Racism: Hidden in Full View

– from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

How Pundits and the Media Deflect Attention from the Cancer

AfricaFocus Bulletin
July 6, 2015 (150706)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

With less than six months before this year’s UN Climate Change
conference in Paris, it is clear that commitments by governments to
action on climate change will fall short of that necessary to keep
global warming under the internationally agreed target of 2 degrees
Celsius, despite recent new pledges by the United States, Brazil,
and China (http://tinyurl.com/qhtfdk9; http://tinyurl.com/q8g3srl).
But, beyond national governments, there are signs of growing
momentum for more rapid “transformational” action. Particularly
notable is the recognition that such action must simultaneously
address economic inequality and development as well as the natural
environment.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1507.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/clim1507.php

This recognition is particularly relevant for Africa, where fossil-
fuel companies and much conventional wisdom have posed a false
dichotomy between development and the transition to renewable
energy, claiming that continued reliance on fossil fuels is
essential to promote economic development and address poverty. In
fact, the needed climate transition is imperative both for the sake
of the planet and for the sake of sustainable economic development
that benefits the majority of Africa’s population rather than only
foreign interests and local elites.

Such a broader perspective was featured in June, both in the widely
publicized encyclical by Pope Francis and in this year’s report from
the Africa Progress Panel headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, entitled “Power, Planet, and People” (
http://www.africaprogresspanel.org/). But it is also visible at many
other levels, including  among multilateral agencies, civil society
groups, and many private-sector investors as well. And it is
reflected in practical terms in the rapid advances of renewable
energy on the ground, despite failures of governments and the
immense power of vested interests in fossil fuels and business as
usual.

Thus the Global Status Report on the status of renewable energies,
also released in June (http://www.ren21.net / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/p2uz9mk), noted an 8.5% increase in renewable
energy from 2013 to 2014 and, significantly, a “decoupling” of
positive economic growth (3%) from energy-related CO2 emissions,
which were unchanged in 2014 from 2013 levels.

Another key report released in June is the International Energy
Agency’s “World Energy Outlook Special Report 2015: Energy and
Climate Change” (http://www.iea.org/ – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/qcpm3sd). This report evaluates the country
pledges to date, finding that these will not ensure a peak in
energy-related CO2 emissions by 2030. In contrast, it proposes a
“bridging” strategy that can reach such a peak turning point by
2020.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the “People’s Test on Climate”
statement by a wide range of international civil society groups,
including the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, as well as two
articles on (1) “off-grid” strategies for energy access and (2) the
rapid growth of windpower for the electric grid in South Africa,
where the existing coal-based strategy continues to demonstrate its
ineffectiveness to prevent energy shortages.

For more on the parallel “decline of coal,” see
https://storify.com/wminter/the-end-of-coal

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on climate change and the
environment, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-env.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

The People’s Test on Climate 2015

http://peoplestestonclimate.org/  – Direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/oq3woz2

Nothing less than a systemic transformation of our societies, our
economies, and our world will suffice to solve the climate crisis
and close the ever-increasing inequality gap.

After over 20 years of stunted and ineffective action to reduce
climate pollution by governments — particularly in wealthy
countries that have failed to meet their legal and moral
responsibilities — only urgent and transformative and systemic
change that can address the root causes of the crisis and deliver
what is needed to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees
Celsius, the limit beyond which climate impacts will become
potentially catastrophic.

The urgency to keep temperatures down is not just about the planet
and the environment. It is about people, and our capacity as
humanity to secure safe and dignified lives for all.

As social movements, environmental non-governmental organizations,
trade unions and other civil society organizations with deep roots
in communities around the world struggling to cope with the climate
crisis, we take hope from the fact that while the scale of the
challenge is enormous, people already have solutions and
alternatives that work at the scale we need. From decentralized
community-owned renewable energy for mitigation, poverty reduction
and sustainable development, to agro-ecological methods for
adaptation, there already exists a wealth of proven ideas and
experience from which to build a global transformation — and it is
booming.

People’s demands and solutions are based in our vision of the world
that recognizes the need to live in harmony with nature, and to
guarantee the fulfillment of human rights for all, including those
of Indigenous Peoples, women, youth and workers.

These people’s solutions upset “business as usual” because they
must, in order to lead us towards a more equitable, just and
sustainable world — but for this very reason, they face serious
barriers. This is why the demands of our Southern people’s
movements, which represent the world’s communities that are most
vulnerable to climate impacts yet have had no role in creating the
problem, are so critical if we want a better, more just, and
sustainable society. These demands include, but are not limited to:

* Sustainable energy transformation — redirecting finance from
dirty energy to clean, affordable, reliable and safe renewable
energy, supporting people’s solutions including decentralized
community renewable energy systems, banning new dirty energy
projects, ensuring that access to clean, affordable, reliable and
safe renewable energy is a public good, reducing energy consumption
particularly by wealthy elites, and ensuring that reducing poverty
and achieving justice is prioritized throughout the transformation;

* The right to food and water — ensuring people’s access to water
and to land for climate resilient food production, stopping land
grabs and the ongoing conversion of land from food to commodities
like biofuels that are falsely presented as solutions to the climate
crisis, and supporting sustainable agro-ecology and climate
resilient food production systems;

* Justice for impacted people — securing and building the
resilience of impacted people including reparations for the world’s
impoverished and marginalized people who have no role in causing
climate change, yet whose lives and livelihoods are endangered by
its effects, supporting a just transition for workers into the new
environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive economy, and
supporting people- and community-driven adaptation and
rehabilitation solutions.

Securing our vision in a just and equitable manner cannot be left to
governments’ voluntary “good will.” Our governments are too heavily
influenced by the entrenched interests whose power, profits and
lifestyles would be impacted by the transformation. The poorest,
most vulnerable and worst impacted are often excluded entirely from
decision-making processes; for any just outcome, space must be
created for inclusive people’s participation in decision-making and
in implementation of those decisions at all levels.

With all that said, history is full of examples of people’s power
overcoming the power of a few narrow interests.

This year will bring governments back to the climate negotiations,
in Paris, to scale up climate action in the immediate short term,
and to agree upon a new global climate agreement to come into place
post-2020. When measured against the people’s demands above, as well
as the imperatives of science, the Paris Summit looks like it will
be very far from what is needed by people or the planet. Instead, it
risks legitimizing the current unjust and unsustainable balance of
power in favor of elites, while only making minor tweaks around the
margins of the status quo.

Yet the balance of power can and will change, because people across
the world are prepared to fight to protect their homes, their right
to energy, their right to food, and their right to a decent job.
That power can be mobilized to come together and make clear demands
of the Paris Summit, to force it to be a signal that the real
transformation we need has arrived.

To meet that test, the Paris Summit must:

* Catalyze immediate, urgent and drastic emission reductions — in
line with what science and equity require, deliver urgent short-term
actions, building towards a long-term goal that is agreed in Paris,
that shift us away from dirty energy, marking the beginning of the
end of fossil fuels globally, and that keep the global temperature
goal in reach;

* Provide adequate support for transformation — ensure that the
resources needed, such as public finance and technology transfer,
are provided to support the transformation, especially in vulnerable
and poor countries;

* Deliver justice for impacted people — enhance the support to
adaptation in a new climate regime, ensure that there will be a
separate mechanism to provide reparations for any loss and damage
that goes beyond our ability to adapt, and make a firm commitment to
secure workers’ livelihoods and jobs through a Just Transition; and

* Focus on transformational action — ensure that renewable and
efficient solutions are emphasized rather than false solutions that
fail to produce the results and protection we need, such as carbon
markets in land and soil, dangerous geoengineering interventions,
and more.

Governments and the Paris Summit outcome will be judged on this
fundamental litmus test. But Paris will not only be about a long
series of negotiations under the UNFCCC. Paris will not only be
about what our governments achieve — or fail to achieve. Paris will
also be the moment that demonstrates that delivering concrete
actions for the global transformation will come from people and not
our politicians.

We see Paris as a beginning rather than an end — an opportunity to
start connecting people’s demands for justice, equality, food, jobs,
and rights, and strengthen the movement in a way that will force
governments to listen and act in the interests of their people and
not in the vested interests of elites. Paris will launch us into
2016 as a year of action — a year when people’s demands and
people’s solutions take center stage.

Climate change needs our urgent commitment and action, in global
solidarity. We are continuing to hold corporate and political elites
accountable for their actions on climate change. And our numbers
will grow as the climate movement of movements becomes more and more
united and linked beyond the COP in Paris. We will encourage more
and more citizens to support people’s solutions. We will continue
our struggles at local, national, regional and global levels to
ensure that it is people that spearhead the just transformation of
our society.

Adriano Campolina, Chief Executive, ActionAid International

Lidy Nacpil, Coordinator, Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and
Development (APMDD)

Maria Teresa Hosse, Facilitator, Bolivian Platform for Climate
Action

Bernd Nilles, Secretary General, CIDSE (network of Catholic
development agencies)

Dr Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director, Environmental Rights Action/
Oil Watch

Jagoda Munic, Chair, Friends of the Earth International

Dr Kumi Naidoo, International Executive Director, Greenpeace
International

Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union
Confederation (ITUC)

Demba Dembele, President, LDC Watch (Least Developed Countries
Watch)

Carolina Amaya Tobar, Executive Director, Mesoamerican Campaign for
Climate Justice

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam International

Mithika Mwenda, Secretary General, Pan African Climate and
Environmental Justice Alliance (PACJA)

May Boeve, Executive Director, 350.org

******************************************************

Why Should Climate Philanthropy Care About Energy Access?

Justin Guay, Program Officer, Climate at Packard Foundation

Huffington Post, July 1, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/of4gm6a

Investing in clean energy access provides a disruptive opportunity
to revolutionize electricity systems and get on the right side of
the politics of development — philanthropy just hasn’t realized it
yet.

To be fair, philanthropy needs to step up its game on climate across
the board. Our investment is woeful — only 2 percent of all
philanthropic funds are devoted to transitioning to a clean energy
economy and staving off the worst impacts of climate. That’s why
some big name foundations are calling on their colleagues to step up
giving, and act on climate.

But it’s not just the sheer dollars that matter — it’s also how we
spend them. While we have a lot of work to do to be more strategic
one of our most glaring blindspots is energy access. To turn that
around someone needs to take the time to make the case that spending
scarce climate dollars on energy access will drive transformational
change. So let me give it a try.

Clean Energy Access Gets the Politics Right

For the more politically oriented amongst us let’s be overt – the
politics of climate at the global level are broken and they
contaminate everything. We need to proactively seek opportunities to
change those politics by aligning development and climate goals in
an explicit way. Supporting the entrepreneurs working to bring poor
rural communities their first energy services from clean energy
sources like solar home systems and mini-grids aligns renewable
energy with development. It means our solutions to climate are also
the solutions to poverty alleviation,not the obstacle it’s
historically been. With exciting new research from the World Bank
suggesting that distributed solar is also driving financial
inclusion we have the opportunity to invest in an intervention that
has cascading development benefits. All of which reframes our issue
in a powerful way: the world’s most advanced technology — clean,
distributed smart grids — are the most appropriate for the world’s
poor. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi understands this, that’s
why he promised solar, not coal, for all by 2019.

Clean Energy Access Is Disruptive

In the 21st century where mobile phones are ubiquituous no rural
villager demands, or expects, land line telephones. What’s more,
those villagers will increasingly demand access to more
sophisticated communications services like the internet via their
mobile devices. But they struggle to keep their phones charged
thanks to a lack of power which is causing Telecom companies and
their counterparts in the tech industry from Silicon Valley, giants
like Facebook and Google, to lead the drive to electrify the poor.
That constituency realizes the only way to quickly and cheaply power
those devices is not to wait for the centralized dumb grid — it’s
to quickly and nimbly deploy smart distributed generation. More
importantly, the companies leading this charge are doing it with a
potent mixture of mobile money financed distributed clean energy
solutions, super efficiency, and innovative pay-as-you-go business
models that deliver energy as a service. Ultimately, that creates a
clean distributed smart grid that serves the poor first, not last.
Meanwhile the rest of us deal with our 19th century dumb grids and
their entrenched dinosaurs who fend off the future by trying to tax
the sun while they fight for the right to continue to pollute our
air and water.

Clean Energy Access is Mitigation

You’ll notice that the direct mitigation piece of this puzzle comes
last. That’s because the politics and disruptive potential of these
interventions are the real selling point. But that’s not to say
there aren’t tons of C02 to be mitigated. Far from it. Take India
where 75 GW of Diesel gen sets are installed which form the
‘distributed reliability backbone’ to the notoriously unreliable
grid. That total is equivalent to half the country’s coal fleet
which is being added to at an incredible clip of 17 GW this year
alone. A consumption whose giant sucking sound evaporates the
country’s foreign reserves and decimates the rupee’s value.

But while diesel replacement is big, the far more interesting
opportunity lies in the super efficient appliances necessary to
wring services out of pico solar and their rebound effect for the
developed world. No, not that rebound effect — I’m talking about a
positive effect that makes super efficient TVs (7 watts in off grid
settings) the norm across the globe thanks to the sheer purchasing
power that 1.2 billion consumers wield. Just imagine the US congress
trying to justify appliance standards that are weaker than those in
Bangladesh and you get the sense of the disruptive impact super
efficiency could have on global appliance markets.

All said and done there is quite a case to be made for clean energy
access. But outside the admirable efforts of the Rockefeller
Foundation or the newly announced super efficient appliances work
supported by Climate Works this issue still largely remains under
the radar. It’s high time we seized this opportunity and asserted a
vision of the future that puts the needs of the poor first – by
building a clean energy future from the bottom up.

*****************************************************************

South Africa: Wind Energy No Longer a Minor Player in SA

By Adam Wakefield

News24Wire, July 3, 2015

http://allafrica.com/stories/201507031961.html

Wind energy is around half of all renewable energy currently
produced in South Africa. As we lurch from one day of load shedding
to the next, the sector is showing no sign of losing speed, rather
the opposite.

Johan van den Berg, CEO of the SA Wind Energy Association, told
News24 in an interview that 2011 was the year government formally
introduced it into the energy sector, with commercial wind farm
construction beginning in 2013.

Today, wind power contributed around 740 megawatts (MW) of
electricity into the grid, “as a proportion of about 45 000 MW of
all power installed in South Africa”.

The average capacity factor for the entire fleet – as wind does not
blow consistently – is currently over 70%.

“In terms of energy delivered, South Africa produces about 2.5% of
what Denmark produces as a proportion of their ultimate electricity
usage. So there’s a lot of space for us to still improve,” said Van
Den Berg.

South Africa is a very large landmass, which is a very positive
starting point. Mapped winds indicated that certain parts of the
republic experienced very good winds by international standards.

“Almost everybody has agreed we can build a wind sector in excess of
20 000 MW and then it depends. You can pick a number somewhat or way
above that,” he says.

“20 000 MW is a big windy industry and from there, anything above
that, we will see where it goes. That equates to maybe 7 000 towers
and turbines ultimately, considering that the towers are getting
stronger and more powerful all the time.”

U shape of wind

The mapped wind of interest to the industry showed a U shape from
the south, starting 350km to 400km north and somewhat west of Cape
Town, running down the South African coastline to almost the edge of
the Transkei.

Winds were also found inland, somewhat surprisingly Van Den Berg
said, in the central Karoo.

“It’s a surprisingly good wind area… Bloemfontein will not be your
best place. Pretoria, I think, has the lowest wind speed in South
Africa.”

The second phase of the South African Wind Energy Programme (Sawep),
an initiative with the UN Development Programme which paid for the
mapping, has recently been approved. The rest of the country would
now be mapped, with Van Den Berg expecting some positive surprises.

An advantage of wind power was its relatively short up-time compared
to fossil or nuclear power generation.

It could take three to four years to be ready to bid, with an
environmental impact assessment taking a year and a half within that
period. This has already taken place with many wind projects at the
execution stage.

Wind measures are also done on site, with wind mast set-ups placed
at the same height as the intended turbine for a period of one to
two years.

“An international expert then comes and guarantees you a specific
output if you use a specific machine with a specific blade, and you
know exactly what you are going to get,” he said.

A giant is built

From bidding, the next phase moved to what is referred to as
financial closure, where construction begins.

“That can maybe be eight to nine months and thereafter, if it’s a
small wind farm, you build it in 12 to 14 months.”

Very large wind farms were being built in South Africa, “extremely
large by international standards”.

“We are generally building 130, 140 MW – 60 large turbines – and
that normally takes about 18 months, which is still the blink of an
eye compared to fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, that take 10 to
15 years.”

The turbines themselves were very big, though only around 5% of land
at a site or farm is used by the end of construction, including
infrastructure and roads. The rest remains available for use as it
was before.

Each turbine is approximately four to six blade lengths apart, with
the rectangular foundation being around 24 square metres in size.
Once covered, the base of the turbine itself is around 2×2 metres.

“There’s an anecdote about a farmer who assured the developer that
he had his workers ready to guard against theft when the blades
came, not appreciating that the blade is 50m long, and the diameter
100m, sometimes 117m,” Van Den Berg said with a smile.

“The tower is normally about double the height of the blade, so the
tower can be from 80m to 120m. It’s a large piece of infrastructure,
with the nacelle weighing around 120 tonnes.”

Boosting local communities

A feature of the local wind energy industry is how wind power
producers plough back a small percentage of their profits into
surrounding local communities, speaking to the National Development
Plan’s developmental state and public/private partnership.

“The relationship between ourselves and Government’s IPP
(independent power producers’) office is an early successful example
of that,” Van Den Berg said.

“That’s actually starting to work. A lot of people in other
industries got this wrong, but I think we are mostly getting it
right.”

The need in deep rural communities was very strong, with the
prerogative being to try and develop those communities.

“I think the way in which the programme was structured, where you
have to invest around 2% of your turnover into those communities,
was a very far sighted move,” Van Den Berg said.

“I probably spend close to half my time on that aspect, to make sure
everybody is coordinated and pulling in the right direction.”

SAWEA and its partners were trying to see which examples were the
good ones to follow, and even internationally, when Van den Berg
went to conferences overseas, this is the aspect people were most
excited about.

“If you are an engineer, you love mechanical stuff, then building a
turbine is very interesting, but then the next one looks pretty much
the same and so on,” he said.

“In South Africa we’re building the same things that other people
are building in other countries, but we’re doing it in a very
different way and in a very different context and that part is
exciting.”

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

AfricaFocus Bulletin
June 30, 2015 (150630)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

Almost three years after the killings by police of 44 striking
miners at Marikana platinum mine, the official Commission of Inquiry
last week released a bland 646-page report, faulting primarily
police commanders and apportioning some blame as well among the
striking miners themselves, the mining company Lonmin, and two rival
unions. However, the Commission said there was not adequate evidence
for the responsibility of higher officials. And its recommendations
for action on the police responsible were for further
investigations.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/mar1506a.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/mar1506a.php

Although the report met with widespread criticism inside the country
from the families of victims and their supporters, as well as other
commentators, it gained little attention outside South Africa. For
many, the police violence in August 2012, and the close
collaboration between the mining company and state officials in
repressing a strike by the lowest-paid workers, has made Marikana an
emblematic symbol for an era of post-apartheid plutocracy, as did
Sharpeville for the apartheid era in the decades following 1960. But
neither the South African political and economic establishment nor
world public opinion seems to regard accountability or reform in
policing or in the mining industry as calling for more than pro-
forma banalities.

For those who want to dig deeper, the 2014 documentary film “Miners
Shot Down” (http://www.minersshotdown.co.za/)is by far the best and
most powerful introduction. Fortunately, it is now available on
YouTube, including interviews, police footage, and evidence made
available to the Commission. See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssPrxvgePsc (note, there are other
versions available on-line, but this one has captions and the best
technical quality).

This AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out by email, and another released
today and available on the web but not sent out by email, contain
selected excerpts and summaries of related commentaries and reports.

Below are text excerpts from a Mail & Guardian report featuring
photos and narrative on two key points: the killings at “scene 2,”
where miners were hunted down and shot by police away from the media
cameras which recorded “scene 1,” and on the housing promised by
Lonmin to workers as part of a social responsibility plan that was
never implemented.

The additional AfricaFocus released today, available at
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/mar1506b.php, includes a
“takeaways” summary by AfricaFocus of a report by Dick Forslund of
the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town
http://aidc.org.za/), documenting how profit shifting within the
British company Lonmin and subsidiaries in South Africa and Bermuda
hid the fact that the company could have easily paid the demands of
the strikers for a living wage, and that neither the South African
tax authorities nor the South African Department of Labour carried
out their duties to monitor and regulate company actions.

It also includes a detailed commentary by Greg Marinovich, the
photographer and writer who covered in depth the strike and the
killings at the time.

Other recent commentaries include:

“Commission Makes ‘Devastating’ Findings Against Police”
AllAfrica.com, June 26, 2015
http://allafrica.com/stories/201506261379.html

“Marikana Report: The continuing injustice for the people of a
lesser God”, Ranjeni Munusamy, Daily Maverick, 26 Jun 2015
http://tinyurl.com/pnt9mjv

The full Commission of Inquiry report is available at:
http://tinyurl.com/pdkkoow

A concise summary is available at: http://tinyurl.com/nbgut3e

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Marikana, including links to
multiple other sources, see
http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/saf1209a.php,
http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/saf1209b.php, and
http://www.africafocus.org/docs13/mar1308.php

For additional news reports, visit
http://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00037469.html

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Marikana: The blame game

Mail & Guardian, June 25, 2015 http://mg.co.za

A special report by Niren Tolsi and Paul Botes

[Excerpts only: full text and photographs at
https://laura-7.atavist.com/mgmarikanablamegame]

Introduction

On August 16 2012 the South African police shot and killed 34
striking miners at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana. Nearly
three years later, on the afternoon of June 25 2015, with no warning
to the families of those killed, President Jacob Zuma announced that
he would be releasing the report by retired judge Ian Farlam’s
commission of inquiry into the deaths during the strike — 44 people
in total were killed: 10 people before August 16 — on national
television at 7pm.

At Marikana, the surprise announcement caught the families of the
deceased miners and those shot by police on August 16 unawares —
returning home to the news they scurried around to find television
sets and radios to hear the president’s reading of the report.

Farlam’s report absolved the executive, in particular then police
minister Nathi Mthetwa and Susan Shabangu, the mineral resources
minister at the time, of any responsibility for the deaths.

The Commission did find that Lonmin’s failure to fulfil its social
and labour plans — legally binding obligations on which its new
order mining rights are dependent — should be investigated. It also
found that police should have stopped their tactical operation after
the killing of 17 miners at “scene one”. Instead, police continued
to another koppie, “scene two”, where a further 17 miners were
killed.

Mail & Guardian chief photographer Paul Botes and freelance
journalist Niren Tolsi have been investigating Marikana’s aftermath
since 2012. In this special report, they explore evidence before the
commission that strongly suggests 17 miners, who posed no threat to
the police, were executed by police away from television cameras at
“scene two” on August 16 2012.

They also explore housing shortages in Marikana, which was one of
the motivating factors behind the 2012 strike and test the current
temperature in the North West town which both government and Lonmin
appear to have failed.

Marikana Scene 2: No refuge

On August 16, and in the weeks that followed, the world reacted with
horror to televised images of South African police firing an eight-
second fusillade at striking miners at Marikana, in the North West
province, killing 17 of them.

Away from media cameras, at a koppie about 500 metres away from the
large rock where miners had gathered daily during their wage strike,
the police then appear to have gone on a “free for-all” killing
spree.

About 15 minutes after the shooting at the cattle kraal, described
as “scene one” at the subsequent commission of inquiry, police
members fired 295 rounds of live ammunition at hundreds of miners
hiding on the koppie, where they had run for refuge after witnessing
the earlier slaughter.

Evidence before the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, which investigated
the 44 deaths during the week-long strike, suggested police had
fired with intent and purpose at the koppie. Much of the killing was
carried out with execution-style precision: of the 17 miners shot
dead at what became known as “scene two”, four had bullet wounds in
the head or neck; 11 had been shot in the back.

Police evidence presented to the Farlam Commission shows the scene
of the killings at Marikana. The Big Koppie is where the miners met
daily during the strike; Marikana Scene 1 is the cattle kraal where
the first 17 miners were killed by police; and Marikana Scene 2 is
the koppie where miners ran to for refuge, but were also shot at by
police.

…

Most were shot dead while hiding in the undergrowth, forensic
investigations confirmed. The lifeless body of Nkosiyabo Xalabile,
for example, lay wedged behind a boulder, his arms behind him, still
crossed – as if they had been restrained in some way. His eyes were
still open, suggesting the death had been a painful one.

Xalabile had been shot from above, an R5 bullet tearing through the
bottom of the left side of his neck and exiting through his ribs.
The shells of the bullets that killed him were found 2.8 metres
away, above his body on some rocks. He was huddled at the foot of a
tree, among bushes near the rock when he was killed.

He had not, as police later alleged, been attacking them. Nor did he
appear to be armed: in early police pictures, there was no evidence
of weapons associated with Xalabile. Those taken later showed two
metal rods nearby.

Independent pathologists found Xalabile’s posture “with hands and
wrists crossed at his lower back … (which was) exceedingly strange
for a live person with these injuries to adopt”. They concluded that
the nature of his wounds and his body positioning “opens the
possibility that the deceased was handcuffed shortly after the
injuries. It suggests that the handcuffs were removed prior to the
[police] photography.”

Immediate or early medical attention could perhaps have saved
Xalabile’s life, the pathologists concluded. This may have allowed
him to recover and return to his wife of 19 days, Lilitha. “Some
mineworkers put their hands [in the] air to show they weren’t
fighting/attacking the police officers but they were shot.”

In their closing arguments, the commission’s evidence leaders
described the actions of the police as a “free for all”. This
appeared to have been perpetrated with impunity, and with scant
regard for standing orders that require warnings before the use of
live ammunition and for the lower body to be targeted. Miners were
shot at while hiding and even attempting to surrender. They appear
to have been fired on while presenting no immediate threat to the
police officers.

In a statement to the commission, miner Nkosikhona Mjuba, who
survived scene two, said: “The police officers started shooting the
mineworkers with long and short firearms. Some mineworkers put their
hands [in the] air to show they weren’t fighting/attacking the
police officers but they were shot.”

Three survivors: Siphete Phatsha cut off his own injured toe trying
to escape from the police’s bullets. Mzoxolo Mgidiwana was shot down
by police, then interrogated and then shot again, this time in the
groin. Bathini Nova was shot eight times while trying to surrender.

Recalling how he hid on the koppie almost three years ago, Siphete
Phatsha (51) said police seemed to be hunting them down: “I could
see police coming into the bushes and shooting at people hiding
there. Where I was hiding, they couldn’t shoot at me, but I was
waiting to die. I thought about my children and I thought about only
one thing: that I am leaving my children, and that I am going to
die,” he said. The father of five from Nqeleni in the Eastern Cape
had been at scene one when the Tactical Response Team line opened
fire on the miners. He had walked off the koppie alongside strike
leader Mgcineni Noki, whose face was then half blown away by high-
velocity bullets, and Mzoxolo Magidiwana, who said that police had
shot him down, and interrogated him before pumping further shots
into his body, including two to the groin that mutilated his penis
and scrotum.

Phatsha was shot in the foot but managed to clamber into the cattle
kraal at “scene one” to seek refuge with several other miners.
There, he lay prostrate, pretending to be dead.

…

Shadrack Mtshamba, a rock-drill operator at Marikana’s Four Belt
Shaft, huddled between two rocks quite close to Nova. He also
witnessed another miner being mown down while surrendering: “One
protester suggested that we should come out of the hiding place with
our hands up,” Mtshamba said in a statement to the commission.

“[The miner] said ‘Guys, let’s surrender’,” Mashamba stated. “He
then went out of the group with his hands raised. He was shot on his
hands or arms. He kneeled down and as he tried to stand up, still
with his hands up, he was shot in the stomach and he fell down. He
then tried to stand up but he was shot at again and he fell down. He
tried to crawl but could not do so.”

None of the police leaders on the ground provided justifiable
reasons for not halting the tactical operation after SAPS shot dead
17 people at “Scene 1”.

…

The police killings at “scene two” also extended to the planting of
weapons on at least six dead miners, the Farlam Commission heard.

“This was a totally unacceptable process,” the evidence leaders
argued. They noted that in the case of one dead miner, Makosandile
Mkhonjwa, this “involved adorning his body with four different
weapons, none of which were anywhere in the vicinity of his body in
the many earlier photographs that we have of his body.”

Fifty-six-year-old Thabiso Thelejane was shot twice in the back of
the head, leaving a gaping wound 2cm behind his right ear. A second
high-velocity bullet struck him on the left side of the head, about
10cm above and 3cm behind his left ear. A third bullet entered his
right buttock and lodged in the left side of his pelvis. There were
also several abrasions on his knees and forehead.

Thelejane’s body was found about 20 metres to the east of Mdizeni,
also face down on the ground. There were no weapons around him. The
independent pathologists found that he was facing a north-westerly
direction and running away from the NIU/K9 line when he was shot in
the back of the head. Policing experts at the commission testified
that after the killings at scene one, the police operation on August
16 should have been stopped immediately, or at least during the 15
minutes between the two sets of killings.

…

Major General William Mpembe, the overall commander on the day, told
the commission that he was travelling to board a Lonmin helicopter
to fly over the area when the shooting happened and had been unaware
of it. North West police commissioner Lieutenant General Zukiswa
Mbombo testified that she was in the toilet at the time and was,
likewise, unaware of the “scene one” killings. Despite being in the
Joint Operations Centre when Botes heard the fusillade over the
radio, Major General Charl Annandale, the Joint Operations Centre
chairperson, testified that he only knew about the killings about 45
minutes after the incident because of radio problems. Yet, less than
eight minutes after the fusillade, Brigadier Suzette Pretorius, who
was sitting with Ananndale in the Joint Operations Centre, sent a
text message to an Independent Police Investigations Directorate
official. It read: “Having operation at Wonderkop. Bad. Bodies.
Please prepare your members as going to be bad.”

The commission’s evidence leaders argued that Mbombo, Mpembe,
Annandale and Calitz should all be held responsible for the 17
deaths at scene two.

Showhouses and shacks: Life in a ‘living hell’

…

The lack of proper housing for workers who, in the main, lived in
shack settlements surrounding its mining operation — and still do
— was one of the driving factors behind the August 2012 strike at
Lonmin that left 44 people dead.

The squalor and deprivation of informal settlements like Nkaneng and
Big House is highlighted by the imaginary games children play using
heaps of plastic rubbish piled up along informal roads.

Homes are rudimentary shacks made from corrugated scrap metal, wood
and cardboard.

Despite a massive power station near Nkaneng, which serves Lonmin’s
operation, there is no electricity in this settlement where
thousands live. Wires for guerrilla electricity connections criss-
cross underfoot.

Water is sourced from one of the public taps placed sporadically
around the community. Many of the standpipes have been dry since
2013 and locals murmur that a R900 payment to the right person will
ensure a reconnection.

“This is a living hell,” says miner Siphete Phatsha, standing
outside the rusted one-room shack he shares with his adult son and
nephew, both unemployed job-seekers from the Eastern Cape. Phatsha
walks “a long way” with his wheelbarrow to a communal tank to fill
25-litre drums with water for their daily use, and to quench the
thirst of his tenderly cared for spinach garden. The garden helps
supplement their Spartan meals that centre on stomach-filling pap.

Employed by Lonmin since 2007, Patsha hankers after the dignity that
a flush toilet and an electricity switch affords. A formal home with
walls to discourage the winter cold would ease his joints and
injuries sustained after police shot him during the 2012 strike.

,,,

At the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, Lonmin maintained that it had
failed to build the 5 500 units because of the 2008 platinum price
drop. Any plans to finally add to the three show-houses at Marikana
Extension Two have been abandoned, however.

In 2013, the company announced that it had donated the land, about
50 hectares with some serviced stands, to the government.

…

Lonmin’s 2010 annual report estimated that 50% of the population
living within a 15km radius of its Marikana operation lived in
informal housing and lacked access to basic services such as running
water and electricity.

The company provided formal housing, including hostels, for less
than 10% of its directly employed staff, which numbered about 24 000
in 2012.

At the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, former Lonmin chief operating
officer Mohamed Seedat conceded under cross-examination that housing
conditions at Marikana were “truly appalling”. He also conceded that
the Lonmin’s board and executive had, post facto, recognised the
link between the critical shortage of affordable housing and the
2012 strike.

Seedat maintained, however, that Lonmin’s social and labour plan
(SLP) promises did not require the building of houses but were,
rather, an obligation to broker an interaction between the company’s
workers and private financial institutions so that the former could
access mortgage bonds.

The evidence leaders at the commission argued that Lonmin’s
interpretation of their SLP obligations was “not credible” and
inconsistent with the terms of the SLPs; the annual SLP reports
Lonmin furnished to the department of mineral resources; the
company’s sustainable development reports and its close-out report
to the ministry after five years.

“This attempt by Lonmin to wash its hands of [a legally-binding]
obligation that it repudiated must be rejected,” the evidence
leaders stated in their closing heads of argument.

Even on Lonmin’s “implausible” reading of their SLP obligations, the
company appears to have failed. In October 2006 it announced to much
fanfare and in the presence of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that it had
struck a R318-million housing deal with Rand Merchant Bank.

The bank would put up the financing for housing for 3 000 workers,
with Lonmin providing surety in the form of shares if workers were
retrenched. The deal was never followed through.

Lonmin ignored its SLP obligations, which were meant to compel
mining companies to address structural problems within the mining
sector, including the dehumanising migrant labour system, which
breaks up nuclear families and contributes to social divisions.

Its transformation committee chairperson, then Lonmin non-executive
director and current deputy president of the country, Cyril
Ramaphosa, exercised oversight of Lonmin’s SLP obligations.
Ramaphosa professed to not reading the SLP reports and being unaware
of its failures at the commission.

The department of mineral resources, meanwhile, appears incapable of
exercising oversight to ensure that Lonmin, alongside many other
mining companies, take a more human rights-based approach to
transforming their workers’ lives.

The Human Rights Commission proposed that Judge Farlam recommend
President Jacob Zuma “convene a task team/working group to undertake
a full investigation of the underlying causes of the dire living
conditions evident in mine-affected communities”

The South African Human Rights Commission, in its closing heads of
argument submitted to the Farlam Commission, noted the “failure of
the state, the department of mineral resources primarily, to monitor
and enforce compliance with SLP obligations, as well as ensuring the
necessary government co-operation and co-ordination required to
successfully implement projects identified as part of an SLP”.

Noting the “frequent failure by mining companies to comply with
their SLP obligations” the Human Rights Commission bemoaned an
amendment to Farlam’s terms of reference which divided its work into
“phase one” (an investigation of the events of August 2012) and
“phase two” (a broader investigation into the socio-economic context
of the mining sector as a whole).

The division, coupled with Lonmin’s refusal to hand over crucial
company documents until very late in the Farlam hearings, or not at
all, hamstrung the commission’s ability to make wide-ranging,
transformative and human rights-based recommendations, the Human
Rights Commission argued.

Lonmin was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s 2012 socially
responsible index, gaining “best performer” status for its social
and environmental work.

The Benchmarks Foundation’s Police Gap Seven report released in 2013
noted that between 2003-2007 most of the company’s “social capital”
went into the Lonmin Community Trust Fund, “which was then rapidly
closed down”.

While crying post-2008 poverty, the mining house also appeared to be
involved in some solipsistic bookkeeping. A report titled “The
Bermuda Connection: Profit Shifting and Unaffordability at Lonmin
1999-2012”, compiled for the commission by the Alternative
Information Centre’s Dirk Forslund, alleged large-scale tax
avoidance through the movement of profits to a subsidiary in an off-
shore tax haven, Western Metal Sales.

Despite having two major buyers for its platinum, the company’s
South African subsidiary, Western Platinum Limited, which produces
the majority of the company’s platinum group metals was, until 2007,
paying 2% of its turnover to Western Metal Sales, registered in
Bermuda, as sales commission for marketing services. From 2008 to
2012 this commission totalled R1.2-billion.

The evidence leaders calculated that in 2006-2011, when Lonmin could
have built the 5 500 houses for its employees at a cost of R665-
million, it had spent R1.3-billion on “marketing” commissions to a
subsidiary.

The Human Rights Commission proposed that retired judge Ian Farlam
recommend a full investigation into Lonmin’s SLP compliance.

It further proposed that Farlam recommend President Jacob Zuma
“convene a task team/ working group to undertake a full
investigation of the underlying causes of the dire living conditions
evident in mine-affected communities” and the department of mineral
resources “undertake a strategic and detailed review of the
deficiencies and failures of the SLP system identified in the
commission’s work, and to propose amendments, revisions or new
initiatives to improve compliance with the legal and regulatory
framework that establishes the SLP system.”

Lonmin were unable to respond to questions about their housing and
hostel conversion projects initiated after being granted their new
order mining rights in time for publication. Nor did the company
respond to questions relating to their transfer pricing activity
during the period 2006-2012.

In October 2014, in response to questions from amaBhungane — the
M&G’s investigative unit — pertaining to the 2% of annual turnover
payments to the Bermuda-based subsidiary Western Metal Sales, Lonmin
spokesperson Sue Vey said: “This company [Western Metal Sales] has
long been dormant and is no longer in use.”

A time of retrenchments: Marikana in 2015

[For this section see full report at
https://laura-7.atavist.com/mgmarikanablamegame]

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

Response to “What is fascism?”

By James Thompson

I wrote the article “What is fascism?” in 2010 in an effort to clarify the concept of “fascism.” It occurs to me that this is an appropriate time to revisit the article and update it.

We have been through a remarkable period following the election of the first African-American President of the United States, Barack Obama. Following his election, some on the left called it a “sea change” and a “qualitative change” in the political direction of this country. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Although it must be conceded that several important issues have been resolved in a favorable direction, the political movement in the USA over the last seven years has been mostly backward. Many of us are happy that US- Cuba relations appear to be improving and that the Cuban 5 were returned home. Many of us are happy that same-sex marriage is now permissible. Many of us are happy that marijuana is now legal in some states. Many of us are happy that more people have health insurance.

However, it appears that the nation has taken two steps forward and three steps backward. Although US-Cuba relations appear to be improving, the US government is spending massive amounts of US taxpayer money to destabilize the Cuban government. Although more people have health insurance, the quality of their health coverage is generally poor. Universal health coverage is not being discussed.

One rallying cry of the Obama campaign in 2008, The Employee Free Choice Act, was immediately taken off the table as soon as Obama assumed office. The union movement in the USA continues to crumble and deteriorate.

However, the most frightening development under Obama has been the continuation of the development of an openly terroristic government highly influenced by finance capital. As the US government terrorizes the world by bombing, the use of drones, the use of US military troops in foreign countries, it terrorizes its own people at home. Recently, it has become the new normal for African-Americans to be beaten, shot and otherwise murdered by the most visible agents of the state, the local police. It has become the new normal for immigrant workers to be detained and deported. Openly fascist politicians, through the emergence of the Tea Party, are being elected to political office and this is part of the new normal.

Almost all US politicians, left and right, demonize Russia and fully support the fascist regime installed by the US government in the Ukraine through a coup d’ etat. No one blinks an eye at the fact that NATO is now surrounding the Western border of Russia. No one addresses the fact that the Obama administration is spending vast amounts of taxpayer money to terrorize the people of Russia, the people of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and China.

Some on the left opine that fascism cannot develop if there is no credible threat from the left. For this reason, they argue “It can’t happen here.” However, as Don Sloan argued some years ago “It can happen here, it is happening here, it has happened here.”

One must consider what is a “credible threat from the left.”

People in the US tend to believe that the world revolves around the USA. They bray about “American exceptionalism.” They fail to recognize that there is a credible threat from the left around the world, in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and elsewhere. As the left grows in these regions of the world, imperialism morphs more and more into fascism.

In the US today, there is a political struggle developing between two Democratic Party candidates for president. It is important to have a clear understanding of the political spectrum in the USA today. If all politicians in the US were subjected to an ideological examination, none could be characterized as legitimate left. The CPUSA is morally and ideologically bankrupt, irrelevant, defunct and dead. Traditionally, CPs around the world have been characterized as the “legitimate left.” No such entity exists in the USA today. Although no one in the CPUSA has been recently persecuted, the CPUSA is not a viable political party and has virtually no influence on the political direction of the country.

The political struggle between the two Democratic Party candidates is a struggle between a far right candidate, Hillary Clinton, and a center left candidate, Bernie Sanders. The GOP candidates all occupy an extreme right or ultra right political space. They would make Barry Goldwater blush. In fact, Clinton might make Mr. Goldwater blush.

In the struggle for the primary elections, it is clear that if Bernie Sanders loses, the country will take a sharp right turn politically.

It is unlikely that in a rational world, anyone would argue that Bernie Sanders represents a credible threat from the left. However, the political ideology of the USA has shifted so far to the right (with the able assistance of President Obama) that Sanders might be considered “left.” There have been some reports that panic is developing in the Clinton campaign, and that panic could prove to be contagious. Clinton’s Wall Street backers may soon be quivering and quaking in response to a candidate who calls himself a “socialist” (even though he is not a socialist), calls for a tax on billionaires and speaks openly about “income inequality.”

We all should know by now that campaign promises are not the same as public policy. However, is it better to support a candidate with reactionary campaign promises or a candidate with somewhat progressive campaign promises? People of conscience and people on the left in the United States have a choice in front of them. Should they support a candidate who is somewhat progressive or should they sit on their hands and let the reactionaries win the day? Will people on the left continue to abstain from politics or will they wake up to the real threat coming from the openly fascist elements of the political spectrum? Will they continue to monkey with their phones and send out tweets about their individual escapades or will they struggle for progress? Will they recognize that the terroristic policies of the US government threaten the survival of all living things on the earth or will they continue to chant “It can’t happen here?”

AfricaFocus Bulletin
May 25, 2015 (150525)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“The failure to acknowledge race as a fundamental feature of today’s
unequal world order remains a striking weakness of radical as well
as conventional analyses of that order. Current global and national
socioeconomic hierarchies are not mere residues of a bygone era of
primitive accumulation. Just as it should be inconceivable to
address the past, present, and future of American society without
giving central attention to the role of African American struggles,
so analyzing and addressing 21st-century structures of global
inequality requires giving central attention to Africa.”

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/afr1505.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/afr1505.php

As readers are aware, AfricaFocus features reposted material
published recently, with the editor’s own comments limited to a
short introduction. This week is an exception, in that the article
reposted (and quoted in the paragraph above) is one that I wrote
more than a decade ago. I was led to
reread it while trying to reflect on the many recent events
reminding all of us of the unequal values given to human lives in
today’s world order, both between and within countries and
continents. These inequalities are shaped by race, place, class,
gender, and multiple other factors. But they are also molded by a
long history that systematically makes the African continent, those
who live there, and those who come from there particularly
vulnerable.

In my view, the connection between global and African realities is
most directly apparent in the realm of issues such as climate
change, migration, and the unequal flows of economic resources,
which are regularly featured in AfricaFocus. But how these
structural stresses affect the highly visible terrain of political
conflict, violence, and human rights varies enormously in its
particularities by country. General narratives, including that
sketched in this essay, are always inadequate, and in many respects
subjective. But today’s date  (May 25, Africa Day) is also an
appropriate one to turn to more general reflections. I am convinced
that the basic points made in this essay still hold true and hope it
may be of interest to many AfricaFocus readers.

For two publications in which I have attempted to address the
global/African connections with respect to the issue of migration,
see the background paper “African Migration, Global Inequalities,
and Human Rights: Connecting the Dots,” 2011
(http://www.africafocus.org/editor/nai-migration.php), written for
the Nordic Africa Institute, and the short pamphlet “Migration and
Global Justice: From Africa to the United States” 2008
(http://www.africafocus.org/editor/afsc0804.pdf), written for the
American Friends Service Committee.

An earlier related essay on “Global Apartheid,” by Salih Booker and
William Minter, appeared in The Nation in 2001
(http://www.thenation.com/article/global-apartheid).

Links to additional publications available on-line can be found at
http://www.africafocus.org/editor.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Invisible Hierarchies: Africa, Race, and Continuities in the World
Order

Science & Society, Vol. 69, No. 3, July 2005, 449-457

William Minter

Abstract:

The failure to acknowledge race as a fundamental feature of today’s
unequal world order remains a striking weakness of radical as well
as conventional analyses of that order. Current global and national
socioeconomic hierarchies are not mere residues of a bygone era of
primitive accumulation. Just as it should be inconceivable to
address the past, present, and future of American society without
giving central attention to the role of African American struggles,
so analyzing and addressing 21st-century structures of global
inequality requires giving central attention to Africa.

“We acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade, including the
transatlantic slave trade, were appalling tragedies in the history
of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism but also
in terms of their magnitude, organized nature and especially their
negation of the essence of the victims, and further acknowledge that
slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should
always have been so, especially the transatlantic slave trade, and
are among the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial
discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that
Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian
descent and indigenous peoples were victims of these acts and
continue to be victims of their consequences. — Declaration of the
World Conference Against Racism, Durban, South Africa, September 8,
2001

Coming only days before September 11, this acknowledgment by world
governments of the legal premise of the reparations movement gained
little media attention. The 62-page declaration and program of
action, already undermined by a last-minute U. S. withdrawal from
the conference, faded into obscurity even more rapidly than the
conclusions of other global conferences that have proliferated in
recent decades. In any case, the commitments made in Durban to
repair the consequences of racism were even vaguer than most such
conference commitments, such as new pledges to finance development
adopted by consensus at the Monterrey poverty summit in March 2002.

Yet the failure to acknowledge race as a fundamental feature of
today’s unequal world order is not confined to Bush administration
unilateralists or international diplomats crafting new compromise
language for promises destined to be betrayed. With some notable
exceptions, such as Winant, 2001 and Marable, 2004, authors of the
vast array of commentaries on globalization and even of the more
recent crop of writings about empire treat race only in passing —
if they mention it at all. Such reticence about race applies not
only to advocates of the Washington Consensus of free-market
fundamentalism and to cheerleaders for U. S. empire, but also to
more critical analysts of a variety of persuasions from center to
left.

The end of the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1994 marked the
demise of racial discrimination as explicit state policy, just as
the mid-1960s victories of the civil rights movement in the United
States had marked the end of the Jim Crow system of segregation in
the U. S. south. But the persistence of de facto racial inequality
into the 21st century is pervasive in both nations, as well as
globally. Its relative invisibility in public commentary and
analysis must be considered a fundamental feature of the current
moment requiring explanation.

21st Century Color Lines

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003) and other analysts, focusing on the
current U. S. racial order, have posited an ideology of “color-blind
racism,” which allows for continuation of racial inequality while
firmly rejecting overt racial distinctions or discrimination. One of
the key components of this ideology is to deny the link between past
and present, so that people regardless of their background are seen
as starting on a level playing field. This assumption fits well with
the companion ideology stressing the virtues of the neutral market,
which all are presumed to approach with similar possibilities of
success. Such an ideology gains credibility from the visible success
of individuals from the subordinate group, which does in the case of
race mark a break with earlier ideologies of rigid discrimination.
With successful individuals in the foreground, and even celebrated
as illustrating diversity, it becomes easier to view continuing
structural inequality as relatively unimportant, or even to dismiss
it altogether. Persistent poverty or other disadvantages can
conveniently be attributed entirely to individual defects, and seen
as unrelated to past or present discrimination.

The dominant ideology thus diverts attention from the structural
bases of persistent and rising inequality. Contrary views are
portrayed as divisive promotion of class warfare or racial
hostility. Meanwhile, progressive forces have failed to forge a
persuasive counter-perspective integrating both race and class that
similarly facilitates united opposition to the dominant order.
Recently Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres have argued that race is
like a miner’s canary, with damage to minority communities signaling
the damaging structural hierarchies permeating the society (Guinier
and Torres, 2002). They further argue that racial mobilization,
combined with openness to wider coalition-building, must be a
fundamental component of progressive action in the United States.
Many others have made similar arguments, while documenting the
persistence of racial inequality, in unemployment, incarceration,
denial of voting rights, and other arenas. Yet it is no secret that
progressive forces have had little success in implementing such
strategies on more than a fragmentary local basis.

Building a progressive U. S. internationalism that acknowledges the
impact of race, both internally and globally, is an even more
intimidating challenge than that on the domestic front. The growing
impact of immigration also makes such issues unavoidable in other
industrialized countries as well. The much-celebrated demonstrations
in Seattle and similar anti-corporate globalization events have been
notable for their failure to make such connections, despite efforts
to do so by many of the activist groups involved (Martinez, 2000).
Despite trans-Atlantic contacts made at the World Conference against
Racism, even for most supporters the U. S. reparations movement
retains an almost exclusive domestic focus, rather than a campaign
situated within the context of damages done to the African continent
as well. Despite overwhelming opposition among Black Americans to
Bush’s war in Iraq, and efforts by groups such as Black Voices for
Peace, the anti-war movement has generally been unable to make
connections with broader opposition to domestic and global
inequality.

Neither the conceptual nor practical solutions to this impasse are
easy to discern. But surely one prerequisite is for progressive
analysts to acknowledge that W. E. B. Du Bois’s prediction that the
problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line
applies to the new century as well. Such continuity must surely
count among the deep structures still characterizing the world
today.

This is not to deny the significance of recent changes, whether the
shift from a bipolar to a unipolar geostrategic order, the
accelerating velocity of global communication, the triumph
symbolized by Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994, or the
globalization of threats of terrorism and counter-terrorism.
Nevertheless, both the visible and real global hierarchies, whether
measured in terms of economic power and privilege, human security,
or access to effective political rights, show a close correlation
with the order established by the centuries of slavery, conquest,
and colonial rule.

To the extent that the gatherings of the World Social Forum in
Brazil and India do prefigure another possible world vision, it is
still a world in which one continent — Africa — is strikingly
underrepresented. [as of writing of this article in 2005]
Speculation about the rise of new forces to global prominence to
challenge U. S. hegemony center on the advance of Asia, including
China and India as well as Japan. The potential weight of the Asian
continent, with more than half of the estimated world population of
some 6.4 billion, is clearly linked to sheer numbers as well as to
the structure of the world system. But the profound gap between
Africa (some 870 million people) and less populous continents such
as Europe (729 million), North America (509 million) and South
America (367 million) is easily visible in any compilation of
comparative statistics of development, from life expectancy to gross
national product to vulnerability to the AIDS pandemic.

The point here is neither to rehearse such familiar statistics nor
to call for continent-based quotas in reflections about the current
state of the world. Rather, it is to suggest that the Guinier-Torres
analogy of the miner’s canary applies globally as well as in the
United States. Just as it should be inconceivable to address the
past, present, and future of American society without giving central
attention to the role of African American struggles, so analyzing
and addressing the structures of global inequality requires giving
central attention to Africa.

The mechanisms responsible for creating and maintaining such
inequality are not unique to Africa, but their effects are most
starkly visible there. That is why Africa figures prominently on the
agenda of international institutions, from the World Bank to the
panoply of specialized UN agencies. The fact that Africa
nevertheless remains marginal to public debate across the political
spectrum outside the continent is an indicator of the absence of a
global social contract and of the current weakness of movements to
establish a world order based on principles other than market
values.

Within the United States, as Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro
convincingly showed in their landmark book Black Wealth, White
Wealth (1995), inheritance remains a central mechanism in
perpetuating racial inequality, even when there is significant
upward mobility in jobs and income for some. On a global scale, the
common-sense case for the lasting effect on the current global
hierarchy of centuries of primitive accumulation of wealth by
violence is so obvious that it seems incredible that it is not
generally acknowledged, whether or not one argues that there should
be a statute of limitations on responsibility for repairing the
damage. Yet in fact such causal links are commonly dismissed as
irrelevant “ancient history” or simply ignored by policy- makers and
scholars alike. The debate opened up by such classic works as Eric
Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery (1944) and Walter Rodney’s How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) has yet to be integrated into
current reflections about globalization and empire.

Global Apartheid

Certainly there is much that is new about the current moment in
Africa, as elsewhere in the world. The end of the Cold War removed
the primary strategic imperative for outside subsidies to African
re- gimes. The AIDS pandemic, which in the 1980s was largely
confined to central Africa, has swept through much of the continent,
revers- ing previous advances in raising life expectancy. It now
threatens almost every sector of economy and society. Few African
cities now lack multiple internet cafes, and the growth of mobile
phone use is the most rapid anywhere. Although the trend is less
well studied than in the Caribbean or Latin America, the dispersion
of new African immigrants throughout the world has made remittances
a central feature of survival for many African communities and a
major com- ponent of many national economies. Each of these trends,
it could be argued, is a sign of deep structural change as well as a
feature of the current moment.

Nevertheless, continuities with previous periods and reinforcement
of long-established structures are equally striking. As recently
summarized in an article analyzing the causes of increasing world
inequality (Wade, 2004), the statistics on recent inequality trends
are much disputed. Results vary widely with the measures and data
used. But what evidence there is for structural advance in the
global South comes almost entirely from trends in China and India.
At a structural level, despite such blips as a modest increase in U.
S. textile imports from several African countries as a result of
tariff concessions in the U.S.-Africa Growth and Opportunity Act,
the role of African countries in the world economy is still
overwhelmingly that of suppliers of primary commodities, as has been
the case since colonial conquest over a century ago. The dynamics of
world markets are of course different for different commodities
ranging from coffee and cotton to oil and gold. But not even South
Africa has managed to find a sustainable strategy to emulate the
East Asian competitive challenges to the established G-7 economic
powers.

Despite multiple shifts in terminology and emphasis, moreover,
neither reformist African governments nor stronger critics of the
Washington Consensus among African activists and scholars have
succeeded in altering the course of the international financial
institutions that have insisted on putting macroeconomic adjustment
and trade liberalization above all else. The World Bank and the IMF
have indeed forfeited any credibility with both African and
international civil society. But alternative agendas for
“sustainable development” and “human development,” despite
endorsement by multilateral agencies, global conferences, and even
dissenting voices within the World Bank, have lost ground to market
fundamentalism in practice.

While the first decades of African independence saw significant
advances in health and education, subsequent decades have instead
seen an overall pattern of decline. Disparities such as these were
and are reinforced not only by economic structures such as commodity
markets and the accumulation of capital controlled by the capitalist
classes of rich countries, but also by continuities of political
influence. The victories of greater autonomy won by anti-colonial
struggles were eroded first by the Cold War and the continued
influence of ex-colonial powers. Regardless of the political
ideology of post-colonial leaders, the model of the colonial state
remained the dominant guide to the exercise of power. And in
response to the economic crises of the 1980s and the 1990s, African
states lost more and more influence to the directing hand of the
World Bank and clubs of creditors/donors.

While contemporary critics of globalization lament the loss of
autonomy of national states, in Africa the empirical evidence for
such an earlier golden age is weak indeed. Whether for the first
wave of independent states in the 1960s, or for those winning power
in the 1970s and 1980s after armed struggles, the period of hope and
popular mobilization was quickly cut short. The entry of a free
South Africa onto the African scene in the last decade has
significantly changed the context for continental cooperation, and
many see the African Union as an arena for both wider public debate
and action on some of the continent’s crises. But whether one
attributes Pretoria’s compromises to pragmatism or to class
interests, it would be difficult to argue that the vision of African
renaissance has won much leverage for Africa in institutions
deciding global policies affecting the continent.

Debates on the causes of this reality, and on how to find a path
ahead that avoids both Afro-pessimism and Afro-optimism, are
complex. But surely it is necessary to go beyond national arenas or
the failure of particular leaders and to include analysis of the
lack of democracy in global institutions that have relatively more
weight in Africa than almost anywhere else in the world. To counter
growing global inequality requires state action on a scale
equivalent to the global mechanisms that reinforce that inequality.

Multilateral institutions dealing with almost every conceivable
issue have in fact proliferated in parallel with economic
globalization. There has also been significant involvement by a
burgeoning “international civil society,” ranging from non-
governmental organizations in the global North to activist groups in
both North and South. The impact at the level of ideas has been
significant. But it is also the case that the more influential the
institution, the more likely its effective governance is effectively
controlled by representatives of rich, predominantly white,
countries.

Whether or not one uses the term “global apartheid” (Booker and
Minter, 2001), any short-hand description of the global order at the
dawn of the 21st century must somehow acknowledge the double
standards implicit in an international system of global minority
rule, based on the entrenched assumption that some human lives are
more valuable than others based on the accident of place and race of
birth. The tragedy of 9/11 and the war on Iraq is not only the
direct damage inflicted by those events, but also the
reinforcement given to diversion of attention from the global
holocaust of the AIDS pandemic and parallel threats to human
security.

It would be a mistake to see this tacit acceptance of the differ-
ential value of human life as simply a cultural or ideological
epiphenomenon less worthy of analysis than the “hard” structures of
global political economy, geostrategic competition, or preemptive
militarism. Long-term rationality, even from the point of view of
the more farsighted guardians of global capitalism, may dictate
attention to the range of global crises that have their most severe
impact in Africa (see, for example, the report of the World
Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, at
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/wcsdg). Seemingly race-neutral
goals such as poverty alleviation and other noble objectives may win
approval in conference after conference.

But just as national divisions are not only conceptual but embedded
in laws distinguishing citizens and non-citizens, so the assumptions
of racial and cultural hierarchy are embedded in the political
discourse and practices that reinforce global apartheid.

Making “another world possible” requires analyses and strategies for
political mobilization that do not evade this stubborn legacy from
the past.

References

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2003. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind
Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United
States. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Booker, Salih, and William Minter. 2001. “Global Apartheid.” The
Nation, July 9.

Guinier, Lani, and Gerald Torres. 2002. The Miner’s Canary:
Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Marable, Manning. 2004 “Globalization and Racialization.” Znet,
August 13.

Martinez, Elizabeth (Betita). 2000. “Where Was the Color in
Seattle?: Looking for Reasons Why the Great Battle was so White.”
Colorlines, 3:1 (Spring).

Oliver, Melvin L., and Thomas M. Shapiro. 1995. Black Wealth, White
Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. New York: Routledge.

Rodney, Walter. 1972. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London/Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania: Bogle L’Ouverture Publications and Tanzania
Publishing House.

Wade, Robert Hunter. 2004. “On the Causes of Increasing World
Inequality, or Why the Matthew Effect Prevails.” New Political
Economy, 8:2 (June).

Williams, Eric. 1944. Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill, North
Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.

Winant, Howard. 2001. The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy
Since World War II. New York: Basic Books.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org