009 cited in Lampton, 2014: 40)

China’s growth and transformation has come with a lot of expectations manifesting variedly in various dimensions. These transcends across diverse variables which include but are not limited to the need to exert economic presence, intellectual diffusion, an overdrive in diplomatic maneuvers, communication advancement, and foreign assistance, among many others (Mahbubani, 2009, 2010); Besides, China’s transformation since the reform era has been an enigma driven by different but competing narratives from power projection, foreign entanglement, and as a source of pride and nationalism (Lampton, 2014). However, what is beyond questioning is that for China to sustain its growth, it had to go beyond its borders. In reality, this explains the fervent drive to access raw materials critical to the sustenance of its burgeoning economy and appetite for its consumer markets both within and without (Carmody, 2017; Su, 2017; Busse et al., 2016; Ado and Su, 2016; Johnston et al., 2015). This typical “go out and buy” (Sun, 2014; Were, 2018) is driven by the inevitable realities of her economic growth, which coincided with an era in which Zimbabwe was in need of a structural realignment in terms of its foreign policy. Much has been written about post-independence Zimbabwe’s socioeconomic and political decay which is beyond the scope of this study, therefore this article does not interrogate that.

After two decades of ambivalent land reform, Zimbabwe engaged in the revolutionary, chaotic, and contested agrarian land redistribution exercise which ruptured Zimbabwe’s relations with the Empire and led to the imposition of economic sanctions. Despite its historical significance, the land redistribution exercise was “demonized as an instrumentalized policy for political aggrandizement, populist demagoguery, devoid of economic rational, . . . [and] . . . was besmirched by neoliberal bromides and market catechists as an affront to property rights, the rule of law and the general corpus of human rights” (Dube, 2021: 147). The resultant isolation and denigration led to Zimbabwe realigning its strategic foreign policy by enunciating the Look East Policy in 2003, which exalted Asian countries (China in particular) as strategic development and diplomatic partners for Zimbabwe. “Thus, Zimbabwe’s LEP and China’s outward development strategy promoted the rapid development of close economic ties. . . ” (Wang and Zou, 2014 cited in An et al., 2023: 1270). Hence at the occasion to mark the 25th Independence celebrations in 2005 former President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe quipped that “we have turned East where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West where the sun sets” (cited in Maroodza, 2011: 2). This was an allegorical statement implying that Zimbabwe was having a strategic realignment of her “. . . foreign policy as an explicit rejection of the political conditions of the West” (Morales, 2020: 114).

Since the year 2003, relations between Zimbabwe and China have strengthened. Chinese investments in Zimbabwe now span across many sectors of the economy like the extractive sector, retail, medical, energy, diplomatic engagements, and people to people cultural exchanges (Mano, 2016; Mudavanhu, 2014; Ojakorotu and Kamidza, 2018; Vhumbunu, 2018). Even the population of Chinese domiciled in Zimbabwe grew from a mere 300 in the year 2000 to 16,000 by 2007 (Park 2013 cited in Gukurume and Nhodo, 2020: 87) Indeed, the nature of Sino–Zimbabwe relations “entails Chinese development for Zimbabwe’s natural resources” (Alao, 2014: 8), mainly minerals like chrome, iron, gold, diamonds, and more recently lithium. In 2020, bilateral trade between Zimbabwe and China reached US$1.399 billion, up by 4.2% year on year, according to figures from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFCOM, 2020 cited in The Daily News, 28 January 2022). Therefore, the post-LEP has witnessed the growth of a dual Chinese character in Zimbabwe. On one hand is “liberal market-oriented China. . . chasing the market and profits. . . ” and on the other hand is a “masculinized China” engaged in mining, industry and infrastructure development “. . . but no longer concerned about local development” (An et al., 2023). Such a scenario provided the right ingredients for the portrayal of China as exemplified by the multiple aspersions used by various stakeholders ranging from the bizarre to the disconcerting but not without some grain of truth.

Contextualizing the concept of nostalgia

In general, nostalgia refers to a strong yearning or a kind of “when-weism” (Fisher, 2010: 69) about the past mostly projected through idealized, romanticized, and instrumentalized couching. Pickering and Keightely define it as a “longing for what is lacking in a changed present. . . a yearning for what is unattainable simply because of the irreversibility of time” (Pickering and Keightely, 2006: 920). Other scholars have defined it as a “longing for a lost place. . . a vanished time” (Angé and Berliner, 2014: 2) or a “positive feeling accompanying a memory of some place, event or object in the past” (Anderson, 2013: 7; Batcho, 1995; Sedikides et al., 2010). From another angle, nostalgia relates to an exaggerated reflection or retelling of a perceived golden age of bilateral relations or cooperation. Nostalgia is very important in that it explains the desire to influence the contemporary in various dimensions such a behavior, perception of foreign relations, and policymaking, among many others. Henceforth, nostalgia can be potent ammo for political leaders in terms of social and political mobilization through the invocation of perceived historical glories. In some instances, it results in the rupture of historical memory for populism or demagoguery (Ranger, 2004, 2005). In countries like Zimbabwe, nostalgia created a kind of “rally around the flag” fostering nationalism, however contested. Besides, nostalgia can be a double-edged sword as well because in Zimbabwe, for example, attempts at instrumentalizing memory resulted in contestations and divergencies over the past, identity, and belonging (Dube, 2021; Makuwerere Dube, 2021). Also, it can be “a dangerous misuse of history trading on comfortable and conveniently reassuring images of the past thereby suppressing both its variety and its negative aspects” (Shaw and Chase, 1989: 1; Angé and Berliner, 2014: 4) Therefore, in the case of Zimbabwe, this has conditioned various groups or constituents’ perceptions regarding Sino–Zimbabwe relations. In summation, nostalgia conditions how history is remembered and interpreted or how it is curated for future consumptions. The raison d’etre is to create a selective memory, perching positives and downplaying negatives, which shapes public memory.

Nostalgia and the narrative of solidarity and unwavering support

Dramatic changes in Zimbabwe’s socioeconomic and political corpus at the turn of the millennium catalyzed the need to reengineer the soul of the society to what life was before. This necessitated a journey into the past, scavenging for a time when China stood by Zimbabwe during the darkest hours of colonial servitude and the attendant quest for freedom. The decay in Zimbabwe’s body politic “created a sense of loss, and distance from the past, that nurtured their wish to “patrimonialise and museumify it. . . ” (Terdiman, 1993 cited in Angé and Berliner, 2014: 3). The foregoing assertion is aptly captured by Robert Mugabe in his welcome remarks to a visiting Chinese Minister in 2007 wherein he notes that:

To us in those days (of liberation struggle) it was difficult to get friends just as it is difficult now, being faced by a struggle against great powers, to get friends who can support us. But you gave us all the means with which we prosecuted our struggle and I say a good friend is one who stands by you when you are in trouble. (Xinhua, 2007)

Therefore, by instrumentally appealing to that nostalgic memory, the center perched China as a “comrade in arms,” an “all weather friend” (Eisenman, 2005), and the bellwether against the Empire, among many other eulogies. By “Looking East” the state not only appealed for a bailout, but also enhanced not only its legitimacy but that of China as imbued with honorable intentions. True to the above assertion, in his 13th visit to China, Robert Mugabe exchanged pleasantries with Xi Jinping, noting that he “felt very much at home” and that the visit “brings the past to the present,” especially their camaraderie forged in the trenches fighting against colonialism, imperialism, and hegemony (Aljazeera, 25 May 2014).

However, this article argues that Zimbabwe’s nostalgia for historical ties with China creates a mirth and myth of unwavering solidarity and decades long comradeship. The flipside is that this has a tendency to mask nuances about the current relationship, what Achille Mbembe terms the masking of the “terrible dunghill hidden under the gilding and the crimson” (Mbembe, 2017: 68). While not dismissing the significances of the bilateral relations, the study is mindful of the realities of international politics from a rational and realist vantage point of a Hobbesian character where states seek to maximize their competitive advantage over others.

Therefore, in view of the above, claims about unwavering support and friendship become ephemeral and cavalier. In reality, Zimbabwe is embroiled or trapped in a “nostalgic mode” (Grainge, 2002). This denotes a scenario whereby there is a selective memorialization of the past that is “energetically manufactured and avidly consumed but do not necessarily correspond to the evidence of experience” (Fritzsche, 2001: 1617). In view of the foregoing, it can be argued that the “all-weather friendship” mantra is a convenient alibi by a regime that was forcibly displaced and retreating off-balance because of sanctions by the West. In fact, other scholars have argued that “even without the war of liberation, it is possible that the West’s isolation of Zimbabwe would still have thrown it into the arms of any country” (Alao, 2014: 7). To this end, it has been argued that post-independence Zimbabwe’s policy thrust invested more energy on courting relations with West at the expense of deepening cooperation with China. In fact, Zimbabwe’s “pronouncements of the Look East Policy (LEP) in 2003 was therefore an activation of a previously espoused diplomatic position a decade earlier” (The Pan African Review, 23 January 2020). Therefore, because of Zimbabwe’s sociopolitical and economic quagmire further compounded by the retreat of “Western technological sources of capital and trade” and her status being “an international pariah, China represented its only major international supporter. . . ” (Eisenman, 2005).

Henceforth, it can be concluded that what exists in reality is a coalition or platform of mutual interests. Hence, “the war was only an antecedent around which trust could be built” which then puts the “nostalgic orgy” of historical bonds under serious scrutiny. Thus, on one hand, is China, an economic powerhouse whose meteoric economic growth and domestic demand pragmatically requires that she forages across the globe for resources to sustain her domestic market’s insatiable appetite for resources (Ado and Su, 2016; Brautigam, 2010; Kim, 2017; Lampton, 2014). On the other hand, is Zimbabwe, a postcolonial state lampooned and marginalized by Western liberalism and in desperate need for economic sanctuary (Moyo, 2016; Vhumbunu, 2018). From this vantage point, domestic, foreign, and geopolitical realities are the main force buttressing China’s sojourn into Africa. Thus, far from revisiting the sustained generational camaraderie, Zimbabwe’s nostalgia of China’s companionship was and remains anchored in the contemporary, conditioned by the dynamics of the former’s disengagement from the West. Memory, history, or nostalgia, while not downplaying its significances bulks small in the presence of these variables.

Also, this research reiterates that an overemphasis in invoking historical precedents, while prudent and pragmatic to Zimbabwe for economic sanctuary and regime continuity (Ojakorotu and Kamidza, 2018; Zhang, 2023), always runs the greater risk of an overestimation of support. In addition, an overreliance on history and memory can stagnate or zombify the inertia and ingenuity of policymaking in Zimbabwe. The fact that the “unwavering support,” and “all weather friendship” has become verbal staple in Zimbabwe, runs the risk of perching China as the panacea of Zimbabwe’s problems. While not an indictment on Chinese benevolence and bilateral or diplomatic links with Zimbabwe and from a realist standpoint, Beijing is no giver of freebies. In reality, China is hard pressed by:

. . . the sheer scale of the challenges they face. Challenges [running] the gamut from meeting rising political expectations and keeping the economic juggernaut going, to provide [their] citizens breathable air and portable water and reassuring an apprehensive world that Beijing’s growing power is not a threat. (Lampton, 2014: 1)

Indeed, given the above, it can be safe to conclude that while foreign entanglements are vital and inevitable given China’s stature and priorities, starkly the reality is that the leadership in China owes it to their people rather than to cogitate excessively about Harare. Within the grand scheme of bilateral relations, countries will only be useful to the extent that their involvement satisfies another country’s needs. Hence, the 19th-century British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston quipped that “there are no permanent friends but permanent interests” in international relations. However, be that as it may, Besada argues that while private interest may drive China’s actions not only in Zimbabwe but also in Africa, it is cavalier and myopic to assume that it is all that matters. In reality, China is simply acting like any other normal super power on a growth trajectory to assuming or on the brink of assuming global leadership (Besada, 2013). Therefore, understanding this reality is important to “those who live in China and to those abroad who must live with China in the 21^st century” (Lampton, 2014: 3).

From another angle, other scholars have argued that far from being a genuine retreat to old companionship, the Look East Policy “. . . was foisted on Zimbabwe by circumstances that leadership did not foresee” and because the country found itself entrapped in a cul-de-sac, it was inevitable that the policy became “replete with abuses of labor laws, extraction of mineral resources, and the flooding of cheap goods to the detriment of local industries” (Moyo and Mdlongwa, 2014: 4). Along this pendulum, critical scholarship has always dismissed the lofty official narratives inundated with rosy images and positives which crowd out the swelling undercurrents of non-official perspectives laden with sinophobic resonances based on allegations of neocolonialism, environmental misgovernance, poor labor practices, and unethical business practices by Chinese under alleged elite protection and connivance (Hess and Aidoo, 2016; Mano, 2016; Moyo, 2016; Peša, 2021). The next section grapples and endeavors to bring nuance to these allegations and the resultant scapegoating (not without justification in some instances), and how they manifest within the discourse of China–Zimbabwe relations.

Scapegoating in the matrix of Zimbabwe–China relations

Scapegoating can be defined as “the act of transferring blame to others” (Allport et al., 1954), especially about an object or group with characteristics that are disliked (Berkowitz and Green, 1962). The term scapegoat can be traced back to the biblical era recorded in Leviticus Chapter 16, wherein the iniquities of Israel were placed on a goat which was subsequently discarded into the wilderness to wander to its demise. Other scholars have argued that scapegoating is an attempt at deflecting blame onto defenseless and vulnerable objects (Weeraratne, 2010). Acclaimed mythologist and theorist Rene Girard noted that the defenseless “target is chosen not because it is guilty of the society’s problems; if it is responsible, it is by sheer accident. In essence, the target of scapegoating is chosen because of its weakness or easy prey to victimize. . . .” (cited in Psychology Today, 21 December 2013). From a frustration–aggression vantage point, during times of sociopolitical and economic flux or crisis, people or institutions “seek groups upon whom they can assign blame and displace aggression for their misfortunes” (Weeraratne, 2010: 5). Besides, in times of great turmoil and uncertainty or when sociopolitical and economic fundamentals are under duress, manipulative and unscrupulous leaders exploit deep-rooted fault lines to scapegoat with the explicit aim of evading responsibility to hide their inadequacies or blame.

In that regard, China’s relationship with Zimbabwe will continue to be conditioned by the controversies emanating from latter’s domestic policy dynamics, internal state, market society relations, and the venality of transnational forces. Along the continuum, scapegoating in Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular manifests through the blaming of Chinese for unfair trade practices, neocolonial exploitation, and all sorts of vices and ills. The scapegoating of China in Zimbabwe “invokes entrenched stereotypes of the group as non-native, economically dominant outsiders” (Weeraratne, 2010: ii). This has been exacerbated by the nature of Chinese-led investments and their alleged elite accumulative partnerships, which has ignited tensions bordering on foreignization and extraction.

Having stated that, it is worth noting that “the Chinese have managed to accomplish at least one impressive thing in Africa. . . . They have everyone else uncomfortable. . . ” (Okeowo, 2023 cited in Alao, 2014: 1). China’s presence, not only in Zimbabwe but across the African continent is highly contentious with narratives abounding, and ranging from the truth, the bizarre, and to the disconcerting. Chinese relations with many African countries, depicted in some texts as that between “a rider and a horse” (Mkudu, 2015), have been followed by a specter of allegations of exploitation (Kolstad and Wiig, 2011; Moyo, 2016), as a precursor to neocolonialism (Musanga, 2017), debt trapping (Alden, 2020; Brown, 2023; Singh, 2020; Were, 2018), environmental mismanagement (Hess and Aidoo, 2016; Peša, 2021), engaging in elite opaque deals (Ojakorotu and Kamidza, 2018), and abetting authoritarianism (New York Times, 19 February 2007), among many other aspersions.

Narrative of Chinese debt trapping diplomacy and colonialism

One of the main drivers of scapegoating of Chinese has been the widely held belief that China’s presence not only in Zimbabwe but across the African continent signals a return to colonialism. In this discourse, Chinese presence is a “precursor to neocolonialism” (Zhang, 2023; Moyo, 2016) through calculated investments projects (e.g., the Belt and Road Initiative) and other various loans and concessions that promote “debt trapping diplomacy” (Brown, 2023; Condon, 2023; Horn et al., 2021; Moyo, 2023; Singh, 2020; Were, 2018). The term “debt trap diplomacy” was coined by an Indian think tank suggesting that China has been or is engaging in a “callous yuan diplomacy” (New York Times, 19 February, 2007) through its loans and mega-infrastructure projects across the developing South, with the explicit goal of ensnaring these countries into a vicious web of unsustainable debt distress from whence they will extricate themselves leading to loss a of sovereignty (Kluiver, 2023). At this juncture, it is imperative to highlight that it is beyond reasonable doubt that Chinese investments have fueled unrivaled growth, but at the same time raised serious concerns about debt sustainability. By the year 2022, Africa countries owed approximately US$63 billion to the Chinese government and US$24 billion to private lenders (The Standard, 02 June 2024). Examples of huge debts cited by critics include Kenya’s US$6.3 billion debt (two-thirds of its total export commercial borrowing) and Angola’s US$40 billion, which is approximately 60% of its gross domestic product (The Standard, 02 June, 2024). Zimbabwe has received a significant amount of loans and investments from China to undertake various projects which amount to approximately US$13 billion (The East African, 20 July 2022). These include the extension of Victoria Falls International Airport, refurbishment of Kariba Power station and Hwange Thermal Station, upgrading of the Robert Mugabe International Airport, Expansion of the state-owned telecommunications company Netone, and the construction of dams, among many others.

Also, scholars have argued that Chinese financing creates a veiled strategy of securing African resources (Sun, 2014) because they are structured in a way that provides “infrastructure paid for by commodity backed loans” (Were, 2018: 6). These accusations of colonialism and debt trapping that drive scapegoating and along the continuum Sinophobia are further fueled by that fact that most of these deals (were loans are resource based) are mostly applicable to countries with a poor debt service history. In essence, critics have argued that China deliberately targets countries that cannot repay the loans, which inadvertently emboldens its leverage as it seeks to counter US hegemony (The East African, 18 April 2024).

However, this paper calls for caution against blaming China for African debt distress and predicament, to the extent of even dismissing scapegoating claims of China debt trapping Zimbabwe in particular or African countries in general. In reality, scapegoating China for debt trapping while presenting Africa as victim “confers a childlike innocence on African governments” and “fails to take into account. . . [that they are] . . . voluntarily seeking out trade” (Were, 2018: 8). In fact, African governments are cognizant of their debt obligations and have a desire to promote socioeconomic development for their citizenry. Along this reasoning, Zimbabwe’s case is particularly poignant in that for two decades the country has been ostracized by the West’s International Financial Institutions (IFIs), especially the Bretton Woods Institutions (World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) and the Paris Club for its failure to service debts. Thus, Zimbabwe’s economic malaise, its history of loan defaults has driven the country into a debt overhang, trapping the country into a two-decade cycle of debt peonage, unrelenting borrowing, buildup of arrears, and sustained defaults (Moyo, 2023: 207). Here, I contend that to blame China for Zimbabwe’s debt distress is not only misplaced aggression but sheer mischief. In fact, the blame lies within Zimbabwean’s political corpus and decision-making and not necessarily with China. Hence, other scholars have argued that such scapegoating narratives depicting China as chameleonic and cunning are fueled by the West (Were, 2018) in their geopolitical turf war. The downside of such narratives is that they produce a single story predicated on Chinese motivations and gains while dismissing or “Othering” African political agency in terms of decision-making (Wen and Jiang, 2024: 3).

In the same vein, it is also important for this study to provide nuance to the dynamics of China–Africa/Zimbabwe relations. Here, I contend that such an approach will go a long way in providing a clear picture that explains why Chinese loans and investments remain attractive to African governments despite the latter’s debt burdens. First, it should be emphasized that China’s history is a “tabula rasa” when it comes to colonialism and its legacy in Africa. China’s legitimacy is further reinforced because its partnerships are couched in the dictum of South–South cooperation, mutual benefit, and so forth. Unlike the West and its hectoring tendencies, China does not condescend upon African countries through its policy of non-interference in another country’s sovereignty. In addition, against a background of an annual infrastructure financing deficit of US$93 billion, Africa requires a boost in infrastructure to buttress her economic development (Were, 2018), which makes Chinese loans all the more attractive to Africa. Therefore, casting aspersions at China and scapegoating her as a colonialist misses the nuances of the intricacies and dynamics of the various partnerships, notwithstanding the disarticulated and varied developmental realities of the African continent. In Zimbabwe, putting aside the internal weak statehood, China remains one of the most viable avenues for the country to realize its development goals.

Narrative of China’s opaque deals and the coddling of governance systems in Zimbabwe

Also, another contentious factor and a major catalyst for scapegoating against the Chinese presence relates to the opaque nature of their deals with African governments. It is worth noting that narratives of opaque Chinese deals are not confined to Zimbabwe or sub-Saharan Africa alone, but to other regions of the South as well. For example, Ecuador had a US$7.3 billion China debt which was supposed to be repaid through oil, but the oil minister Carlos Perez was oblivious and professed ignorance to the nature and terms of Chinese loans (The Straits Times, 22 May 2018). Along this reasoning, there exists a considerable degree of opaqueness around the negotiations of Chinese deals in Zimbabwe. This has raised unanswered questions to the actual number of agreements, whether African governments are presenting the appropriate projects for financing, questions about effective and efficient use of the financing, notwithstanding its viability (Were, 2018). The fact that most infrastructure projects by the Chinese are not subjected to the tender process has raised reservations about accountability and transparency, which is further compounded by the fact that if the terms of reference of the deals are not revealed to the public, “separating fact from fiction becomes a daunting task” (Institute of Security Studies, 2 November Kluiver, 2023). With most negotiations carried out “in camera,” speculations and fears by the various publics in Zimbabwe have graduated to scapegoating and the associated perceptions that the Chinese are colluding with the government to burden Zimbabweans with financial default. For example, in Zimbabwe, most Chinese loans are “shrouded in secrecy while others are resource backed loans that have left the country mortgaged to Beijing” (Moyo, 2023: 207). Indeed, some critics have labeled China as the “patron of misgovernment” (New York Times, 19 February 2007) and these sentiments are echoed by other think-tank organizations in Zimbabwe as well. A study conducted by the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) in partnership with the Africa Institute of Environmental Law (AIEL) confirmed that indeed lithium mining was under the total control of the Chinese. The report went on to state that lithium mining contracts remain a mystery with “the contracts. . . not accessible for communities and other players to monitor and track progress on agreed terms and condition” (Zwinoira, 2023).

However, it is also important to note that there is genuine concern by the proponents of the narratives of Chinese colonialism, debt trapping, and the coddling of Zimbabwean governance systems. Concerns revolve around the rising debt to China and the perceived inability of Zimbabwe to repay the loans. Another concern is grounded in questions pertaining to whether debt repayment will not affect the Zimbabwean government’s ability to deliver political goods. Against the background of Zimbabwe’s economic woes, characterized by macroeconomic volatility, porous tax regime and a shallow tax base, and compromised financial flows, “dipping into an already shallow pool to make debt repayments is particularly painful” (Were, 2018: 9). Therefore, this study goes against the grain to submit that the elephant in the room is not China but rather the internal dynamics of a postcolonial state punctured by a deep-seated weak statehood.

From another perspective, Chinese investors in the extractive sector in Africa have been accused of environmental mismanagement, poor corporate social responsibility (CSR), disrespect and flouting of labor laws, community rights and riding on elite protection. In fact, Chinese presence in the extractive sector and the attendant accusations of environmental mismanagement is full of precedence across the African continent. For example, the September 2020 protests in South Sudan by locals after Chinese oil extraction left a trail of environmental pollution (The Citizen, 4 September 2020), the controversies surrounding waste disposal and profit extraction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Peša, 2021), and the famed Galamsey debacle in Ghana in 2013. In Zimbabwe the Center for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG) noted that Zimbabwe continues “to face a myriad of environmental problems ranging from pollution, mining, waste dumps. . . . with a significant portion of Zimbabwe’s arable land rendered unusable due to mining activities” (Newsday, 7 June 2024a). For example, there has been various contestations in Mutoko between Chinese extractive companies like Shanghai Haoyuan, Jinding Mining and Bozimo, and residents of Nyamakopa Village. Bozimo mining has been accused of “environmental degradation including leaving trails of open pits, which are death traps for humans and livestock” (Sunday Express, 25 October 2022). In addition, it is alleged that their environmental mismanagement has resulted in air pollution, water pollution, land degradation, and in some cases loss of life and displacement.

In another case of poor environmental management, two Chinese owned companies, Dingson Colliery and Zhing Jian Investments, which are contracted by Hwange Colliery Company Limited (HCCL) were found (dewatering) pumping wastewater from their mining excavations into nearby rivers, threatening aquatic ecosystems and human livelihoods in Makwika Village (Newsday, 8 March 2023). The discharge of toxic waste is a catalyst for the proliferation of human diseases and has been found to cause a reduction in crop yields, siltation of water bodies affecting not only the natural ecosystem, availability of irrigation water but the broader food security and livelihoods framework. In addition, Chinese investors, especially in the extractive sector, have been accused of wantonly flouting regulations related to health and workplace safety, abrogation of workers’ rights, poor remuneration, and a deliberate sidelining of local people in other downstream activities related to value addition and beneficiation. (Newsday, 9 February 2024b). Also, sentiments are rife that Chinese products are of a poor quality which are caricatured as “zhing-zhong” and that their influx is crowding out local industries (Musanga, 2017).

Of shallow analysis and missing nuances

In view of the above assertions and realities that obtain in Zimbabwe, on face value the Chinese are indeed “scapegoatable.” Their presence has crowded out the viability of local industries, and they are constantly pursed by a specter of negative publicity that affects the host communities in which they invest. In some spaces such reports can ignite reactionary movements, as has been the case between host societies and foreigners in countries like South Africa with xenophobia, Brexit in England, America First under Donald Trump, and other right-wing tendencies in Italy, Hungary or Tunisia, and so forth. For example, it is gospel truth that “the mining industry thrives at the expense of the environment, posing serious threat, especially to mining host communities and future generations” (Newsday, 7 June 2024a). However, without appearing to condone their actions, with some of them true and others sensationalized, this article foregrounds that scapegoating the Chinese, while justified to some extent smacks of a shallow analysis of the nuances of the subject matter. Therefore, in view of the foregoing, the article argues that it is not the Chinese that are at fault but rather the agency of internal political dynamics and actors.

First, this study contends that while some of these allegations are true and provide grounds for scapegoating and blaming the Chinese in toto, the catalyst of such tendencies is the existence of an allegedly elite connivance or protection that turns a blind eye to all these misdemeanors and transgressions against the laws, presumably because China is an “all-weather friend” and comrade in arms. There have been allegations that there exists a kind of patron–client protection system between Chinese investors and some elite government figures with the latter providing political protection and muscle which allows the Chinese investors to act above the laws of the country without any checks and balances. To this end, Farai Maguwu the CNRG Executive Director lamented that “we are seeing an increase in the number of Chinese coming to Zimbabwe and these are going either straight to the minister (Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando), if it is other minerals, or off to the President (Emmerson Munangagwa), if it is about coal, oil and gas” (The Independent, 22 December 2022). Another report by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee in 2013 observed that in the Midlands province, Chinese companies projected “an attitude of being untouchable and could operate above the law. . . [and created] . . . . the impression within the community and in some government institutions that they were protected by someone in a very high office in government” (The Standard, 13 March 2022).

Second, building on the allegedly elite partnership narrative and also acknowledging that while blaming or scapegoating Chinese may be desirable and sometimes politically correct in Zimbabwe’s circumstances, it is critical for all and sundry to self-introspect on the acute deficiencies in the legal and regulatory frameworks and their enforcement thereof. Along this pendulum, there is need to expeditiously reform the laws and regulations to create checks and balances between capital and labor promoting and protecting workers’ rights and welfare, ensuring the mainstreaming of local players in the downstream business of mining to engender value addition and beneficiation (Newsday, 9 February, 2024b). In that regard, civil society and pressure groups should cajole the Government of Zimbabwe to do more in “explicitly linking projects supported by Chinese. . . to concrete benefit for [Zimbabweans]” (Were, 2018: 9) by making sure that terms of agreement with the Chinese guarantee “job creation, knowledge transfer and technology transfer” (Adegoke, 2018). If not addressed, the flipside is that communities where Chinese investments are occurring will develop negative perceptions which may transcend into outright hostilities, further straining bilateral relations and undercutting Zimbabwe’s leverage of Chinese investments.

From another angle, scapegoating against the Chinese lies in Zimbabwe’s domestic politics, whereby the country’s political landscape is highly polarized characterized mainly by the contested legitimacy of the incumbent government. In that vein, coupled with China’s policy of non-interference in another country’s domestic affairs and the fact that some African governments may lack or are believed to lack popular support, China has been accused of abetting authoritarianism or along the continuum dictatorship. In this regard, and against a background of Zimbabwe’s contested political space, people may feel that the giver of aid or investment (China) has allied itself with an unwanted regime against the desires of the people. Thus, if a government lacks popular support, helping it will come at a cost of being branded as promoting the suffocation of people’s aspirations. Such a strand of thought may explain the allegations by the Herald that counter-reactionary forces are funding the private media to write sensationalized narratives about Chinese investors as colonizers, riding roughshod over community rights, the environment, and flouting the country’s investment regulations and labor laws, among many other aspersions (The Daily News, 28 January 2022).

Here, I argue that such a scapegoating and polarized political culture obtaining in Zimbabwe has not only resulted in a binarized worldview, but also created and entrenched a kind of “mutual zombification” (Mbembe, 2017) surrounding the discourse of China–Zimbabwe relations. This manifests in a kind of political discourse rife with suspicion, accusations, and counter-accusations wherein there are two distinct camps that are mutually incompatible “seeing no evil and hearing no evil” as it were. On one hand, this partly explains the sentiments by the Chinese Ambassador Guo Shaochun in which he exhorted Chinese business people in Zimbabwe “to welcome competition, but not malicious smear” (The Daily News, 28 January 2022). On the contrary, this sheds light on an investigation conducted by Xinhua in 2020, which concluded that Western media was engaged in an overdrive casting maledictions against Chinese presence in Zimbabwe using a corrupted and compromised private media and civil society organizations to peddle lies, unbelievable mendacity, depicting Chinese as criminal, unethical, abusive, and so forth (The Daily News, 28 January 2022). While there may be elements of truth in some of these allegations, there are also remnants of scapegoating which may not only strain bilateral relations, but also undercut Zimbabwe’s ability to leverage fully the Sino–Zimbabwe bilateral relations.

However, besides the seemingly negative images that continue to follow Chinese presence in Zimbabwe, this study revisits the works of An et al. (2023), which argues for a sustained de-masculinization of Chinese image through “feminist geography or geopolitics.” In their submission, they argue that the Chinese images in Zimbabwe have been inundated with masculinities and gender biases, hence they put forward a case for women philanthropy which challenges the discursive framings of these masculinities and asymmetries that define China’s state-led development outreach goals (An et al., 2023: 1262). These various philanthropic works dovetailing into orphanages, fundraising, and so forth have helped to reshape ingrained attitudes in international politics, public diplomacy, and geopolitical imaginations revealing an alternative understanding of China distanced from narratives of looting and avaricious accumulation tendencies. This research offered a breadth of fresh air to the Sino–Zimbabwe discourse, because it sought to shift focus from the traditional elite-led geopolitical discourse to one that is drawn from “the increasingly frequent social, cultural and economic exchanges” (p. 1275). Therefore, through the various charity endeavors and visibility of organizations like Love in Africa, “the locals’ impression of China in Zimbabwean society has gradually changed” (p. 1273).

In the same vein, this study also calls for caution against scapegoating Chinese as inherently criminal and posturing them as undesirable elements. Revisiting Gukurume’s (2019) works on new forms of Chineseness in Zimbabwe, this paper posits that what is made of Chinese identity and image is not biological but rather a product of dialogic process between the subject (Chinese) and the object (the sociopolitical economic environment) in Zimbabwe. Henceforth, it can be argued that their images, agency, behaviors, tactics, and strategies are indeed products of a mutually complementing process between the Chinese and Zimbabweans. This brings to the fore the argument that I foregrounded earlier in the text, that it is the internal political dynamics rather than Chinese agency that requires interrogation. Hence, scapegoating Chinese for the various ills, some true and other fallacious, misses the point. In this line of reasoning, Zimbabwe can better leverage bilateral relations with China if the focus is redirected at addressing internal deficiencies in such areas like governance, addressing corruption, building the capacity of state institutions, and doing away with a virulent strain of acute mendacity and lies that perforate the political discourse.

While this section has grappled with scapegoating tendencies directed against the Chinese presence in Zimbabwe, the article also endeavors to analyze another strain of scapegoating by the state against the imposition of sanctions and unravels how it undercuts Zimbabwe’s leverage of bilateral relations with China. Scholars have argued that while sanctions have traction and are a crime against humanity, in Zimbabwe they have been made scapegoats by political elites to dodge accountability and to mask failures at delivering political goods (Magaisa, 2019). No doubt sanctions have “scapegoatable” qualities especially in postcolonial states like Zimbabwe burdened by residues of colonial legacies memorializing race, empire, its bifurcations, and exploitations, among others. Therefore, because “the myth of nationhood is powerful, consuming, intoxicating. . . it is the simplistic and alluring explanation which appeals to many who are not well positioned to exercise critical examination of issues” (Magaisa, 2019). Indeed, Zimbabwe’s political economic crisis herein referred in this study as a failing statehood goes beyond sanctions. In essence, their evolution was a process not an event. Alex Magaisa in his famed Big Saturday Read termed this “causal fallacy,” whereby an event is believed or attributed to have been caused by something without evidence to it. He argues, “think of ZANU PF’s favorite argument, the country’s economic problems are because of sanctions. . . this is false cause not least because Zimbabwe’s problems pre-date the imposition of targeted sanctions twenty years ago” (Magaisa, 13 August 2021). In fact, issues like corruption, deindustrialization, land reform, and poor economic management contributed to Zimbabwe’s quagmire. Hence, the scapegoating of sanctions has resulted in the over-exaggeration of the impact of Chinese partnerships as the panacea to Zimbabwe’s challenges. Therefore, to blame Zimbabwe’s economic misfortunes on sanctions alone is purely mischief and worse criminal to believe that only Chinese investments can solve these challenges because their success or failure thereof is dependent on the vitality of the intrastate dynamics as well.

Alterity politics and Zimbabwe–China relations

To be read in tandem with scapegoating, alterity politics relates to the construction and maintenance of the “Other” or the “not me” (Mythen, 2004) in political discourse, whereby external entities or countries do not belong. Here, I argue that alterity politics has always been justified through some juxtaposition to that which is hegemonic based on autochthony, otherness, or the creation of obdurate boundaries of those who belong as opposed to those who do not belong. Scholars like Zhang concur noting that alterity politics manifest through the masked “production, consumption and mobilization of narratives of national identity, capitalizing on victimhood or subalternity, articulated through a (post-) colonial relationality. . . .in material, normative and epistemological terms often designated as the international, the West, or the European” (Zhang, 2023: 2). Along this reasoning, China–Zimbabwe relations provide an interesting inquiry because in all the two epochs of enhanced bilateral relations (the liberation war/Cold War era and the post-Look East Policy era), China has always been in the crosshairs of a hegemonic international capitalist order and Zimbabwe has always been caught in between as a proxy locale.

As alluded to earlier in this article, the enunciation of the Look East Policy signaled the realignment of the country’s strategic focus away from the West and its purported neocolonial inclinations (Morales, 2020). Since then, the Establishment in Zimbabwe has remained intractably grounded in a cavalier form of perpetual revolution, engrossed in the dictum of blackness, colonization, neo-colonization, oppression, and the perfidy of the Empire. Along this reasoning, the Establishment purports to be fighting obdurate images of blackness finding expression through oppressive, social and cultural systems. Indeed, the state elevates itself as the paragon and Oracle of anti-imperialist struggle fighting against the simplistic, stereotypical forms that suffocate the humanity and complexity of individuals (Dube, 2021). From the regime’s binarized understanding of the international order, the Chinese are perched as “all weather friends” “fraternal relationship” as opposed to the neocolonial Empire depicting a kind of cold war politics. Just like his predecessor Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Munangagwa “Others” the West, noting that “unlike western interests which have been exploiting our continent . . . the Chinese have now come back to the continent they helped liberate as new non-traditional investors . . . bolster[ing]our independence while changing the structure of our economy in this season of punitive Western sanctions” (Bartlett, 2022).

It can be argued that alterity politics creates obstacles against comprehensive partnerships, mutual understanding, and deeper cooperation notwithstanding the adoption of knee jerk decisions like the Look East Policy (Moyo et al., 2014). On one hand, by maintaining a victimhood posture (Sadomba, 2011) as under attack by the Empire and the resultant adoption of the Look East Policy, the Zimbabwean state not only limited its strategic options but also made itself vulnerable and desperate. In fact, other scholars have argued that other than the nostalgia of “all weather friendship” and “fraternal relationship” (Eisenmann, 2012) as the main reason behind the Look East Policy, Zimbabwe was in cul-de-sac (Alao, 2014). Despite the fact that the Look East Policy has been inundated with lofty and catchy phrases of age-old historical bonds, critical scholarship has always viewed it as an imposition and inevitable result of circumstances (Morales, 2020; Musanga, 2017, Moyo) or as reductive and not pragmatic (Moyo et al., 2014). Hence, arguments are that “continuing to look East without looking North, West and South. At any rate, if you continue going East, you will inevitably come to the West because the East and the West are now two sides of the same coin” (Gutu, 2010).

In view of the foregoing, this article submits that Zimbabwe’s victimhood posturing lurks like a jingle bell to her prospects for leverage with China. Such an alterity complex has ingrained a psyche and culture of being “prisoners of lamentations and sorrows” within the national consciousness (Lumumba, 2019). The result is that, in her bilateral engagements with China, Zimbabwe presents herself as a charity case, pitiable object, heeled into a position of weakness and dependency, groveling for freebies, seeking sanctuary through benevolence and philanthropy which further weakens her bargaining position. Walter Muzembi warns against this dependency and pitiable syndrome noting that:

Understandably it’s a liberation war culture that saw us going around the world seeking solidarity support for the liberation struggle so we could ask for anything from cigarettes, shoes, jeans, blankets, jackets to arms of war. Literally anything we asked for and we received generously. But this was war time. . . 44 years later our pitch to liberation allies should change from begging, perennial gratitude which weakens our case to sovereign equals. . . seeking win-win partnerships, joint ventures. . . . we are no longer anyone’s basket case. (Mzembi, 2024)

Besides playing the devil’s advocate, this article questions whether this victimhood mentality and the associated weakened posture explain the allegations of an apparent inaction against some of the allegations (whether true of sensationalized) against Chinese investors or elite protection thereof in Zimbabwe. Also, the major question is how Zimbabwe can gain competitive advantage in bilateral relations with China if she remains trapped in a state of “perpetual victimhood predicated on narratives of suffering, victimization, trauma and oppression” (Dube, 2021: 183). While the memory of historical injustices and humiliation can be a springboard from whence nation-states have often found the drive to progress as the case of China demonstrates (Lampton, 2014; Mahbubani, 2009, 2010), an obdurate fixation on these narratives, however noble and unquestionable, is degenerative to progress and development. Achille Mbembe grapples with such postcolonial alterity complexes in his classical “Critique of Black Reason” wherein he contends that:

Is it possible to craft a relationship with a black man, that is something other than that between a master and his valet? Does the black man not insist, still on seeing himself through and within difference? . . . Does he not live in a world shaped by separation, cultivating a dream of returning to an identity founded on pure essentialism, therefore on alterity? (Mbembe, 2017: 7)

Here, I reflect on the power of narratives of alterity and the associated defeatism noting that:

The mindset of defeatism among individuals can become a shared mindset of a family or neighborhood. It can even become the mindset of an ethnic group, or a nation. Beyond a mindset, it can become a belief system, a logical argument and a cultural assumption. When that happens, people turn on their feelings of inadequacy into proverbs, anecdotes, poetry songs, drama and a body of knowledge. Each member of the group repeats these ideas freely to each other to reinforce that mindset. The net effect is that whole groups of people can also encase themselves in a feeling of weakness . . . (Otabil, 2006: 7-8)

In reality, such alterity politics, mindset, and culture of defeatism festers a scapegoating culture, one that makes a people suspicions of Chinese presence as economic imperialism, debt trapping, land grabbing, foreignization, or colonization. While grounded in factual history, such a victimhood complex robs a country of progress (Dube, 2021: 168).

The significance of Chinese investments to Zimbabwe

Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular, remains entrapped in a vicious web of developmental challenges. Across many African countries, there obtains for the most part deficits in terms of “bricks and mortar” (infrastructure development). It is a no-brainer that for any economic development to kickstart, there is need for a robust infrastructure financing to support and sustain its momentum (Muzapu et al., 2018; Were, 2018). In this regard, China through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will remain an important partner for the continent, reeling with archaic infrastructure that is failing to support its growth potential. The BRI has become pivotal because of its focus on projects with a multiplier effect to transform economies, the kind of projects that unleash government efforts. Examples in Zimbabwe include investments in energy like the refurbishment of both the Kariba South Power Station and Hwange Thermal Power Plant. These are critical to the country because economic development is hinged on sustainable energy supply, while investments in the extractive sector will diversify the economy while strengthening foreign exchange.

However, for Zimbabwe to leverage this bilateral relationship, there is a strong need for a capable state with sufficient infrastructural and bureaucratic capabilities to champion development (Wen and Jiang, 2024). It has been proven beyond doubt that most African governments are “strong at the center but powerless in the periphery, ambitious in aspiration but feeble in service delivery. . . .” (Chigudu, 2020: 5; Migdal, 1988). Therefore, what obtains is that there is an acute dearth regarding the infrastructural or bureaucratic capability of the state to engender political deliverables. Along this argument, China continues to provide the much-needed training to ensure that Africa and Zimbabwe in particular benefit from a competent bureaucracy. This is being implemented through the provision of Chinese government Scholarships, exchange programs, training seminars, and workshops to improve African (Zimbabwean) government competences in diverse fields like science and technology, public administration, defense, and education management, among many others.

In addition, contrary to the core theses of Fukuyama’s work “The End of History and the Last Man,” which eulogizes liberal democracy as the alpha and omega of human social and political development, China has provided an alternative path to development for the Global South. While the main question bedeviling the South is whether to “replicate or imitate” China, the prerogative is to argue that China has provided the world with the signposts to a world in which development is hinged on autonomy and tailormade to local variations (Xi, 2017). Be that as it may, China’s ascendency to global presence has challenged the foundational tenets of Western liberal democracy and much of the narratives about China while having some grains of truth are in sensationalized garments, with the aim of besmirching and making the reality of its progress invisible. Therefore, it is imperative for any analysis of China–Africa relations to not only provide nuance of the local realities but also be cognizant of the global geopolitical dynamics.

Conclusion

In summation, the article interrogated the interplay of nostalgia, scapegoating, and alterity politics as they impact on Zimbabwe’s ability to leverage bilateral relations with the People’s Republic of China. The study noted that while instrumentalized and rooted in historical affirmation and experience, nostalgia is also hinged on contemporary realities conditioned by Zimbabwe’s limits of engagement with the West and her response to the ensuing isolation. However, such a nostalgic mode has had the negative effect of over-perching China’s significance in addressing Zimbabwe’s problems, which may not only require foreign assistance but also domestic transformation in governance and state, society, and market relations. In addition, the research observed that scapegoating within Zimbabwe–China relations is rooted in Zimbabwe internal politics dynamics born out of the strategic realignment from the West at the turn of the millennium. Because of the Empire’s “scapegoatable” traits, the imposition of sanctions by the latter and the threat they had on political legitimacy and regime survival in Zimbabwe, this provided the pretext for the Establishment to absolve itself of any responsibility for failure. Also, this scapegoat culture has also affected Chinese investors who are stereotypically perceived as non-native and economically dominant land grabbers, debt trappers, and so forth. The negative effect of such has the probability to strain bilateral relations between the two countries. Finally the article also delved into alterity politics grounded in the then perpetual memorialization of subalternity, oppression, and “Otherness.” The research concluded that such a wailing tendency provides a drag effect on national progress and is a great incubator of dependency and the desire for Africans to present themselves as objects of pity. In the end, the Zimbabwe–China relationship is a platform of endless possibilities.