Patrick Bond

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Following a debate with chief World Bank economist Shanta Devarajan, Patrick Bond decries the bank’s ability to ignore its own research and continue to insist that Africa is growing richer per person. The bank’s emphasis on GDP (gross domestic product) entirely ignores the loss to African societies and environments from raw material extraction, while the ‘talk left, walk right’ stance of so many of its officials smacks of schizophrenia, Bond writes.

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Now two years in the making, the South African state's War on Poverty (WoP) is ‘one of the most clandestine operations in South African history’, writes Patrick Bond.

© abhalali.org

As the World Cup draws to its much-anticipated finale, the democratic integrity of South Africa continues to be intoxicated, writes Patrick Bond. Bond recounts a recent anti-xenophobia rally in search of a better society, which was only to result in a run-in with the law. Bond unearths the deliberate distortion of South Africans’ constitution and freedom of speech to accommodate Fifa – soon to move on, leaving little benefits behind for its host society.

Mark Turner

Added to the raft of problems soccer-loving cynics have predicted will plague South Africa as a result of the World Cup is the threat of 'another dose of xenophobia' from both state and society, writes Patrick Bond. Allowing immigrants to be blamed for crime and joblessness, says Bond, is a ‘scapegoat’ strategy for the government’s failure to address root causes of the social stress, from mass unemployment and housing shortages, to ‘South Africa’s regional geopolitical interests which create ...read more

‘No South African threw themselves more passionately into so many global and local battles. But from where did the indomitable energy emerge?’ Patrick Bond pays tribute to troubadour Dennis Brutus, who died at the age of 85 on 26 December 2009, ‘battling cancer, climate change and capitalism.’

Patrick Bond collates excerpts of testimonials about the late Dennis Brutus, ‘a poet whose work will be celebrated forever, and whose wisdom in so many campaigns for social justice will be sorely missed’, from institutions, individuals and the media.

cc Alarmed at the fondness for neoliberal solutions to the global financial crisis among the Nobel Prize Winners Muhammad Yunus and Joseph Stiglitz, Patrick Bond suspects that the two economists are simply aiding rather than challenging the global capitalist system. With Yunus and Stiglitz both set to give talks in Johannesburg this week, Bond fears that civil society...read more

Following the South African brokerage of a power-sharing deal between Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Zanu (PF) Patrick Bond explores whether, in the face of myriad threats to the country’s democracy, the wishes of the Zimbabwean people – as expressed in the People’s Charter adopted at a convention in February – could prevail. As South Africa and the African Development Bank join the Bretton Woods Institutions in calls for Tsvangirai to repay Mugabe’s odious debts, and Sou...read more

Patrick Bond in this essay argues that while Obama was elected on a platform of change, his cabinet and advisor picks point to a return to domestic Clintonian policy, and an extension of Bush’s foreign policy. Even though Bond acknowledges that “Obama may not run as extreme a militarist regime as Bush/Cheney or as McCain/Palin would have” still, being less militaristic while pursuing a neo-liberal economic agenda does not bode well for the third world.

Drawing on examples such as Thabo Mbeki’s role in damaging HIV/AIDS policies in the early 2000s and a current case in a San Franciso court against Chevron for 1998 murders in the Niger Delta, Patrick Bond argues that a similar process of critical treatment is appropriate for Barack Obama’s new leading economic advisor, Paul Volcker. Citing the opinions of a number of prominent political commentators, Bond reviews Volcker’s disastrous economic policy at the end of the 1970s, highlighting the d...read more

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