Tell us something new, comrade Jim.
>... The 'crisis' of late 1997 turned out to be episodic rather than
> systemic.
What does that mean? The SACP were, actually, right about global (and local, were they brave enough to say it) "overaccumulation," having just read the May-June 1998 NLR. One of the classic ways out of a systematic overaccumulation crisis--which by the way has been apparent here for about three decades--is geographical displacement. That helps explain the resurgent subimperialism.
> Pointedly, South African capital took advantage of the period
> 1994-8 to buy into ...
Sure, just like they did from 1990-92, and then it proved largely unsustainable in those early mining, banking and retail circuits, so expansion slowed, then picked up a tiny bit again during the late 1990s under conditions of dramatically increased subsidies from Pretoria, and less local competition (fading thanks to austerity at home). It's still not in the least a stable, productive accumulation model anywhere I've seen up-continent from Jo'burg, and in fact boils down, really, just to extraction industries, tourism, commerce and finance.
> ... As South Africa's capitalists have basked in the reflected
> glory of the ANC's government...
No, as they try to ESCAPE the stagnant market of SA, which thanks to the glory of exchange-control liberalisation, was part of the ANC-NationalParty power-transfer deal, ...
> ... At the same time country's political leaders have become
> international statesmen, brokering new settlements in the Congo,
> Burundi and Zimbabwe.
Gotta love that Heartfield sarcasm. Patrick Bond (pbond at wn.apc.org) home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa phone: (2711) 614-8088 work: University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Public and Development Management PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa work email: bond.p at pdm.wits.ac.za work phone: (2711) 717-3917 work fax: (2711) 484-2729 cellphone: (27) 83-633-5548