Geography Archives: Africa

After four years of Trump’s ‘America first’ isolationism, U.S. President Joe Biden announced “America is back”. His White House has since tried to find allies against China and Russia.

China is forgiving 23 interest-free loans for 17 African countries, after already cancelling $3.4 billion and restructuring $15 billion of debt from 2000-2019. Beijing pledged more infrastructure projects and offered favorable trade deals in a “win-win” model of “mutually beneficial cooperation.”

Borders barely exist for these white bodies; rather, borders are lived as a hot summer inconvenience of queues at airport security. But for the dark bodies carrying their Global South passports, the Mediterranean is a humiliating border.

With no national force with the vision and power to offer an emancipatory alternative to politics that turns neighbors against each other, the country is on a knife edge.

“I was held face down at gunpoint with my arms and legs bound behind for half an hour, while they fired shots and chased down my comrades,” CPS central committee member Vuyiswa Maseko told Peoples Dispatch.

Africa’s political liberation and economic emancipation can’t be one-country affairs, but pan-African combined with international solidarity.

As tensions between the United States and China rise, Washington is intent on contesting Beijing’s influence around the world, particularly in the Global South. The U.S. government has ramped up its efforts to influence international media and public opinion. In this new Cold War, South Africa is once again in the crosshairs.

Leaders and officials from Russia, France and the United States are vying for influence over the 1.3 billion people living within the African Union’s 55 member-states.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR. Colonial-style currency board arrangements have enabled continuing imperialist exploitation decades after the end of formal colonial rule. Such neo-colonial monetary systems persist despite modest reforms.

This interview is part of a series with the Blended Finance Project a group of unions, non-governmental organizations and academics who are concerned about the Canadian government’s embrace of what is called “blended finance.”

The liberation struggle against colonialism, if it is to be a total liberation struggle, is not only for the political conquest of territory (‘flag independence’); it is a struggle to liberate the people from the tentacles of colonialism.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR. Like so many others, Africans have long been misled. Alleged progress under imperialism has long been used to legitimize exploitation. Meanwhile, Western colonial powers have been replaced by neo-colonial governments and international institutions serving their interests.

The police attempted to arrest CPS member Bongi Nkambule, who was abducted and tortured by the police in March. When they failed to capture him, they took his wife into custody and beat her up in the police station. There has been an upsurge of resistance in Swaziland recently.

It is timely not only because NATO is concluding its meeting in Madrid as we speak, but also AFRICOM as one of the many arms of NATO  is conducting its yearly military exercises called “African Lion” on the African continent at this time.

Video images captured the horrific actions of Moroccan security forces armed and trained by the United States through the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and working on behalf of the Spanish government, systematically beating and slaughtering African migrants on June 24, 2022.

1 year ago, in June and July, a massive uprising led by Communists in Swaziland threatened to overthrow the last absolute monarchy in Africa. With the help of its imperialist allies, the Swazi monarchy brutally repressed this uprising, but they have only temporarily delayed the inevitable. One year later, we can reflect on the conditions that caused the revolution, its successes and missed opportunities, the role of imperialism in tipping the scales to a comprador bourgeoisie, and what has changed in the year since in Swaziland as revolutionary agitation continues.

Long seen as means to seek advantage on the pretext of providing mutual benefit, free trade agreements may increasingly become economic weapons in the new Cold War, disrupting earlier globalization.

U.S. media outlets and politicians have nearly all parroted the same praises of the recent “peace agreements” between Israel and the repressive U.S.-backed governments of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.

Liberal Democrats shamefully all voted for the “Countering Malign Russian Influence Activities in Africa” Act—seems like relic from bygone era

Senegalese President Macky Sall highlighted the relationship that exists between Russia and African countries, recalling that the Eurasian nation “played a tremendous role in the independence of the African continent and this will never be forgotten”.