Global capitalism and Africa after Covid-19

The editorial in the last issue of this journal noted that

Indeed, the latest information from the African continent continues to give the mixed picture regarding Covid-19 and its impact presented in the last editorial.

At the time of writing (September 2020), new official cases in all but 14 African countries are falling (Africa CDC 2020). It is possible that cases peaked in mid July of this year but, as in many other parts of the world, there are new outbreaks, or hotspots, which unless isolated and contained could ultimately result in a widespread increase across the continent. The apparently low incidence of Covid-19 has been variously explained by doubting the data; by arguing that Africans’ exposure to several different diseases has boosted their immune systems so they are more able to resist, or recover from, the virus; by noting that African populations are younger; and arguing that there are better tracing systems using mobile phones and people’s memories. Even if the numbers of cases have been seriously underestimated, hospitals have not been inundated with Covid patients and deaths caused by the virus have been low (Taylor 2020; Nachega et al. 2020).

As has been the case in lockdowns in other parts of the world, the impact has been unequal, with lower-income groups, living in overcrowded housing and with limited or no access to running water to wash their hands regularly, having suffered the most in terms of contracting the virus and dying from it. The impact of Covid-19 is indeed a class issue, and not just in terms of health. Although there has been some decline in manufacturing employment, it is the service sector that has taken the biggest hit in countries where lockdowns have resulted in the closure of hospitality services, of entertainment and cultural venues, and other service provision, typically employing people on low wages with poor job security and leaving them in even more precarious positions.

Elements of lockdowns have been reimposed locally and nationally in many countries to deal with the resurgence of the virus, with quarantine rules limiting and disrupting international travel, with the travel industry already in deep trouble as a consequence of the original lockdowns, and those countries with large tourism sectors taking a devastating hit. It now appears that we will be living with Covid-19 for some time. However, as the previous editorial argued, as countries exit lockdowns, and multilateral organisations model the future based on their ideas of a ‘new normal’,

What, indeed, is and will be the impact of the virus on African economies and societies, and are there opportunities arising out of the pandemic for different paths of development than those followed up till now? To try to answer these questions first requires considering the state and future of global capitalism, and then the state of, and prospects for African countries in the context of the future of global capitalism.

Covid-19 hit capitalism when it was already confronting systemic problems arising out of the aftermath of the financial crash of 2007–09 and the incontrovertible evidence of the climate emergency. During a period in which the austerity policies of most economies of the global North have increased the proportions of their working populations living on low incomes with reduced levels of social support, there has been a significant increase in inequality and a concentration of wealth into fewer hands. The latest data shows that the top 1% in the world have 45% of the world’s wealth (Credit Suisse 2019), while in 2016, eight men owned as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population (Hardoon 2017) and two years later this number is almost down to five (Buchheit 2017) . In the global South, inequality has been increasing at a fast rate. In China, for example, the top 1% owned 30% of the country’s wealth in 2019, compared with just over 20% in 2000. Countries classified as emerging markets are getting close to the world average, with the top 1% moving from 32% of wealth in 2000 to 39% in 2019 (Credit Suisse 2019). Meanwhile, wage growth in the global North has been lower than economic growth and has led to further inequality in incomes and wealth. This skewing of the income distribution towards the already well-off has dampened demand and depressed consumer goods manufacturing, resulting in manufacturers in the global North moving production of as much as possible to the global South where labour is cheaper. This has to some extent been counteracted by the recovery and continued growth of the financial sector, which is now performing as well as ever for the rich but doing little for the rest of the world, although this may be a temporary phenomenon, as prospects for a return to normality decline with a second wave of Covid-19, reflected in the move to negative interest rates, and renewed pessimism about economic recovery.

Added to the demand crisis facing advanced capitalism, there are the advances in information technology (the ‘fourth industrial revolution’) in almost all areas of life. Robotics have reduced employment opportunities in manufacturing and some service industries, while not increasing them by as much in the new industries. A shorter working week and more leisure time offers more possibilities for democratic participation and control over production. The existence of an increasing number of free goods, such as some computer software, or goods sold at ever lower prices, undermines profits and capital accumulation. The potential abundance of low-priced or free goods requires a very different principle of distribution from that based on supply, demand and price. In Marxist terminology, the development of the productive forces is in conflict with the social relations of production: the level of technology creates an abundance of goods, such that as the costs of their manufacture continually reduce, so does their price, limiting the possibilities for private profit and private capital accumulation and forcing a different organisation of people around production and a different way of allocating goods in society.

Whether or not Covid-19 has arrived at a point of an underlying crisis of capitalism, it has certainly made matters a lot worse. A world economic system struggling after overcoming a major financial crisis is now hit by a virus affecting both supply and demand and forcing lower levels of economic activity around the world, with a predicted fall in global GDP of around 5% in 2020, and for advanced economies a fall of 8% (IMF 2020). The estimate for global GDP is already higher than the 3% drop predicted three months earlier and although there has been an economic recovery as lockdown has been eased around the world, a second wave would lead to predictions of an even larger fall in global GDP.

Even if these challenges to global capitalism did not exist, there is the climate emergency which threatens the supply of oxygen and water for the next generations’ chances of mere survival. Covid-19 has helped to connect the dots between environmental degradation and the development of global capitalism. Deforestation has brought to markets wild animals with new viruses to which humans are not resistant (Davis 2020; Wallace 2016). Global capitalism has increased human traffic such that an outbreak of a virus in a distant Chinese market can very quickly infect others in far-flung regions of the world. So, questions have been asked not only of the effects of capitalist globalisation but of the future of capitalism itself.

Meanwhile, there are more immediate threats to the global system from Covid-19, not least the disruption to the global value chains (GVCs) on which production of finished goods is dependent. For example, the slowdown in production in China resulting from lockdown affected the supply chain of many products in Europe. This has prompted some debate as to whether too much of the supply chain for manufactures in the global North is dependent on production in the global South (especially China) and that this production should ‘come home’ and increase the share of manufacturing output. However, the dispersion of production through GVCs begs the question of where home is. China already manufactures products for the global North’s manufacturing corporates. It is, for example, far and away the biggest manufacturer of motor vehicles (Wong 2020) and surely it will not be long before the final products for which China currently supplies components are designed in China. The worsening of China–US relations with US attempts to restrict or ban Huawei, for example, is a development that threatens the whole logic of globalisation and of the capitalism of the global corporates.

The return to national capitalism as an objective is now the policy of right-wing governments and of right-wing movements everywhere as they oppose ‘globalisation’ and its effects on domestic production and employment, demanding controls on the free movement of labour and that industries that moved to the global South – especially the Far East – are re-established in the rust belts of the global North. This is hidden under the label of free trade and bilateral trade deals, but it raises the question of whether global production can be reorganised geographically or whether the process of integrating economies into GVCs has gone too far to be easily dismantled by state action, even if governments abandoned their global ‘free market’ positions. Even if possible, it is unclear how quickly this could be done, given the capital and skill requirements of expanding and diversifying manufacturing production. It is also questionable whether global corporate capital will allow such a state-directed reorganisation of GVCs to happen, given its power over financial and commodity markets. Indeed, how far can we talk of a unified global capital when the interests of sections of capital diverge and different blocs of capital exert considerable and competing influences over governments – the financial–security and military–industrial complexes in the US, or the minerals–energy complex in South Africa, for example?

One of the significant consequences of the measures governments have taken to deal with the pandemic and its economic effects following lockdown has been the challenge to the idea of the minimal state, one that lies at the heart of neoliberal ideology. Indeed, it could be argued that those countries that have shrunk state capacity (especially through outsourcing public services to the private sector, thus reducing the share of public expenditure in GDP, an iconic indicator of neoliberal success) have found themselves without adequate capacity to deal with the virus. Shortages of protective equipment, of hospital beds, of medical staff and of tests as well as an inability to enforce lockdown rules have resulted in the faster spread of the virus and greater loss of life than if there had been adequate state capacity. Where countries such as China and South Korea have developed or maintained strong state capacities to organise and direct, outbreaks and deaths from Covid-19 have been significantly lower. Among African countries, Ethiopia for example, with a strong state capacity and considerable experience of driving the economy, has been able to support conversions of industrial units hit by the economic downturn, especially in exports, into manufacturing much needed protective equipment and keep official Covid-related deaths to date very low (Oqubay 2020; WHO 2020).

As the last editorial noted, emergencies such as this pandemic give rise to authoritarian behaviour by the repressive forces of the state, whether that state plays a strong or weak role in managing the economy. Indeed, one of the characteristics of neoliberalism has been the importance given to the state’s role in the maintenance of law and order and the protection of property rights. The more authoritarian right have further emphasised this role, not least in the US and, as we have seen, most notably in the shooting of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, police killings have reflected the racist characteristics of this authoritarianism. In Africa, police brutality during the arrests of hundreds of thousands has resulted in many deaths, as security forces enforce lockdown rules or use lockdown rules to pursue other agendas. In South Africa, in late August, Nathaniel Julius, an unarmed South African boy with Down’s syndrome, was shot in the head and chest because he did not respond to officers’ questions, this despite the outcry over the killing of at least eight people in April by police enforcing the lockdown. But then, such killings are not unusual. In the two reporting years between 2017 and 2019, South African police officers killed 978 people. In Kenya, at least six people were killed during the early night-time curfews: at one time more Kenyans had died from police killings than from Covid-19 (Njoki and Gachihi 2020). According to Human Rights Watch, the Kenyan police shot and beat people as they were shopping at markets or going home from work, even before the curfew started. Police have also extorted money from people, having broken into their homes and looted food stores across the country (Sakpa 2020). In Nigeria, there were 18 killings by the police and military documented by the country’s Human Rights Commission only a short time into the lockdown as well as many cases of violence by police and security forces against people apparently acting against the lockdown rules (NHRC 2020). The consequence has been resistance from Tunisia to Kenya, to Nigeria and South Africa with public protests against African states that have used lockdowns as a form of repression, but also expressions of solidarity by social and political movements especially with health workers (Ramdeen 2020, ROAPE 2020a). We have come to know some of these movements through the participation of their representatives in the workshops ROAPE has been running in Africa and the webinar held earlier this year (ROAPE 2020b).

Dealing with the economic consequences of the lockdowns has resulted in some policies which run contrary to neoliberal ideology, the most obvious being an astronomical rise in budget deficits, and thus national debt, in those countries where governments have been paying a substantial part of the private-sector wage bill to workers who would otherwise be unemployed as their employers closed or were forced to reduce activity to conform with social distancing rules. This has not stopped unemployment rising and state welfare expenditure increasing where such social security exists. The intervention by governments to maintain economic activity by subsidising effective consumer demand and incentivising factories to switch production to protective equipment has suggested a return to ‘Keynesian’ policies as, clearly, neoliberal policies cannot deal with the effects of a pandemic. The financial crisis of 2007–09 also suggested a return to Keynesian policies to shore up demand, only for austerity to bring cuts in public expenditure so that budget deficits were reduced to the levels of financial market expectations of sound government policy. Austerity policies applied to the current state of economies around the world will only make matters worse given the reduction in world economic activity in 2020, estimated at 3%. Yet there are hints that such policies will need to be introduced as the neoliberals argue that government debt must be reduced at some point soon.

Finally, if it is the case that the capitalism’s contradictions have become insurmountable, and that we are in a period of transition to another mode of production, is this a transition to socialism or to some other social formation? The upsurge in recent years of right-wing authoritarianism around the world suggests that a transition to democratic socialism is not necessarily the only outcome of a crisis of capitalism. However, an authoritarian, or even fascist, turn is not inevitable. The vast inequality between the 1% and the 99% may become a mobilising force for popular resistance and radical change in favour of the 99%. The realisation during the pandemic of the importance of ‘key’ workers and how little many of them are paid suggests that there is widespread support for a more equitable society. The actions of people supporting their vulnerable neighbours and developing a community spirit hinted at a rejection of the neoliberal idea of individuals being responsible for themselves and a realisation that individuals are socially interdependent.

One consequence of governments’ paying part of private-sector wages has been a strengthening of the argument for a basic income for all to be topped up by part-time or full-time employment. That clearly undermines capitalist relations, dependent as they are on people having nothing to sell but their labour power. It could have the effect of allowing employers to pay less, or it could strengthen the bargaining power of workers if they have a basic income sufficient to meet their subsistence needs. In the context of the new robotic technologies, advanced economies could move to a rapidly reducing working week.

So what has been the impact of Covid-19 on African economies, and what are the implications for future development on the continent? The economic consequences of Covid-19 for some African economies have already been devastating. South Africa, for example, which has had the highest number of cases by far of any country in Africa, will reportedly suffer a fall of up to 8% of GDP this year (UNDP 2020). The predictions for Africa as a whole are not as bleak: the African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates that overall, the continent’s economy could shrink by up to 3.4% in 2020 (AfDB 2020), although given the uprating by the IMF of predictions for the world economy, the prediction for Africa could be an underestimate. Given Africa’s economies are still heavily dependent on the export of primary commodities, a significant world economic downturn will severely impact on Africa’s foreign exchange earnings especially from primary commodities, and therefore adversely affect government revenues. We have already seen a sharp decline in the oil price. Before the pandemic, oil was trading at US$49/barrel. With the pandemic it fell to US$30, and at the time of writing it has only recovered to US$43. There are even suggestions that peak oil demand has passed as alternatives to oil become cheaper, thus putting downward pressure on oil prices, although this has been disputed (Dale and Fattouh 2020). If, however, an accurate assessment, then it is bad news for African countries for whom oil is the major foreign exchange earner. Worse still, an oil price slump, like a hike, tends to have a positive relationship with the prices of other primary commodities.

Indeed, with the exception of gold, whose price increased sharply and continued to increase through the next two months, non-oil primary commodity prices slumped between the first and second quarters of 2020. However, by the middle of the third quarter most had recovered, possibly reflecting uncertainty of supply. Predictions of export revenue declines are widespread, but because of the uncertainty of the effect of the virus on supply, revenues could rise if prices increase. The main exception is expected to be oil, unless producers restrict supply, more difficult because of the competing interests within the producer group of countries.

As in the global North, African government revenues have been hit by reduced economic activity during lockdowns and by increased health and other expenditures related to the virus and its effects. Budget deficits are forecast to go from middle-single to high-double figures in many countries, and already the IMF has agreed emergency funding for over 30 African countries for debt servicing and budget support, although there has been reported resistance to taking up these funds because of the increased debt burden and the effect on countries’ credit ratings. Nevertheless, UN forecasts suggest that Africa will need a US$200-billion support package to sustain services and stimulate economies to prevent a further 50 million people falling into severe poverty. It will also need a debt standstill and a facility which allows it to repay commercial debt. Some countries now have a debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 100% which, together with high fiscal deficits mentioned above, the much higher cost of borrowing for African countries and the depreciation of their currencies, creates an inflationary pressure which will plunge even more people into extreme poverty (Sallent 2020). Lower output especially of food across the continent will result in lower incomes and a general fall in living standards, but the impact on the large number of people with very limited means of living will exacerbate existing inequalities.

In recent years some African governments have begun to take the issue of structural transformation and the role of the state in that process much more seriously after the failures of neoliberalism. In various parts of Africa, there is evidence of industrial strategies being developed to effect structural transformation, with the state playing a key role in directing and supporting new industrial economic activity, broadly defined (Chitonge and Lawrence 2020; Whitfield and Zalk 2020), although this may enable an accumulation of capital by a corrupted political class rather than accumulation of surplus for investment in development for the whole population. The consequences of Covid-19 will require a much greater involvement of the state in managing the economy in the near future. Indeed, the irony of the more nationalist position of the right around the world is that it accepts some disengagement from elements of globalisation. For progressive governments in the Africa and the rest of the global South, state management of the economy with an industrial policy revives the ideas of the late Samir Amin, whose work will be discussed in a forthcoming issue of ROAPE (issue 167), around ‘delinking’ from the global economy as a necessary condition for structural transformation. Whether the neoliberal-oriented states and their donors find another way to avoid a regulatory and interventionist state and preserve the position of the powerful capitalist forces is a key question.

The problem for progressive forces in African countries seeking initially to move the state towards a more interventionist and directive economic strategy is whether the decades of running down the capacity to do this makes such state involvement possible. Even if there is sufficient capacity, what will push them into taking a more interventionist role that is to the benefit of the whole population, and especially those in extreme poverty? For it is only with organised pressure from below that governments will move in such a direction. The serious abuses of power by the forces of the state during the pandemic, referred to earlier, do not augur well for the possibilities of such organisation being tolerated. Meanwhile, those of us in the global North, and this journal in particular, will continue to express our solidarity with movements in Africa that seek to effect a development strategy to change people’s lives for the better so they no longer struggle for mere survival.

In this issue

This issue focuses on southern Africa and the role of the state, covering questions relating to land reform policy in Zimbabwe and South Africa, environmental policy in Botswana, disability policy in South Africa, the philosophical basis of the South Africa Economic Freedom Fighters, the deaths of two major figures in the Zimbabwean struggle and a review article of a book that celebrates the life and work of Archie Mafeje, one of South Africa’s most important intellectual figures. Archie, who died in 2007, was largely ignored in the post-apartheid era, but his work is now increasingly appreciated by scholars inside South Africa and beyond. He was an overseas and later contributing editor of this journal for its first 10 years. Another contributing, and later advisory board, editor whose life we celebrate in this issue is John Loxley, who died suddenly in July and who was associated with this journal from its beginning until his death as an editor and contributor, and was friend and comrade to several of the other editors. He will be sorely missed.

In the first article, Toendepi Shonhe and Oliver Mtapuri propose a new classification for farmers after Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform programme (FTLRP). Readers of the ROAPE special issue on the FTLRP (no. 159) will recall the trimodal classification of large-scale commercial farmers and estates, small-to-medium commercial farmers and a peasantry with enough land for own consumption and some marketed produce but also employed on larger farms or off-farm. Shonhe and Mtapuri, on the basis of a survey of 230 farms in Hwedza District, propose a four-category classification reflecting the dynamics of the reform process. They find that the largest group (51.7%) that has emerged out of the reform are the medium-scale farmers comprising the small-scale commercial farmers and the A2 beneficiaries of the land reforms. The other groups are the ‘poor emerging farmers’ (31.7%), the ‘medium to rich’ (14.7%) and the rich (1.7%). The authors draw attention to the complexity of rural social relations, with size of landholdings being less important than the area actually farmed. They point out the importance of access to capital being crucial to determining the proportion of land farmed and the role of contract farming and other interactions, with local and international capital affecting the dynamic of land distribution after the reforms. Whether this dynamic is leading to the creation of a stable group of medium-scale farmers is an open question, especially given that the authors point out that each of the groups has a proportion of poor farmers. How long these latter can survive without losing their land will determine the stability of this new classification, as will the degree to which domestic and international capital is increasingly able to affect the agrarian structure towards domination by large-scale commercial actors. ROAPE would welcome contributions – whether articles, debates or briefings – on the role of small-scale (family) farming in the pandemic and post-pandemic world. We would also remind readers that we have a critical agrarian studies page on Roape.net¹ to which contributions are welcome.

In the second article, Clemence Rusenga shows how land reform in South Africa is skewed towards promoting large-scale commercial farmers – the agribusiness model, as he refers to it. He argues that this model cannot work where farmers are resource- (capital-)poor and that the smallholder model, with its lower costs, is more appropriate when reallocating land to families with limited resources. Rusenga compares this case with the relative success of small farmers in Zimbabwe, although from Shonhe and Mtapuri’ s article in this issue, it would appear that this is more the case for medium-scale farmers and, even then, the amount of their land they can actually cultivate is also governed by the resources that they have, while for the small (A1) farmers, their farms incomes are supplemented by wage labour elsewhere in agriculture or in non-agricultural activities.² The farm size debate and its economics have a long history; although the factory farming of the large-scale commercial farms with a high level of chemical inputs has generated higher returns to land and capital, it is not evident that such farms are appropriate in all circumstances. What this and the study on Zimbabwe tells us is that access to capital is limited for small farmers and can drive them into a subordinate relationship to capital through such arrangements as contract farming. In South Africa, the policy bias towards large-scale commercial farming which continued after 1994 means that relatively small farmers lack support, which if they could get it would lead to their commercial success.

Emmanuel Mogende and Maano Ramutsindela examine a different aspect of rural southern Africa with an analysis of an aspect of Botswana’s environmental policy regarding wildlife and its links to tourism and conservation. Here the importance of the state and its source of power are issues raised by the authors. They demonstrate the key role in environmental policy played by the presidents of the country since its independence in 1966 and the way this policy has changed with changes in holders of that office. They show that while the greening of the state in Botswana is manifested in particular by the hunting ban introduced by the former president, Ian Khama, they also show how motivation to conserve the environment may have come second to motivation to preserve business interests in eco-tourism which could have been adversely affected by allowing wildlife hunting. The authors see a coincidence of interest between the domestic ruling political and military elite and foreign capital operating in the international eco-tourist industry. The successor president to Khama has reversed the hunting ban which suggests he may be more sympathetic to the hunting lobby, which has also foreign capital interests, but also more sympathetic to those in rural areas whose livelihood and food supply heavily depend on hunting. The article raises important issues about the nature of the state and the way it can be steered to supporting particular interests both at home and abroad.

State policy on disability is the subject of the fourth contribution to this issue. Marie Schnitzler notes how global policies around dealing with disability have shifted from grants to the disabled to empowering disabled people and enabling them to work. Schnitzler argues that studies of disability have largely concentrated on social grants, juxtaposing grants and work in such a way as to endorse the view that state policy should be aimed at getting people off grants, implying dependency on the state, and into work, a view that is prevalent in the global North and a fundamental tenet of neoliberal economics in which any state assistance to vulnerable groups is seen as a disincentive to them to look for a job. Schnitzler shows, through a case study from the Mitchell Plains township, that promising work as part of the means of empowering the disabled is extremely frustrating for them in the context of precarity and a shortage of jobs. Schnitzler presents the experiences of four disabled people in some detail. In so doing she discovers that they are seen by the state as both fit and unfit for work. As a consequence, even in the context of precarity of employment, the disabled develop strategies including bending the rules so that they can claim their right to work and clearly not so that they can avoid it.

Expectations of where post-apartheid South Africa would be 26 years after its first black president was installed have not been fulfilled. Although the African National Congress (ANC) remains the strongest party, its support has been waning since its crushing victory in 1994. One manifestation of that has been the rise of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which broke away from the ANC and is now the third-largest political party in the country. Mosa Phadi in this issue contests the view of some on the left that the EFF is a dangerous proto-fascist organisation. She argues that the EFF is in the line of the Congress movement, that its programme has its roots in the Freedom Charter, and that the party should be viewed in the context of South Africa’s Reconstruction, a concept she associates with W. E. B. Du Bois, who first used it with respect to the period after the abolition of slavery in the USA. Phadi shows how much Du Bois’ analysis of post-emancipation USA for the black people applies to post-apartheid South Africa. In this analysis of Reconstruction, Phadi sees the EFF as more radical than the ANC but unlikely to break with capitalism and its racism. For her, the EFF is another elite formation that, although radical in its political stance, is part of the Reconstruction in which it cannot change the system.

The final article and the review article in this issue are both about individuals who have played an important part in the liberation struggles in Zimbabwe and South Africa, but in very different ways. David Moore reflects on the Zimbabwean liberation struggle and its aftermath in the context of the deaths in 2019 of Robert Mugabe and a less well-known liberation struggle leader, Dumiso Dabengwa – one the victorious leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF), the other a leader of the sidelined Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) led by Joshua Nkomo. In a fascinating reflection on Zimbabwe’s liberation and after, Moore considers Dabengwa’s contribution to the struggle in the context of the ZANU–ZAPU rivalry, the role of Mugabe, the relationship of ZAPU and Dabengwa with the former Soviet Union, and the activity of the British and Tanzanian governments, especially relating to the genocide of Gukurahundi.

Rusenga’s article in this issue arguing for land reform based on small-scale agriculture references in support of his case the work of the late Archie Mafeje, who also saw small-scale agriculture as the object of land reform and appropriate to conditions in rural South Africa. In a review article around a newly published volume celebrating Mafeje’s life, Peter Jacobs considers Mafeje’s academic-activism with a long involvement with the Unity Movement of South Africa. He moves on to examine Mafeje’s methodology of dialectical logic which enabled him to make compelling incisive critiques of trends in social theory leading to an interdisciplinary approach to analysing societies. Finally, he discusses Mafeje’s approach to the agrarian question, in which he argued for the critical importance of the landless peasantry in a post-capitalist future. Jacobs shows that Mafeje’s thinking has influenced later scholars in rejecting the ‘linear proletarianisation’ thesis and recognising the complexity of urban–rural relations in South Africa and the rest of the continent.

Linear proletarianisation implies structural transformation such that the rural dispossessed landless become the urban proletariat ripe for industrial employment. Structural adjustment policies with the abandonment of industrial policy led to industrial decline, but return of industrial policy to the mainstream development discourse and its adoption by some African governments in order to accelerate industrial growth, and with it structural transformation, has generated a new optimism about African countries' development prospects. In a Briefing in this issue of ROAPE, Elijah Munyi examines the data on industrialisation in the context of Africa as a beneficiary of the ‘flying geese' model of foreign investment. He finds that since the financial crash there has been a decline in foreign investment for manufacturing, leading African countries to issue sovereign bonds and to borrow from China as well as to encourage Chinese investment, while China itself and its neighbours mop up the bulk of foreign investment that does not in the majority stay in the global North. Munyi is sceptical about the idea that Africa can skip the manufacturing industry stage and concentrate on service industries. The debate will continue on how central manufacturing is to structural transformation and whether Africa’s future lies in a flying geese strategy, in investing in manufacturing focusing on green technologies, in the development of industrial agriculture or in some kind of re-peasantisation of the rural economy. We welcome contributions to this important debate.

One of the main criticisms of Economics, especially in its neoclassical form, is that it finds no place for power and power relations. Indeed it assumes that everyone starts from the same place, enters into competition through various markets, and that through competition with everyone maximising their own welfare, maximises social welfare and reaches the optimal situation where the only way anyone can be better off is by making someone worse off. It is hardly surprising that Economics and economists are regularly mocked for the implausibility of theory and the absurdity of some assumptions. In a contribution to Debate, Deniz Kellecioglu expands this discussion by looking at the ethical implications of modern mainstream economics as the subject appears to justify the power relations that result in the subjugation of the poor, and especially the populations of the global South, to the plutocracy that benefits from their labour and now makes them relatively worse off by increasing inequality. Kellecioglu questions the ethical basis of an economics with its focus on the individual and its justification for inequality. Especially resonant in the time of Covid-19, he reminds us of the altruism of individuals and the ethical basis of collectivist behaviours which need to be the basis of a revolutionary economics.

Peter Lawrence

Keele Business School, Keele University, UK

p.r.lawrence@123456keele.ac.uk

On Roape.net

Since June the website has continued to be extremely active – hosting webinars, and posting on the continued Covid-19 crisis on the continent, and also the developing Black Lives Matter movement. Though the response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the end of May has been limited in Africa, we reported on the reaction in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. Baba Aye, Lai Brown, Heike Becker and Sabatho Nyamsenda (2020) wrote on 18 June, for example, on the development of radical art and how institutionalised racism and its root – capitalism – continue to kneel on all our dreams and hopes. The pandemic has also laid bare the inadequacy of mainstream arguments concerning the role of the African state in addressing existing health inequalities. At the end of June, a blogpost by Joan Nimarkoh (2020) highlighted the potential reawakening of progressive models for health delivery centred on the needs of the poor as the pandemic exposes the stark inequities of privatised health systems.

A little earlier in June ROAPE hosted a webinar on Sudan’s revolutionary upheavals. There was a wide-ranging discussion on the revolutionary struggles in the country, and the current efforts of the transitional government. The full video of the webinar is available to watch on our site and YouTube channel.³ In a major online seminar jointly hosted with the Walter Rodney Foundation in July, titled ‘Overthrowing the weight of history: slavery, colonialism & Black Lives Matter movement today’, we heard Jesse Benjamin, Hakim Adi and Lena Grace Anyuolo speak on racism, legacies of colonialism and resistance. At the time of writing, over 2000 people have watched this incredibly rich discussion.⁴

At the end of July, ROAPE’s Tunde Zack-Williams discussed the BLM movement in the context of African studies and the radical left. For those of us who work, research and study in the narrow discipline of ‘African studies’, including in ROAPE, Zack-Williams (2020) argued that we need to break down the disciplinary barriers between continents and the African diaspora. The post has generated an astonishingly rich discussion which can be read below the original text.

In early September we posted a blog by Matteo Capasso (2020) based on his article in the journal: he reframes the war in Libya by showing how US-led imperialism underlies the ongoing war and militarism that have contributed to the destruction of the country. Later in the month, Luc Reydams (2020) argued that the official death toll in Rwanda roughly doubled the number of genocide victims. Reydams provides insight into how history and myth has been created in the new Rwanda.

Leo Zeilig

Review of African Political Economy, UK

website.editor@123456roape.net