East Timor vs Somalia vs SA

Patrick Bond pbond at wn.apc.org
Sat Oct 2 22:09:04 PDT 1999


On 2 Oct 99, at 20:37, Chris Burford wrote:
> How could any post apartheid regime have bucked the
> power of the international bond traders? Do your think that the progressive
> economic policy promoted by some left wing economists as an option before
> the election, could ever have worked against the power of international
> finance capital? I think not...

Too easy Chris. Explain away Mahathir's success bucking the City and Wall St, then?

It's as if a massive fight for the soul of the ANC wasn't fought by internal Mass Democratic Movement leftists from 1990-93... and lost.

(This is, if I can advertise, the subject of Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in SA, forthcoming from Pluto in Feb; only two chapters are on the int'l financial markets' influence.)


> ...
> >Who will put forward your "radical democratic economic programme"?
> Well a second rate singer like Bob Geldorf, in alliance with the Pope will
> put it forward, by calling for change in the Bretton Woods institutions
> that have overseen the present massive debt situation.

Don't know about Geldof. I just saw the transcript of a Cambridge, Mass talk between Sachs and Bono a fortnight ago; the latter sounded like a bad post-fordist huckster (what is it about that little city which brings out such bad argumentation?), bragging about Ireland's education/training for IT, implying that that's the formula for Africa. Must find that transcript, you'll have a laugh.

Please, though, be as critical as you can about the deal-making being done in the name of debt "relief." Lots of South voices are being raised about this, such as at last weekend's Washington conference of 50 Years is Enough (posted on other lists you see), especially given the IMF's scam this week renaming their most vicious poverty-creating programme so as to reengineer themselves.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list