From: Patrick Bond (pbond@MAIL.NGO.ZA)
Date: Mon May 08 2006 - 19:08:20 EDT
Are there any other OPE-Lers who have books that are about to
> be printed?
In a week or so we'll have the second edition of Talk Left, Walk Right
(http://www.unpress.co.za/book.php?action=displaybook&conf%5Bbookid%5D=204and below) and in June *Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation*.
Here's the shameful back-cover self-promotion:
Looting Africa
Zed Books (London) and University of KwaZulu-Natal Press (Pietermaritzburg)
ISBN: 1842778129
EAN: 9781842778128
224 Pages
Despite the rhetoric, the people of Sub-Saharan Africa are becoming
poorer. From Tony Blair’s Africa Commission, the G7 finance ministers’
debt relief, the Live 8 concerts, the Make Poverty History campaign and
the G8 Gleneagles promises, to the United Nations 2005 summit and the
Hong Kong WTO meeting, Africa’s gains have been mainly limited to public
relations. The central problems remain exploitative debt and financial
relationships with the North, phantom aid, unfair trade, distorted
investment, capital flight and the continent’s brain/skills drain.
Moreover, capitalism in most African countries has witnessed the
emergence of excessively powerful ruling elites. While noting their role
as collaborators, this book contextualises Africa’s wealth outflow
within a stagnant yet financially volatile world economy.
"Patrick Bond’s book provides a solid theoretical, empirical, and
analytical framework proving that the processes of looting the African
continent, which started with the slave trade, have continued to this
day.///" - Professor Issa Shivji//, University of Dar es Salaam//,
Tanzania/
"Patrick’s books on post-apartheid South Africa have been a beacon, and
his latest is a brilliant analysis and timely expose of the rapacious
forces ranged against Africans today./" - //John Pilger, author and film
maker
/
***
*TALK LEFT WALK RIGHT*
South Africa's Frustrated Global Reforms
*Authors: * Bond, Patrick
<http://www.unpress.co.za/author.php?action=displayauthor&conf%5Bauthorid%5D=172&PHPSESSID=238c3550de1b3b975800d715484bebccAuthor Zapiro
<http://www.unpress.co.za/author.php?action=displayauthor&conf%5Bauthorid%5D=240&PHPSESSID=238c3550de1b3b975800d715484bebccIllustrator
*Category: * Political Economy
*Binding: * Softcover
*Soft Cover ISBN: * 1 86914 054 0
*Price: * R160
*Width: * 150mm
*Height: *
230mm
Thabo Mbeki recently advocated unity with 'anti-globalisation'
activists: "They may act in ways you and I may not like and break
windows in the street, but the message they communicate relates."
This raises two critical questions: is the South African government
genuinely opposed to what Mbeki calls 'global apartheid'? And are the
reforms advocated by Pretoria succeeding - even on their own limited
terms? Talk Left Walk Right answers both in the negative.
Mbeki's critics, from left and right alike, suggest that his AIDS
policies, corrupt arms deal and support for Zimbabwe's repressive regime
have damaged his credibility beyond repair. Others claim Mbeki's global
ambition is his saving grace. But the content of Pretoria's broader
reform strategy is rarely examined.
Between incomparable cartoons by Zapiro, Patrick Bond considers the
dynamics of international political economy and geopolitics.
He reviews a series of contemporary examples where Pretoria is
frustrated by unfavourable power relations: US unilateralism and
militarism, the UN's World Conference Against Racism and reparations for
apartheid profits, soured trade deals, stingy debt relief and
counterproductive international financial flows, unsuccessful reform of
multilateral institutions, the New Partnership for Africa's Development,
the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, the World
Water Forum, UN Security Council reform, haggling with the G8, and
African peace-building.
The Afterword to this updated edition provides critical analysis from
the 2004-06 period, characterised by backsliding in nearly all areas of
global governance.
Bond poses alternatives and also assesses the progressive social
movements, which may well be Mbeki's most persistent, unforgiving
judges, both locally and globally.
Patrick Bond teaches at the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of
Development Studies and directs the Centre for Civil Society. Zapiro is
a cartoonist for a number of South African newspapers.
'Thanks to Patrick Bond's analytical skills and brilliant cartoons by
Zapiro, Talk Left, Walk Right allows global justice activists to decode
rhetoric and reality: from Washington and Davos conferences to the South
African townships. Mbeki and the ANC are not hapless victims, but are
deeply implicated in promoting faraway ideologies and unaccountable
powers' - Njoki Njoroge Njehu, director, Daughters of Mumbi Global
Resource Centre, Nairobi
'Bond knows the debates on political economy as well as he knows South
Africa and its politics ... More than any other writer, he keeps alive
our early hopes for a different script for South Africa's foreign
policy.' - Peter Vale, Nelson Mandela Chair of Politics, Rhodes
University, in "International Affairs"
//
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