First, the news…

By John Chiahemen for the BBC

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s union federation COSATU planned to use a rally marking its 20th birthday earlier this month to promote a “buy local” campaign.

But as some 20,000 unionists marched and chanted “Proudly South African” slogans in a Durban stadium, word went round that the bright red T-shirts each wore were made in China.

Thousands of noisy members of the SACTWU textile union, which is spearheading a campaign against a flood of cheap Chinese textile imports, removed the shirts and hurled them into a pile in the middle of the stadium.

“People’s reaction to those T-shirts is a clear indication that they’ve had enough of these cheap products from abroad,” SACTWU President John Zikhali told Reuters later.

“South African retailers need to come to the party and buy products that are made here because we cannot afford to lose any more jobs,” Zikhali said.

From South Africa to Lesotho, to Zambia and Nigeria anger is mounting over what one union leader called “a tsunami of cheap Chinese goods” that many say is choking off local industries and wiping out jobs.

Leonard Hikaumba, president of the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions, bemoaned what he called the dumping of cheap textiles and electronics goods by Chinese exporters.

“The beneficiaries of these are the exporters, not us,” he told Reuters. (more…)

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This is something I saw coming months ago–China taking advantage of African resources like a growing skilled labor force, oil and other natural resources. In exchange, Africa gets flooded with cheap imports. In the end, thanks to out of control African leaders (not all, but many), it is the African people themselves that don’t get to see the benefit of international trade. This particular article may be addressing this situation in South Africa, but China has been doing the same thing in other African countries as well.

Cheap imports will destroy any chances for African nations to work themselves out of a dependency status.

Warren Snow of designindustry.co.nz has a good article that talks about how this trend is actually destroying China as well.

The Chinese Revolution: The real costs behind cheap Chinese imports