Ordinary Chinese in South Africa look to charity, religion, business and culture to counter divisive politics. Osita Nwajah reports
The men, women and children assemble in their numbers. The compact space outside a house in Mamatheda Street in Mofolo, Soweto, can’t contain all of them, so they spill into the narrow street. The people, clutching walking aids, are the 200-odd blind “children” of pensioner Dolly Ntoko (76). On the second Saturday of every month they receive a delegation of the Taiwanese Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation. Since 1998 members of the charity group founded in Taiwan have brought relief to the blind of Mofolo, complementing work started 17 years ago by Ntoko. The Tzu Chi members hand out bags of food, beverages and washing powder to the grateful blind. Then they set out to do the same at the brimming Ethel Mabala’s Hope for the Hopeless Home. Each member of the 20-person Tzu Chi delegation had, with more than 1E000 others, contributed to what South African branch chair Simon Liu calls “a drop of kindness”.
Another gesture by the Chinese (this time under the auspices of the Golden Nest organisation of the People’s Republic of China) is the construction since 1996 of 3E200 houses in Mpumalanga. Project coordinator Lucy Liu says R55- million has been spent so far to build the owner-occupier houses. Another 4 000 units are planned for those Liu describes as “poor black people who don’t have jobs or have very low incomes”. The first Chinese came to South Africa as a small group of prisoners in the mid-17th century. Much later contract labourers in the rapidly expanding South African gold mines boosted immigration numbers from the world’s most populous nation. From the 1940s immigrants also came from the Chinese island of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Under apartheid, labour and other rights of the Chinese in South Africa were abbreviated. Years after apartheid they profess immense love for South Africa, but feel they have, at best, qualified citizenship.
Melanie Yap, former leader of the Transvaal Chinese Association and co-author of Colour, Confusion and Concession, a definitive documentation of South African Chinese history, says the Chinese are today the classical victims of reversed racism. “In the past, they were not regarded light enough to be white, now they are not dark enough to be black.” For Chinese immigrants arriving since the end of apartheid, there is also the onslaught of crime and international politics to worry about. Last year more than 500 Chinese marched on the home of then president Nelson Mandela to protest against the spiralling incidence of attacks on Chinese immigrants. “The popular perception is that every Chinese is rich,” says Judy Lai, proprietor of the Regal Palace Chinese restaurant, in Bedfordview. Donald Wong, chair of the Gauteng Chinese Association, thinks that is a misleading perception. But on the streets of Johannesburg slurs are cast on Chinese integrity. By popular attribution, everything cheap and inferior is Chinese. Despite the odds, Chinese immigrants have continued to set a frenetic business pace which other immigrant groups in South Africa are finding very difficult to match. There are two “Chinatowns” in Johannesburg, Cyrildene and downtown, and they have the largest concentration of Chinese South African immigrants, where a Chinese business and social culture has steadily emerged.
A good number are to be found selling fabrics and toys and supplying machines and tools to small and medium-scale manufacturers. And of course there are the Chinese restaurants. Fifty-four well- established Chinese restaurants and dozens of smaller ones dot the big cities. “When I came to South Africa 24 years ago,” recalls Lai, “there were not more than 10 Chinese restaurants in South Africa and the menu was very simple.” The menu of a good Chinese restaurant, Lai explains, must include foods from all major regions of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It was Kan Chu-cheng who has made by far the single most telling impact on the economy of South Africa. Mustek Electronics, the company he established in 1988, grosses R2-billion a year, with its Mecer brand of computers holding the largest chunk of the PC market in South Africa.
But it is not only in the sphere of business that Chinese immigrants are changing the face of South African society. On an 8ha expanse at Bronkhorstspruit, near Pretoria, stands the Nan Hua Buddhist temple and seminary. Among the 40 novices training at the temple in Chinese, English, martial arts, HIV/Aids counselling and computer skills, are some from South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi, New Zealand, Congo and Rwanda. The temple, which has about 300 tourists weekly, is also a museum of sorts for Chinese art, the only one of its kind in Africa.
This grand testimony to a community’s insistence on the propagation of its culture has already cost R35-million and Harold Lemke, principal assistant to Venerable Hui Li, the temple’s head, estimates that more than R130-million would be spent on completing it.
But the Chinese have no political influence in South Africa, although a foundation for political activism was laid at the turn of the century when the Transvaal Chinese Association could be counted in the vanguard of Mahatma Gandhi’s passive resistance. Donald Wong foresees that it may not be long before the situation is reversed, but only after the basic foundation of non-discriminatory politics is laid, he says. A subtle undercurrent of animosity exists between immigrants from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan, who are guided by the intricate politics playing out in Beijing, Taipei, Washington and the United Nations. Whereas the PRC maintains a “one-China” policy, viewing Taiwan as a renegade province it will in time bring under direct control, Taipei, backed by a few powerful countries like the United States, insists it is an independent state, even though it remains the only country in the world outside the UN and does not belong to other world bodies whose membership requires statehood.
The frosty inter-governmental relations are reflected at official level in South Africa. The government in Taipei has yet to forgive the 1998 South African severance of diplomatic ties. Peter Sun, information officer of the Taipei Liaison Office in Johannesburg, identifies commerce as central to the South African decision. “China is a very big market and South Africa was looking for that kind of market, especially for her agricultural produce. Besides that, South Africa is counting on the support of China to get a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.” Against the background of attacks on Taiwanese businesses and people in South Africa, a document released by Sun’s office quotes Tim Yang Tien-hsing, director general of the Taipei liaison office in Cape Town, as saying that “the most urgent task for the Republic of China on Taiwan right now is to distinguish between Taiwan and the PRC”. But it is anyone’s guess if the criminals would notice the difference. Then also, the poor women who stopped Liu’s work team in Mpumalanga to plead “Golden Nest, build more houses for us”, have no need for such distinctions.