Pretoria - Respected academic and linguist, Dr Paul Zilungisele Tembe has published a book detailing his experience of living in the People’s Republic of China from 2006 till 2013, and the valuable lessons he learnt.
Titled: “Xi Jinping Thought - Through South African Eyes”, it focuses on helping readers understand the governance practices in China, and how South Africa and other African nations might take a page from Beijing’s success story.
The book details Xi’s philosophy and propositions on regional and international affairs, clearly explaining China’s views and solutions to global issues.
“Let me start by defining, or demuse into my work. I follow what I call ethnographic patterns or auto-ethnographic perspective which means I cannot write about it if I have not lived it.
“Therefore, my life is about language because language forms identities and identities are the platform for practice,” said the University of South Africa (Unisa) senior lecturer and researcher.
“Maybe that is what we are lacking as South Africa, in terms of implementation. How can we implement when there is not outright, defined identity? That lack of defined identity means there is a social structure or social unit, or social container that lacks.
“I’m not here to praise China, I am not here to blame South Africa but I am here to say … how do we do it.”
He said instead of focusing only on the human development index, which is part of human capital, he opted to delve into the human happiness index “and China has managed to put these two together”.
“In South Africa we have the tendency of saying ‘I do not have a job’ but you are not looking for a job, you are looking to be happy, so find a way to acquire those goods that in the long run make you have that happiness. You are not looking for ‘mmreko’ (a job). But if you do good and stay within your station in society, good will come to you,” he said.
“In this book, I take each and every success story from China and I juxtapose it with South African conditions, and guess what – same conditions with China, same opportunities with China or even better, we have more arable land, we have more mineral resources we are high on demographics.
“Just now, in this and the coming decade we have the so-called demographic gain but if we don’t harness that African demographic dividend, we are looking at the African demographic curse. That is where education comes in handy.”
Delegates including Chinese Embassy in South Africa’s Charge d'Affaires Li Zhigang, African National Congress general manager Fébé Potgieter, and University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Africa-China Studies director, Dr David Monyae, were among the speakers at the launch..
On behalf of the Chinese Embassy, Li said it was helpful for China’s South African friends to better learn and understand the background, profound connotations, theoretical achievement and glorious practices contained in the new book.
“Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping has been leading the CPC and the Chinese people to respond to major changes and usher in new chapters,” he said.
China is South Africa’s biggest trading partner for over a decade, and official records show that the economic ties have doubled despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We are consistent when it comes to sharing the fruits of development with our African brothers and China-Africa development cooperation is seeing great results. China-South Africa relations have become a model of China-Africa relations, South-South cooperation and the solidarity and cooperation among emerging market countries,” said Li.
He said the Chinese Embassy in South Africa was ready to support the people-to-people and cultural exchanges between the two countries within its capacity.
“Dr Tembe’s book launch today is very timely. It will help our two sides enhance the exchanges of ideas, build trust and promote mutual appreciation between our civilizations,” said Li.
“I want to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Tembe for his hard work. I wish him more and greater achievements in promoting the people-to-people and cultural exchanges between our two countries.”
IOL