BRONWYN NORTJE: Can Africa really afford China's largesse?
There is no such thing as a free lunch
When the nuclear deal was still a possibility, there was a story going around that the whole purpose of it was for the Russians to get their hands on SA's uranium deposits. No-one was ever able to give credence to this conspiracy, but the premise was simple enough to believe. By providing a loan to SA to buy something it didn't need - and one it would never be able to repay - the Russians would be able to take what they wanted. It's Geopolitics 101. As the nuclear deal and the Russians have faded from the limelight, the geopolitical baddies have had to change. I heard the latest version of the conspiracy theory at a function last week: "That's the whole reason the ANC is pushing so hard for expropriation without compensation: the Chinese want land, and this is the only way the government can get their hands on it." I don't know what the Chinese government would want with millions of hectares of South African farmland (unless they, too, have designs on our mineral resources), but wha...
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