CHINESE President Hu Jintao came to Tanzania on a working visit recently. Correspondent ATTILIO TAGALILE analyses the visit and looks at the genesis of Sino-Tanzania relations.
TANZANIA has had the opportunity of being visited by many top-flight political and religious leaders from various nations in the world. However, only a few leaders have left a telling impact on the lives of ordinary men and women in the East African country. It is indisputable that Chinese leaders and experts have left the most telling impact in Tanzania.A number of landmarks created as a result of the long friendly relations between the two countries come to the fore.
These include the 1,860-kilometre railroad which links the commercial city of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia.The construction of the standard railway line, which connects Tanzania to Zambia is also a vital link with South Africa and was started in 1970 and completed in 1976. The Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, once commented that hundreds of Chinese engineers stayed for over ten years in the country, in the course of carrying out feasibility studies and finally building the railroad.Unlike some foreign experts from other countries the world over, Mwalimu said, the Chinese concentrated on what had brought them in the country and as a result, left no child in the country.
The Tanzania Zambia Railway was built through a two billion US dollar soft loan provided by the Chinese government. The construction of the railway was mooted by Presidents Nyerere and his bosom friend, Dr Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia.The objective was to provide Zambia with a reliable route and thereby help in enforcing economic sanctions that had been slapped by the international community against Southern Rhodesia's minority regime (which would later become known as Zimbawe after its independence under President Robert Mugabe in 1980) led by racist Prime Minister, Ian Smith.Because of the weight of Zambia's leading export -- copper, the road between Zambia and Tanzania was reduced not only to untold potholes, but was also "christened" the Hell-Run with hundreds of peoples' lives being lost on both parts of the country.
It was at this point that Nyerere and Dr Kaunda approached Britain and other western countries, which included the United States of America, for a loan for the construction of a more reliable infrastructure in the form of a railroad.The West turned down the two African countries' request, but stressed that they were ready to build a road for them. The West argued that a railway line linking the two countries would be too expensive, given the nature of the terrain it would be required to go through, hence the need to go for the road.
Presidents Nyerere and Dr Kaunda were however, not beaten in their quest for a railway line which they believed was not only more reliable, but would serve them better than a road.At this point, they turned to the then dreaded East, the Chinese government. This was the time of Chairman Mao tse Tung and Prime Minister, Chou en Lai.The Chinese leadership expressed its readiness not only to provide the two countries with a two billion US dollars soft loan for the project, but also to construct the railway line that would pass through the most difficult terrain on the continent.
Interestingly, when the Chinese government said it would help the two countries realize their dream, through the signing of the agreement to build the railroad in 1967, the West tried to throw cold water on the faces of Mwalimu and Dr Kaunda by claiming that the Chinese did not have both the technology and engineering experience of building such a gigantic project.They said what the Chinese would succeed in their quest to build the railway line would be to come up with what they described as a bamboo railway line! Ignoring the west, Chinese engineers arrived in Tanzania to carry out feasibility studies along the route, through which the first ever biggest Chinese project outside its territory would be undertaken.
And by 1970, construction of what is arguably one of the best and strongest railway lines ever built in Africa started in earnest. The railway line was completed in 1976 after six years of hard work between Chinese engineers and labourers from Tanzania and Zambia. The railway line passes through some of the most treacherous terrain in Africa. For instance, at Mlimba where the train goes through a tunnel inside a mountain, like a slithered snake, is 1,000 metres above sea level, making it the highest railway-point in Africa.
The final completion of the construction of the railway line did not only make it easier for land-locked Zambia to make full use of the Dar es Salaam port, but also helped the two African countries to help Southern Rhodesia's liberation movements to the hilt. As for the Chinese government, the railway line, which was then the biggest project outside their country, was arguably a show-case to the doubting Thomases the world over, over their ability to take on any project under the sun. Indeed, it was through Tazara that the world came to realize that when it came to construction of railway lines, the Chinese were second to none in the world.
The Chinese engineering feat, over Tazara, was put to test in 1997 when Tanzania was hit by El Nino that put out of use the central railway line of the then Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC), for over eight months following the destruction, by floods of railroads and bridges. Although the hardest hit part, by El Nino, in the country was in the regions traversed by the Tanzania Zambia railway line, interestingly the railroad remained intact, with both goods and passenger train services plying between Kapiri Mposhi and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania throughout the year!
Since the construction of the Tanzania Zambia Railway Line, whatever derailment that has befallen the line has not been out of poor engineering work, but rather sabotage by people bend in laying their hands on scrap metal! It was thus not surprising that when the TRC decided to rebuild the destroyed bridges and other parts of the railroad along the central line, they turned to Chinese contracting firms who had proved, beyond reasonable doubt, their top-notch engineering.
It is important to bear in mind that this was the time when the cold-war, between the capitalist West and the communist East was at its height. And many countries, especially from the developing world, including Tanzania and Zambia, who had been under western influence through colonialism or mandated territory (Tanzania), always feared to be seen to be hobnobbing with communist countries such as China, the Democratic Republic of North Korea and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Thus it was courage coupled with commitment on the part of Mwalimu and Dr Kaunda that drove the two leaders into the hands of the Chinese government.They knew that without the construction of the railway line between their two countries, land-locked Zambia which was in the forefront of the liberation war in southern Africa would not be able to play, to the letter, its historical role of helping the black majority in Zimbabwe earn their rightful independence.
Having the Chinese shown, through practice, how good they were at building a robust railway line, one would have expected Tanzania as a pioneer, in introducing the Chinese engineering feat to the world, to have continued to court the Chinese in extending Tazara to other parts of the country.In conclusion, President Hu Jintao's visit to Tanzania is not a normal visit of a head of state. It is more than that. This is a visit by a leader from a country that gave Tanzania -- Tazara, Mang'ula machine tool (one wonders whether it still exists!), Urafiki Textile Mill and Ubungo Farm Implements.
No comments:
Post a Comment