South Africa

IMF: if you didn’t like the starter, wait for the main dish

5 July 2020 - by Amandla

The Treasury has made clear that it is seeking a smallanyana three to five year loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of $4.2 billion, at a smallanyana interest rate of 1 or 1.1%. It will also be looking for a loan of $55-60 million from the World Bank. And another good diplomatic (...)
South African should be wary about long term repercussions of new IMF loans

5 June 2020 - by Patrick Bond

Amidst this raging debate about the role of IMF loans to pull out countries from the economic mess triggered by the outbreak of the pandemic, Patrick Bond, professor at the University of the Western Cape School of Government in an interview to Radio Islam International warns us about the (...)
Running to the now ‘reformed’ IMF would be a mistake

3 June 2020 - by Dominic Brown

Covid-19 creates an opportunity for the government to act boldly, which includes greater investment in social services and a much larger public sector Historically regarded as a villain that has obstructed the prosperity of “developing nations”, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has taken (...)
Should South Africa Follow the Law of the Jungle – or the Doctrine of Odious Debt?

30 April 2020 - by Patrick Bond

South Africa’s fierce debates over the costs and benefits of a proposed International Monetary Fund (IMF) bail out of $4.2 billion unveil the country’s massive weaknesses and potential strengths, at a time food protests have moved from the slums of Cape Town to the Johannesburg Central Business (...)
This Changes Everything

31 March 2020 - by Amandla Editorial

For many, the lockdown of 21 days will be a severe test. For some it will in effect be impossible. Imagine being under lock-down for 21 days in a one bedroom shack with six or seven others. Tensions and violence are bound to rise, and it is women who will bear the brunt. Great anger is brewing (...)
Liberate South African public pension from stock market

27 March 2020 - by Dominic Brown

Globally, stock markets are reported to have lost more than $13-trillion dollars over the past month. South Africa was not spared. On March 12 and 13 the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) dropped by 10%, the biggest single fall in the JSE since 1997. The all share index (the largest 164 (...)
Who really ‘state-captured’ South Africa? Revealing silences in poverty, inequality and structurally-corrupt capitalism

2 March 2020 - by Patrick Bond

The ‘state capture’ of South Africa’s parastatal agencies and government departments typically has been seen in a binary mode, with a narrative critical of two competing factions (‘Zuptas’ and ‘WMC’) within the African National Congress. A review of post-apartheid financial and corporate influences (...)
South Africa: actions against the abusive debts imposed on the popular classes

13 November 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

The 2012 Marikana mine massacre In 2012 thirty-four protesting miners employed at the Marikana platinum mine were massacred by police repression. They were in a hard fought struggle for wage increases. They had nothing left to lose because at the demand of creditors the mining company was (...)
New Threats, New Resistances and New Alternatives

12 November 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

We conclude with thoughts about the agency for resistance to these neoliberal policies, both ones in existence since the early 1990s (Bond 2014) and those that are being re-introduced through SEZs and the renewed export-led ‘growth’ strategy. The SEZ strategy did not begin well, Treasury at (...)
Local South African Economic Conditions

6 November 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

As the world economy spirals into crisis stage, with fully-fledged deglobalisation and a new round of financial turmoil, the South African context is just as foreboding. Corporations and workers alike are ill prepared for the period ahead, especially if it entails another export-led drive (...)
Africa’s Renewed Crises of Unbalanced Trade, Disinvestment, Debt

29 October 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

In addition to China, Africa is meant to be one of the most critical markets for South Africa’s SEZs, and attracting other investment, trade and finance to the continent was one justification for entering the BRICS bloc, according to Jacob Zuma and his colleagues. In 2013, for example, deputy (...)
The China Factor

22 October 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

The most crucial factor in whether South African SEZs succeed may well be the complicated role of China. There are three aspects worth discussing: overall demand; Chinese incoming FDI to South African SEZs (such as is driving Coega and Musina-Makhado); and Chinese-financed and built (...)
Global Economic Volatility and Socio Political Reactions

16 October 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

Trade and currency wars, financial volatility and economic turbulence are now the most important features of the world economy. The elements of a new international financial crisis are in place. Although we do not know when it will break out, it is unavoidable, and its impact on world economy (...)
South African Special Economic Zones : History of Limited Successes

8 October 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

Given both short- and longer-term trends in the world and South African economies, there is a danger of government and society placing inordinate hopes in what are variously termed Export Processing Zones, Industrial Development Zones and Special Economic Zones (SEZs), as sources of economic (...)
South Africa: Cancel Eskom’s odious debt to the World Bank

3 September 2019 - by Jonathan Cannard

Despite significant and wide-ranging concern about the fate of Eskom, the World Bank has recently expressed its full confidence in the state-owned power utility’s ability to complete Medupi power station and ensure national electricity provision. The bank’s vote of confidence in the struggling (...)
Something’s got to give

14 June 2019 - by Amandla Editorial

The election of a new government should be a time of celebration. 25 years since the end of Apartheid should be the time of immense celebration. Yet, 25 years since the “dawn of democracy” and South Africans are engulfed by extreme forms of anger, disillusionment and alienation. 22 million adults (...)
Lonmin’s murder, by money

6 June 2019 - by Patrick Bond

Autopsy reveals Lonmin—the British-South African company—corpse’s poisoning by microfinance, ‘development finance’ and corporate finance. The death of the 110-year old mining house Lonmin at a London shareholders meeting on 28 May occurred not through bankruptcy or nationalisation, as would have (...)
South Africa: Resistance and Research for Alternatives to Illegitimate Debt and for Ecosocialism

3 May 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

Report on the CADTM International mission to South Africa 31 March – 12 April 2019, part 2. First part available here Wednesday 3 April: Cape town and Cape of Good Hope: highly visible social and racial segregation The fourth day was spent seeing Cape Town and its region out to Cape of (...)
South Africa: the odious debts generated by coal-fired power-stations

2 May 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

In South Africa, public debt has recently been back in the news through a nationwide debate over the future of Eskom, the public electricity company. Major power cuts affected the country’s social and economic life in February 2019, drawing attention to this company. The poorest sector of the (...)
South Africa: The support of the World Bank and the IMF to the Apartheid regime

29 April 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond

The World Bank and the IMF were accomplice of the apartheid for decades. They violated the UN embargo against the racist regime at the helm of South Africa. Between 1958 – 1968, the World Bank loans made possible the financing of the “pro-White” projects : a thermal power plant (Eskom) which (...)
From the BRICS countries to the townships: racial and social segregation continues

22 April 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

Over 25 years ago now the people of South Africa won the struggle to end the Apartheid regime. [1] Nevertheless, even though it is now against the law, de facto racial segregation is still apparent. Moreover the capitalist assault on the majority of the population is blatant. The class (...)
South Africa Suffers Capitalist Crisis Déjà Vu

3 April 2019 - by Patrick Bond

A year ago, the majority of South Africans stared into the abyss. They faced either a continuation of corrupt misrule by a stereotypical kleptocrat—Jacob Zuma—whose anti-imperialist rhetoric failed to disguise worsening austerity, or a potentially dramatic change of political direction toward (...)
Budgeting for black-out in South Africa

27 February 2019 - by Patrick Bond

Upon taking power in a palace coup a year ago, Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) government was supposedly going to sweep out the prolific corruption associated with the 2009-18 Jacob Zuma ANC regime. But although excruciatingly-slow progress is being made in evicting the most (...)
South Africa searches for a financial parachute, now that a $170 billion foreign debt cliff looms

18 December 2018 - by Patrick Bond

Johannesburg – This week’s hush-hush visit by International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde to Pretoria (between stops in Ghana and Angola) is mysterious. In contrast to last week’s IMF press briefing claim – “Madame Lagarde will hold meetings with the authorities, as well as (...)
Mining conflicts multiply, as critics of “extractivism” gather in Johannesburg

14 November 2018 - by Patrick Bond

The World Social Forum’s “Thematic Forum on Mining and Extractivism” convenes from 12-15 November 2018 in Johannesburg, South Africa, just after the Southern Africa People’s Tribunal on Transnational Corporations. In between, at the notorious 2012 massacre site on the platinum belt to the west, (...)