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Benjamin Fogel is a contributing editor at Jacobin and head of publishing at Alameda.
In Wednesday’s election, South Africa’s ruling ANC risks losing its majority for the first time. But with the opposition split between xenophobic posturing, threats of violence, and dull technocratic solutions, the vote offers little hope of positive change.
The average African is 19 years old. The continent’s average politician is 62 and getting older — and more authoritarian.
The colonial history of South Africa lives on in conspiracy theories about the “Third Force,” but it’s not secret external enemies plaguing South Africa today — it’s the country’s own ruling class.
Online misogynist Andrew Tate doesn’t pretend that life under capitalism isn’t a scam. He readily acknowledges that it is, with success coming through coercion, exploitation, and predation — and he wants you to get in on the hustle with him.
Internationalism persists as a rallying cry, but what would it mean to go beyond sloganeering?
With violent crime and mass shortages spiraling out of control, South Africa is nearly a failed state. And the ANC has no one to blame but itself.
Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency has been a destructive clown show. A Lula win today can help rebuild Brazil’s democracy.
Ten years ago this month, 34 striking mine workers in South Africa were slaughtered by police on live TV. The Marikana massacre exposed the deep ills of the postapartheid status quo — and the urgent need to build working-class power in the country.
Crime is born out of poverty and the miseries of capitalism. An index of oppression can’t be ignored by socialists.
South Africa’s municipal elections this week were nothing short of disastrous. South Africans are desperate for a political alternative to the African National Congress; if the Left doesn’t provide it, right-populists and ethnonationalists will.
From assumptions about drug traffickers and police and elected officials’ corruption to Mexicans’ economic incentives for selling drugs, the Mexican drug trade has been drenched in sensationalist and inaccurate mythology. We need to totally upend our understanding of it.
South Africa’s immense poverty and inequality have been weaponized by former president Jacob Zuma and his supporters through a massive economic sabotage campaign. Any response must address the miseries saturating the country as well as the chaos now unleashed.
In Brazil, an absurd and deeply politicized “anti-corruption” campaign was carried out to block Lula da Silva from the presidency — delivering it instead to far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, who oversaw the world’s worst COVID-19 response. We have ex-judge Sergio Moro to thank for it.
After yesterday’s ruling declaring former Brazilian president Lula da Silva eligible to run in next year’s election, Brazil’s ruling class is panicking. But for Brazilian workers struggling with economic hardship and the COVID-19 pandemic, Lula’s return means there is finally some hope for change.
Nobody likes corruption. But the modern politics of “anti-corruption” is built on both domestic and international double standards. Corruption is not some alien virus that enters and disrupts a system, it is a symptom of all that is wrong with the world that liberals are vainly striving to restore.
Brazil’s Lava Jato investigation in corruption jailed former president Lula da Silva and was lauded by anticorruption campaigners in the West. But its legacy is the most corrupt president in the country’s history: Jair Bolsonaro.
South Africa has imposed one of the world’s most draconian COVID-19 lockdowns, slapping hundreds of thousands of mostly black and working-class people with criminal charges. The authoritarian response highlights again the lost promise of the post-apartheid government and the deep disparities that still plague the country.
The mass slaughter of leftists in Indonesia was more than just another Washington-backed atrocity. It was the prototype for smashing the hopes and dreams of the Left in the developing world — for good.
After more than a year of Jair Bolsonaro’s rule in Brazil, the country is hurtling toward authoritarianism. Now the president is calling on his supporters to take to the streets in a “Fuck You March” against the democratic institutions that are standing in the way of his far-right agenda.
Since Labour’s election defeat, pundits have accused the party of being out of step with working people’s social conservatism. But the “Blue Labour” obsession with Christian morality and national pride offers a caricature of the working class — and ignores the ability of socialist politics to unite people across cultural divides.