THE NEW SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA

Fellow Africans, there is a new scramble for Africa, and it is between the Western Countries or the developed first world countries and the East and the global South led by the BRICS countries. In 2006, Brazil, Russia, India and China created the ‘BRIC’ group. South Africa joined in 2010, making it ‘BRICS’.

The group was designed to bring together the world’s most important developing countries, to challenge the political and economic power of the wealthier nations of North America and Western Europe. The Western countries are mostly our former colonial masters and are led by the United States of America and Western Europe. The strength of the Western countries is their control of the United Nations with its agencies, the International Monetary Fund IMF, World Bank and International Rating Agencies. The three biggest Credit Rating firms are in the US and dominate 80 per cent of the international market.

The scramble for Africa has been playing itself out in South Africa, the most industrialised African country. This battle of minds has been unfolding through the recent national elections. On one hand, we have the African National Congress of President Cyril Ramaphosa signing a grand coalition with the right-wing Democratic Alliance (DA), which represented the white moderates and former opposition to the dreaded national party the official architects of the apartheid regime. On the other hand, we have the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) a newly-formed left-wing progressive Political Party coming together with Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) a youth-based progressive political party representing the Eastern Block.
The battle of ideologies.

Ideologically the ANC and DA are miles apart. It just boggles the mind how they could find themselves working together. Their leader President Ramaposa is a capitalist through and through, building a well-established successful business network. Rob Harzov a well-respected white South African was at pains promoting the ANC/DA coalition as the only hope to pleasing the markets and getting the country back on track, as he put it. The reality is that they have been free to operate for 30 years post democracy in SA, but the lives of the black people have not changed. They have continued to enjoy supernormal profits.

Let’s talk about the markets.  Moody’s Investor Services, Standard and Poor’s (S&P), and Fitch Group are all tools of the Western capitalist cooperation and conglomerates that have their loyalties to their super-rich shareholder, who do not care one bit about the black Africans in South Africa or anywhere they operate. They are the remnant of the colonial masters and do not care about the lives of any locals they work with, but  the locals are useful as long as they continue to give them profits.

Conglomerates

Yes, the general perception within the developing world is that we cannot do without foreign direct investment and that we should bend over backward to attract and keep these conglomerates. For years African Countries gave tax holidays to big businesses only to have them exploit their people and leave at the end of the tax holidays. Unions were blocked and minimum wages were discouraged along with all workers’ rights. They had the audacity to tell the African government what tax they were willing to pay, and the governments agreed to ridiculous teams. The Coca-Cola concentrate company Conco Ltd in Eswatini does not pay the same tax as any other company.

These Conglomerates will leave their own country the United States, close factories, and render fellow Americans jobless just to make more profits exploiting other nations.  The African National Congress ANC was a progressive left-wing movement whose ideology was to fight the apartheid regime that had the full backing of neoliberal capitalist Western nations including the United States, the UK and a large part of Europe. America and Britain refused to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa, but were very quick to impose sanctions on Libya and Zimbabwe when their interest was threatened. The ANC had to seek assistance from Cuba and the East including Russia to liberate South Africa.

The ANC/MK/EFF/IFP and PA coalition

Say whatever you wish to say about communist China, but the reality is that it has pulled millions of its citizens out of poverty and has industrialised rapidly. It has grown its economy to become a superpower in the last five decades.  Asia had developed its poor countries without the help of foreign direct investment but with inter-trade among its people. The ANC and South Africa have lost the opportunity to come together as brothers and say we need to put our differences aside and work together for our people. The ANC failed to realise that the time has come to introduce radical economic transformation to benefit the black men in particular and the African in general. The ANC /MK/EFF/IFP and PA coalition would have had the two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution to favour the black man. The blame falls not only on the ANC but on Zuma and Malema too for endless conditions.  

This progressive party coalition would have had to endure serious punishment from the Western countries, but they would have been able to regain the means of production including idle land. The repatriation of land without compensation laws could have been introduced with some form of qualification not just a blanket law. For example, there are vast tracks of farmland that have been left unused for decades. The white owners moved back to England and the children don’t care or need it anymore. There are vast farmlands that are idle when black families and their chiefdoms need land.

Laws that seek to force mining companies to invest in manufacturing within the community they mine in. For example, the iron ore company must be forced to bring in steelmaker factories so that at least 10 per cent of the iron ore is processed locally employing locals. Diamond mining must invest in diamond processing locally. They will argue, asking why the mining company bothers with manufacturing employment when it is already an employer and is paying taxes. The answer would be it’s that law.  In many cases, these big mining companies never provide quality jobs and never pay the actual tax they are to pay. They hire tax consultants mainly to help them pay as little as possible.
Comment: septembereswatini@gmail.com

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