TAIWAN/CHINA DEBATE

Sir,
I have read with growing interest the Taiwan/ China Debate in your daily newspaper and felt compelled to share my personal experience working with the Taiwanese Embassy. I have personally seen first hand the huge monetary and medical donations, the food donations and rural electrification projects, trainings, educational bursaries, investment in textiles, wheelchair/ walking sticks and canes that the Taiwanese have donated to our beloved country.

I know that without a doubt, the Taiwanese are a kind and generous nation. Some people, however, have been talking about how China’s monetary power and hydro thermal plants  could better benefit our country and that could be great but what I know is that without Taiwan’s help, generosity and investment for over 50 years, some of us wouldn’t even be here today to have this conversation.

I remember like it was yesterday the numerous occasions I travelled with His Excellency Ambassador Leonard Chao and other Taiwanese officials to various rural communities where the Taiwanese donated money, food- stuffs, rice and even mealie meal and stationary for the schools, and where we dispensed medicine for the various ailments to hordes of community members.  I will never forget seeing Ambassador Chao taking if his suit jacket, rolling up his sleeves and applying medicine on those old ladies’ sore legs, hour after hour as we all worked in unison.

I can assure you that while the Taiwanese were dispensing the medication, washing and swabbing wounds, the so-called vote that they want from us was the furthest thing on their mind. They were all intent on helping emaSwati. I know that emaSwati who have been helped by the Taiwanese are truly appreciative and a young girl around seven or eight, summed up what helping someone else truly means  when she said, “Ngabe sifile sonkhe ekhaya kube anikafiki nalabelungu.

Ngoba sekuphele liviki singakadli.” (We would all have died at home if you had not come here to help us. As we haven’t had anything to eat for a week,” she said with a beaming smile. And when you have spent hours of your life helping others, you realise its not always about the money or what you can get from someone that’s important, its just about love and having someone there who cares and  that it what I truly felt from the Taiwanese that day and on so many other different  rural communities where  donations were made and you can’t put a monetary  figure on that.

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