Zimbabweans have struggled for years to replace Mugabe with a democratically elected leader. These efforts were dashed by the military. But now that the citizens have given the palace coup far more legitimacy than it deserves, it is even more vital for progressives committed to social justice to redouble grassroots organising and generate clear demands for a democratic post-Mugabe era.

Former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and super-consultant Iraj Abedian, two solid bourgeouis representatives, have made an unusually passionate case against what is sometimes termed White Monopoly Capital. Thus surprising breakthrough indicates that corporate-state degeneracy is now so extreme, that the truth will out.

Capitalism is bleeding Africa to death: illegal financial flows, legal financial outflows, FDI flows, foreign indebtedness, sub-imperial accumulation, new subsidies for infrastructure financing and uncompensated mineral and oil and gas depletion. The continent is further threatened by land grabs, militarization and climate change. Only rising social resistance can halt and reverse these trends.

Last week's World Economic Forum (WEF)-Africa conference in Durban hosted some of the world’s most controversial politicians: not just Jacob Zuma and his finance minister Malusi Gigaba plus regional dictators Robert Mugabe, Yoweri Museveni, King Mswati and Edgar Lungu, but also the most powerful man in Europe, the notoriously-corrupt neoliberal German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.

At a time US and South African presidents Donald Trump and Jacob Zuma personify controversies over crony capitalism, corruption, populist rhetoric and self-serving economic strategies, will big business calm down the politicians – or just egg them on?

Supporters of austerity are happy because South Africa’s junk rating is a good stick with which to whip President Zuma. But his immediate concern is survival, not the economy. Could the current crisis generate a long-overdue era of redistribution, racial justice and radical economic transformation? This was the promise of new Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba last Saturday, April Fool’s Day.