The export of Communism during the Cold War was a function of the ideological battle between the Soviet Union and the West. Today, it is China which continues to export its Communist ideology and authoritarian rule. This is being done on the African continent, where ‘democratic’ rulers have remained in power for long and seek to continue their political dominance. Evidence of this phenomenon comes from the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School in Tanzania. At the school, the Communist Party of China (CPC) teaches how it fuses the ruling political party and state. The school, located on 30 miles outside of Dar es Salaam, was funded by a US$ 40 million donation provided by the CPC’s Central Party School, which trains China’s top party officials, and built by a Chinese construction company.
The CPC is thus teaching present and future African leaders its authoritarian system of government as an alternative to democracy at its first overseas training school. The challenge this poses to Western democracy and its way of life is currently not realised, but it presents a clear and present danger. Cultivating an authoritarian-friendly political bloc on the African continent will help China reshape global institutions and guarantee markets as Western sanctions seek to isolate certain Chinese industries. African governments and state media in China claims the school in Tanzania promotes Africa’s economic and social development. They cast the CPC’s approach there as a way to alleviate poverty and spur economic development through training effective leaders.
The reality is that the school focuses almost exclusively on political training. Chinese teachers are flown in from Beijing to train African leaders that the ruling party should sit above the government and courts and, that fierce discipline within the party can ensure adherence to party ideology. Its campus is vast, complete with a large banquet hall, gyms, tennis courts and more than 300 hotel-style rooms with Chinese-made furniture. Like many projects, it’s named after Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s first leader after it gained independence from Great Britain in the early 1960s. The school, which opened in 2021, is a partnership between the CPC and the ruling parties of Tanzania, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, South Africa and Zimbabwe. It is a joint project of the CPC and six Southern African ruling liberation movements: the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) of Namibia, Tanzania’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, or Revolutionary Party), South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), and the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
The first major training conference, for about 120 participants from all seven parties including the CPC, was held in 2022, and a second major conference with about 170 attendees was held in June last year. There have also been smaller conferences and short courses specifically for members of Tanzania’s ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). All six nations are multiparty democracies, but their governing parties share another key feature: each has ruled continuously for decades. Thus, clearly China’s ambitions are much bigger than teaching political science to the people of Tanzania! The CPC has for years invited delegations from African nations to attend training sessions in Beijing and in smaller cities. But the scale and scope of the school and its location outside of China, a throwback to Soviet-era strategies of exporting Communism marks a departure from what the CPC has previously done.
The first thing participants see when entering the leadership school is a quote by Tanzania’s first leader after independence, Julius Nyerere. Conferences and short course topics at the school are taught by Chinese teachers affiliated with party schools in China. In Tanzania, they teach party governance, party discipline, anti-corruption methods, Xi Jinping’s Thought, and poverty alleviation. African staff, who operate the school, give lectures and short courses on topics including Pan-Africanism, nationalism and public-sector enterprise management. Together, they share lessons from their revolutionary history. The school’s offerings are made available to rising young members of the ruling parties — but not to politicians from opposition parties.
Collin Ngujapeua, an official in Namibia’s ruling party, SWAPO, who attended the June 2022 training, reportedly said that he hoped to implement several “wonderful lessons” taught by an instructor from the CPC’s Central Party School, especially the fusion of party and government. During the training, the CPC Central Party School instructor emphasized that party discipline should be above and outside the law, Ngujapeua said. China’s system features a corresponding party official for important government positions — provincial governor, mayor, university president and others throughout the entire system. The party position is superior to the government position, conveying party directives and guidance, which the corresponding government official then implements. That type of system, originally developed by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and adopted by the CPC, translates into tighter party control over the state and eliminates checks and balances on the party’s power. In China, the CPC’s discipline commission has sweeping powers to detain, interrogate, investigate, and even torture party members. While all political parties enforce behaviour, the Leninist approach to party discipline is different from parties in liberal democratic systems. In the case of Chinese officials, the party deals with them. The law and the courts come after the party.
Paul Nantulya, Research Associate at the Africa Center, specializing in governance, peacekeeping and East Africa opines that the inaugural class of the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School in Kibaha, Tanzania, listened intently to a message from Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader spoke of “Great Changes Unseen in a Century” and the “urgent need for China and African countries to strengthen solidarity, common development, and exchange of Chinese experience and mutual understanding in governance.” He further mentions that China has been an ideological and military supporter of the six liberation movements and is now the sole external partner of Former Liberation Movements of Southern Africa (FLMSA). China also provides more professional military education (PME) opportunities to SADC than other African regions.
The Nyerere Leadership School reinforces this strategic partnership. It enables the six FLMSA parties to lay plans more systematically using training, educational, residential, and sporting facilities gifted to them by the CPC’s Central Party School in Beijing. This School has prompted widespread debate in Southern Africa and beyond. While its members led their countries to independence, they have also exhibited tendencies that tend to undermine democracy and constitutionalism. While they all ostensibly adhere to multiparty political systems, many have been largely intolerant of opposition challenges and have employed wide ranging measures to stifle, constrain, and even dismantle opposition parties. By supporting the project, the CPC capitalized on an opportunity to export its political and ideological programs to Africa. The Nyerere Leadership School is the first political school the CPC has built overseas, a move that often denies that China promotes its political system abroad. The school enables the CPC to proselytize and methodically share its governance model. By deploying political theoreticians from the CPC’s Central Party School to the school as instructors, the CPC hopes to gain a return on investment as the school gives it a permanent home for year-round interactions with each party’s new recruits and senior party cadres. This puts it in an advantageous position to shape the African liberation parties’ China friendly policies and long-term influence.
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