Where one state gives aid (in this case China) and the other receives aid (Lesotho), sometimes the receiver of aid lacks agency. As this project was pitched at the highest office, this almost disassembled the agency of the government machinery. However, there was clearly some Lesotho influence in the final design, which shows that there is a multi-layered nature of African agents within African states.
There was also a disconnect between the Lesotho Foreign Office and the Public Works department. The Foreign Office was a lot less critical and more accommodating towards the Chinese than the Public Works team. Possibly because they know little about construction and the consequences of using Chinese material, and their main aim was to develop stronger relations with the Chinese.
Interestingly, over the past ten years, with every new government, the Prime Minister has become increasingly friendlier with the Chinese government. Even one that was initially critical, when he became Prime Minister, he appointed a Chinese national as his economic advisor. This signifies the importance for Lesotho to have stronger relations with a major power like China.
China has understood this change that Lesotho, along with other countries in the region, no longer are led by one power, and instead have a multi-party institution. This means that to assert influence, China must be strategic and assert itself in both the present and the future.
So the parliament provides this revolving door of political elites and having involvement there places China at an advantageous position. As China’s global stature increases, it knows it needs to build alliances and it cultivates relations by empowering these national political institutions.
After the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the West wanted to sanction China through using multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. At the time China was so deep in economic development and had neglected cultivating relations with African countries -who could provide the necessary numbers to forestall the West’s designs.
So after fear of being cut off, the Chinese government decided to re-engage with these countries. The idea of cultivating relations with African governments should also be seen in this same context – that China is doing this strategically to secure their position in the future.
China did not only want to donate a parliament building, but wanted to donate a parliament building of their choice. I refer to this as a “design loop” – which means that by China designing the building, it also embeds the Chinese into that building. Then because they designed it, they also were in control of how it was built – which materials it used and its specs. The materials chosen were Chinese materials.
And these materials look Chinese. One of the officials even said “this building looks like it came from somewhere and was transplanted into Lesotho”. And this is the parliament building, supposedly a symbol of Lesotho. of course there are some elements – such as the use of the Lesotho symbol, the mokorotlo.
The building also does not serve Lesotho weather. For example, the weather is very extreme. Extremely cold or extremely hot. And so in Lesotho, you do not tend to plaster buildings – because if you plaster, then the paint just peels off because of the climate of the weather. And this is what happened – because the design did not conform to the local conditions.
And additionally, using Chinese materials makes it harder to replace at a later stage. The Lesotho Public Works ministry communicated that it would be a lot easier to replace materials that used South African standards in the future. But Chinese contractors insisted on using Chinese materials.
The third part of this “design loop” is the maintenance of the building. Because the building was designed by China, using Chinese materials, there was a big difficulty in maintaining the building. For the past ten years, the Chinese contractors are still around the building, maintaining the building.