The words of the song, Weeping, went through my mind as reports came in of Antony Blinken’s statement on the latest US policy towards China.
Written as an anti-apartheid song in the eighties, Dan Heynmann penned those words: “I knew a man who lived in fear; it was huge, it was angry, it was drawing near…I heard its lonely sound, it wasn’t roaring, it was weeping.”
Needless to mention, the song was written in response to Botha’s state of emergency in 1985. The apartheid regime was fearful that their racial and class project was failing and they could no longer contain their fear. Indiscriminate killings, abductions, detention and beatings were the order of the day.
As the international order moves fast into a post-American world, the US is experiencing the same sort of paranoia and prejudice pursued by the pundits of apartheid.
Speaking at the Asia Society’s Policy Institute, the US secretary of state insisted that “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order – and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it.”
He went on ad nauseum about how “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years…”
Yet the rest of us in the developing world know exactly what these so-called universal values have meant for us in the last eight decades. The international order, defended by the likes of Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken, have only meant exploitation, gross inequality and undemocratic practices for the majority of us.
Like Botha in the eighties, Biden and his administration are creating scarecrows for the rest of the world in order to instill fear in us when all these countries, such as China, have meant to us is cooperation, co-development and mutual respect.
While focusing mainly on China in his speech, it is worthwhile mentioning here that both Russia and China have played and continue to play an integral role in the upliftment of millions of Africans.
Side-by-side Russians and Chinese supported the liberation of many African countries and yet that support did not stop there but continues to this day to achieve freedom through development.
The propaganda promoted by Blinken is akin to the propaganda promoted by the apartheid regime in its last days: western civilization and all it holds dear is being threatened.
However, this western civilization has meant only subjugation and suppression for the majority of the world’s people.
If this were not enough then the irony displayed by the Botha and Biden administrations could not have been starker. Surely in order to preserve western civilization its proponents should be apply its values indiscriminately?
Yet the greatest threat to the world order and to values such as democracy and development itself is the United States.
Correctly so, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, noted that “it is no other than the US that poses the most serious long-term challenge to the international order. The ‘rules-based international order’ it touts is actually the ‘US-rules based international order’, a hegemonic order to dominate the world with the house rules of its clique.”
There could be no better example of praise of China’s principle of non-interference than the words of Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky who was quoted as saying, a day prior to
Blinken’s address, that “China has chosen the policy of staying away. At the moment, Ukraine is satisfied with this policy. It is better than helping the Russian Federation in any case. And I want to believe that China will not pursue another policy. We are satisfied with this status quo, to be honest.”
Informed by their US-rules based international order, American diplomats posted in South Africa find it apt to continue to lecture our government against neutrality and yet this is exactly what the Ukrainians want, as seen through Zelensky’s words on China’s stance.
However, one must understand where these patronizing lectures are coming from. They come from a deep-seated place of fear because they, like the apartheid regime, are not roaring but are weeping.
Seale has a PhD in Chinese foreign policy.