Discussions of Africa-China relations usually take the tenor of a diplomatically naïve Africa at the mercy of another would-be colonizer. Some of those who concede that Africa is not naïve in its relationship with China, assume a condescending tone that, while China is a calculating player, Africa seems to have no plan on how to engage its second biggest trading partner. While understandable, both positions are simplistic, as China has also been led by a sense of Afro-Asian nostalgia to sustain relations with African political actors whose long-term benefits are difficult to discern.

Engaging China is less difficult. The Communist Party of China (CPC) is the government, as has been the case for the last 74 years. In Africa, the case is not so clear-cut, especially under the zeitgeist of multiparty politics and regular elections that do not guarantee the rule of one party for decades on end. In South Africa, China has had a chequered history with the ruling African National Congress (ANC). However, probably noticing that the ANC is fast losing its revolutionary lustre and political fortunes, as past generations of its leaders, who commanded international and moral renown, are either dead, inactive, sidelined or discredited, China has had to cast its net wider in courting other political players in South Africa. In the long run, this approach, of maintaining relations with the ruling party while extending overtures to the opposition, could be a masterstroke for China. For context, a brief history of China’s relationship with South African political players is apt. 

In 1955, just shy of six years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China following the triumph of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and the expulsion of the Kuomintang to the island of Taiwan, China participated in the now celebrated Bandung Conference in Indonesia. At that conference, which was hitherto the biggest convention of previously colonized and still colonized regions of Asia and Africa, Chinese representatives interacted with representatives of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle Moses Kotane and Maulvi, sometimes written as Molvi, Cachalia. 

1955 was also a pivotal year in anti-apartheid annals. The Congress of the People, a collection of anti-apartheid leaders (communist and nationalist) met in Kliptown, Johannesburg, and adopted the Freedom Charter, a somewhat left-leaning blueprint for what a post-apartheid South Africa would look like. The Charter, whose sentiments were inserted in South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution, would have made the Soviet Union and China happy as it was laden with communist influence. “The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole,” asserted a portion the Charter. The close concord that the South African Communist Part (SACP) shared with the ANC drove some ANC members to abandon their party and form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1959 and thus continue promulgate what they thought was an unadulterated brand of Africa nationalism unsullied by communist influence. 

When China and the post-Stalin Soviet Union grew apart, due to Nikita Khrushchev’s repudiation of Stalinism and entertaining the possibility of peaceful coexistence between the capitalist West and the socialist East, the PAC played a role, however minor, in eroding China’s stature in Africa. The SACP and the ANC took the Soviet side in the Sino-Soviet split. China supported the PAC, a nationalist party that was decidedly anti-communist. For more than two decades China and the ANC, the frontrunner among South Africa’s liberation movements, nurtured a frosty relationship. Leading to end of apartheid, the ANC and the CPC repaired their frayed relationship. However, when the ANC formed government in 1994, it inherited apartheid South Africa’s formal relations with Taiwan. It took about four years for South Africa to establish relations with China, at Taiwan’s expense. Since then, the ANC and the CPC as ruling parties have reinforced and expanded their respective countries’ relationship. 

South Africa is a member of BRICS, has signed onto to the Belt and Road Initiative and is an enthusiastic consumer of Chinese products, from clothing to technology. China has reciprocated South Africa’s openness to Chinese products by showing support for international matters, such as calling for United Nations reforms and condemnation of Israel in Gaza that are close to the ANC’s heart and epitomize more than a century-long fight for the well-being of the developing world. It is a history that China and the ANC cannot forget, and will constantly rely on to justify the incumbency of the CPC in China, the ANC in South Africa, and elsewhere where parties of liberation remain in power. 

China built the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School (MJNLS) in Kibaha, Tanzania, which was jointly established by the Former Liberation Movements of Southern Africa including the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), African National Congress (ANC), Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO), and Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). In his address at the opening of the MJNLS, China’s XI Jinping “said that for a long time, the six parties in southern Africa have united and led their people in the cause of national independence, construction and development, winning the support of the people.”

But that support is fast waning. In South Africa, the ANC is frantically and painfully adjusting to the reality of coalitions, already underway in some parts of the country. China has realized this, but historical ties, convergent antipathy to Western meddling in affairs of the developing world, and political and economic pragmatism are strong enough to maintain China’s ties to the liberation movement. At the same time, China, through its consulate has been cultivating ties with other political parties, chiefly ActionSA, led by former mayor of Johannesburg Herman Mashaba and the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), founded by a cohort of erstwhile ANC youth leaders or leaguers who had been ejected from the party. High-ranking ActionSA and EFF members have attended and spoken at events organized by the Chinese Consulate. The ANC, as a party, seems not to have registered any discomfiture with this development. Alongside ActionSA and EFF members such as Bongani Baloyi (who has since left ActionSA), Floyd Shivambu and Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, some high-ranking ANC members, namely Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Paul Mashatile, Mxolisi Dukwana and Tasneem Motara have honoured invitations sent by the Chinese Consulate. 

There thus seems to be a plan for South Africa on China’s part, steeped in realism. If ANC would lose considerable power, to the advantage of the opposition, China would still enjoy the support of those most likely to benefit – the EFF. It also serves China well not to show any overt coziness with the Democratic Alliance (DA), a liberal part that has struggled to fend off allegations that it is a throw-back to the apartheid era liberalism led by white South Africans, and not expressly to the advantage of the long-suffering black majority. The EFF, though much younger than the DA, has positioned itself, ideologically, as a new incarnation of the fervour that fueled Africa’s struggle against colonialism and apartheid. China is thus taking a long view by retaining old ties to the ANC, while nurturing new ones with the EFF. Going into the 2024 crucial election in South Africa, China has no sense of worry about how the biggest beneficiaries of the crucial polls might position themselves vis-à-vis China.

2024 will be a milestone for South Africa, as the country will be celebrating 30 years of democracy. The writing seems to be on the wall for the ANC, however. “A survey of 2000 registered South African voters by the Rivonia Circle indicate[s] that if an election were held” in November 2023, “the ANC’s share of the vote would drop to 41% from the 57.5% it obtained in 2019 national election. The survey conducted with Ipsos, shows that the DA’s share of the vote would continue to decline to 18% while the EFF would increase to 15%. Likely voter turnout is currently at around 65%.” Even more damning, 74% of the sampled voters believed that South Africa is moving in the wrong direction. Scandalously high levels of unemployment, rampant corruption, crime, rolling electricity blackouts and the high cost of living were prominent determinants of the pervading despondency.

 As a diligent reader of global politics and the current of internal power dynamics in the countries where it operates, China is aware of the bleak realities confronting South Africa’s ruling party. Its overtures to other political parties seem to be deliberate and pregnant with foresight. Whichever way one would choose to interpret this multipronged approach of the South African political scene, it is an effective way of ensuring China’s presence in South Africa. 


Emmanuel Matambo is the Director at the Centre for Africa-China Studies (CACS), University of Johannesburg