International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Climate sanctions against fossil-addicted capitalists

Patrick Bond — 2025-05-07T20:48:20Z

The implications of climate-unjust politics are ever more important to interpret and resist. United States President Donald Trump, an unabashed ‘climate denialist', withdrew his country, the main historic emitter of greenhouse gases, from United Nations negotiations, and should now be sanctioned. But annual UN COPs (Conferences of the Parties) won't, because the ‘climate action' approach is dominated by the West and BRICS. They continue to deny the world long-overdue ‘climate justice' and they won't punish Trump's climate crimes.

- IVP604 - May 2025 / Ecology and the Environment, South Africa

Western diplomats offer rotten climate carrot, and wield broken sanctions stick

Desmond D'Sa, Patrick Bond — 2022-12-27T09:04:53Z

In 1965, Ho Chi Minh described U.S. President Lyndon Johnson's half-baked $1 billion gift to the Vietnamese – and simultaneous threat of endless bombing – as a “rotten carrot and broken stick.” The National Liberation Front's aim was to achieve full-fledged sovereignty in a unified country by defeating the world's most powerful army, an awesome task yet one completed within a decade (though at the cost of two million dead compatriots and 50,000 brutal U.S. invaders).

- Features / Features, Climate, Debt

Durban's latest Rain Bomb kills more than 300 and unveils state climate sloth

Mary Galvin, Patrick Bond — 2022-04-22T12:18:11Z

This devastating report on the terrible floods in Durban indicts the total failure of the South African government to prepare for an entirely predictable and predicted disaster. But this report has huge international relevance because these floods are precisely one of the forms climate change is taking in many parts of the world and the criminal negligence of the Ramaphosa government is typical of capitalist governments everywhere. GEN

- IV567 - April 2022 / Ecology and the Environment, South Africa, Climate

Western Imperialism and the Role of Sub-imperialism in the Global South

Ana Garcia, Miguel Borba , Patrick Bond — 2021-04-22T18:47:02Z

“As seen above, multinational corporations from BRICS countries, as well as projects financed by BRICS institutions, are reinforcing accumulation patterns that are socially and environmentally predatory, destroying the forms of life and work of populations in their territories. In order to overcome this predicament, South-South relations must be built with profound respect for counter-hegemonic social forces in these countries, as well as at the global scale.”

- Features / United States (USA), World, Economy

Covid-19 attacks the down-and-out in ultra-unequal South Africa

Patrick Bond — 2020-04-08T22:17:08Z

South Africa has the highest number of coronavirus infections in Africa, topping 1200 as of March 30, including the second Covid-19 fatality. More than twenty-five years after the ANC's triumph and Nelson Mandela's election, how well-prepared is post-apartheid capitalism to confront the contagion? Unfortunately, the answers are not pretty, nor are they promising. Instead, South Africa is “long over due for a socialist transformation” argues Patrick Bond. Bond is Bond is a professor at the University of the Western Cape School of Government. and co-editor of BRICS: An anti-capitalist critique (published by Haymarket, Pluto, Jacana and Aakar). This article is part of No Borders News ongoing international coronavirus coverage.

- IV543 - April 2020 / South Africa, Covid-19 Pandemic

The BRICS, global governance, accumulation, class struggle and resource extractivism

Patrick Bond — 2018-07-19T20:53:31Z

An exceptionally interesting debate about how imperialism is now behaving.

- IV522 - July 2018 / Marxism, Ecology and the Environment, Economy

Brics summit in China: A missed opportunity

Patrick Bond — 2017-10-06T08:27:56Z

The ninth BRICS summit was held in Xiamen, China, on September 3-5. Sharmini Peries from the Reel News network spoke to Patrick Bond shortly after the end of the summit. Bond is Professor of Political Economy at Wits University in South Africa. Bond is the author of the recent books, South Africa - The Present as History (with John Saul) and the 3rd edition of Elite Transition. He is also the co-editor of BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique.

- IV513 - October 2017 / Brazil, Russia, Economy, China, India, South Africa

South Africa's Deprivations and Depravations Revealed in Jacob Zuma's Meltdown

Patrick Bond — 2016-12-23T11:35:10Z

This week [first week of November, 2016] could well be remembered as South Africa's most important political inflection point since the September 2008 ousting of sitting President Thabo Mbeki by his own party, the African National Congress (ANC). His main tormenter then was Jacob Zuma, who – following a brief handover period – has ruled the country in an increasingly dubious manner since May 2009.

- IV503 - December 2016 / South Africa

South African Student Protesters Win First Big Victory

Patrick Bond — 2015-10-28T11:01:55Z

An historic victory over South African neoliberalism was won on October 23, after the most intense three-week burst of activist mobilization here since liberation from apartheid in 1994. University students have been furious, as their cry “Fees must fall!” rang out on campuses and sites of political power across this society. But though there will be an effective 6% cut in tuition for 2016, the next stage of struggle looms, with demands for free tertiary education and university labor rights atop the agenda.

- IV489 - October 2015 / Youth and student movements, South Africa

Exploding with Rage, Imploding with Self-Doubtâ€”but Exuding Socialist Potential

Patrick Bond — 2015-07-08T16:48:08Z

The fast-reviving South African left is urgently coming to grips with the most acute national crises of structure and agency the country has experienced since the historic freeing of Nelson Mandela in February 1990 and the shift of the entire body politic in favor of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). At that time, the ANC soon took control of the country's progressive forces, winning mass social hegemony, vanquishing other liberation tendencies (Pan-Africanism and Black Consciousness), and dissolving the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front (UDF) that civil society activists founded a decade earlier. It then negotiated the first democratic election, which it won handily in April 1994 under Nelson Mandela's leadership. Afrikaner state managers and corporate titans, as well as multilateral agencies and other forces of imperialism, demanded from the ANC an elite transition that opened both the macro- and microeconomies. Property rights were granted maximum protection, even though whites had acquired the bulk of those through what is widely termed a crime against humanity: apartheid.

- Features / Trade unions/workplace organizing, South Africa