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polly7

(20,582 posts)
Wed Mar 27, 2013, 03:38 PM Mar 2013

From Bangui To BRICS: If You Carve Africa, Africa May Carve You Too

By Patrick Bond and Khadija Sharife

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

DURBAN - The reach of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) leaders far up the African continent was palpable this week, not just here in Durban where they are gathering to plan investments and infrastructure, but everywhere up continent where extraction does extreme damage.

One site is the Central African Republic, where Saturday’s combat deaths of 13 SA National Defense Force troops - in a fight of 200 South Africans against more than a thousand Seleka rebels – were in vain: not in support of African democracy, for François Bozizé was such an embarrassing tyrant that not even France made an attempt to prop him up. Tragically, over the past ten weeks, our SA troops have been defending counterproductive, repressive military investments and potential mining deals, as deputy foreign minister Ebrahim Ebrahim let on in a recent interview explaining their deployment in the Central African Republic.


It all reeks of the crony capitalism that we fear when BRICS heads of state and corporate interests crowd into the same Durban International Convention Centre hallways. Pretoria’s foreign ministry bureaucrats have explicitly excluded anyone from civil society from attending, and SA’s most accomplished environmentalist, Bobby Peek, was even prohibited from entering for a debate on national radio yesterday morning.


But as Pretoria’s commitment to Bangui shows, when these elites carve up Africa, the backlash can be brutal. A different way is needed: with more respect for societies and nature than for the profits of BRICS corporates. There are countless forms of resistance being shared by brics-from-below activists from each of the countries and their hinterlands – and growing linkages that mean coordinated critique and campaigning can be a logical next step in bottom-up internationalism.


Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/from-bangui-to-brics-if-you-carve-africa-africa-may-carve-you-too-by-patrick-bond
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