New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy

Editorial

Martin Nicol — 2025-04-03

Uneasy contradictions in development policy in Africa were laid bare in February 2025 by a disastrous accident at a copper mine in Zambia. An unmonitored and badly constructed tailings dam failed, releasing some 50 million litres of toxic mine sludge to pollute the Kafue River. Fish died, livestock were poisoned, farmers’ crops were destroyed and people along the river, the longest in Zambia, lost their water supply. As the poisoned water flowed downstream, engineers had to cut off water to Zambia’s second biggest city Kitwe, 30km from the mine with a population of over 600,000. By the date of publication, the scale of the catastrophe was still to be measured.

Investigating complexities and opportunities related to extractivism in Africa

Mark Volmink — 2025-04-03

Extractivism in Africa presents a paradox of substantial economic opportunities and significant social, environmental, and political complexities. Africa’s rich natural resources have attracted foreign investment, contributed to economic growth, and improved infrastructure. This paper examined how extractivism has led to displacement, human rights violations, environmental degradation, and corruption, perpetuated by neocolonialism. Based on a review of literature this article draws on insights from several sources , including articles and reports and describes concepts and a theoretical framework relevant to extractivism in Africa. While the findings of this study articulate the challenges and complexities of extractivism, it also uncovered opportunities that exist for Africa to harness its resources for inclusive growth and sustainable development. This necessitates the enhancement of institutional capacity, promoting transparency and accountability, and ensuring participation in global trade. Regional inter-linkages and improved policies can also maximize benefits and mitigate risks. By addressing the complexities and grasping opportunities, Africa can transform extractivism into a catalyst for equitable and sustainable development.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Policy Frameworks for Development in Africa

Mulugeta F. Dinbabo — 2025-04-03

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action adopted by all UN member states in 2015, aiming to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all by 2030. The SDGs promote inclusive development through sustainable economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection. Using secondary data analysis, this paper investigates the opportunities and challenges associated with the SDGs, examining how national policies connect with them and evaluating the implementation of relevant treaties and conventions. Key findings highlight institutional capacity gaps, the impact of political will and the importance of international alliances in achieving the SDGs. The study also emphasises the need for effective monitoring and evaluation systems to track success, ensure accountability and promote adaptive policy approaches. These findings contribute to the discourse on sustainable development and offer a roadmap for policy-makers and organisations committed to advancing sustainable development across Africa.

Ben Turok Memorial Lecture 2024

Kumi Naidoo — 2025-04-03

The world no longer has the time to indulge in pessimism or denialism as we get ever closer to the climate crisis cliff, and
the urgent task at hand is to revise -- and revitalise -- the thinking of activists, academics and leftists world-wide who have taken on the responsibility of being changemakers in pursuit of a more just global order. This was the challenge thrown out to the civil society community by decades-long human rights and climate justice activist, Dr Kumi Naidoo, who delivered the fourth Ben Turok Memorial Lecture in Cape Town on 9 December 2024 on the anniversary of Turok’s passing in 2019.

What lessons have we learned from Stillfontein?

Bruce Kadalie — 2025-04-03

The Stilfontein disaster, which claimed the lives of dozens of informal miners, has become a flashpoint for broader debates about governance, human rights, and economic justice in South Africa. As noted by Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) the tragedy was not merely an accident but a "direct consequence of systemic neglect and the criminalisation of artisanal miners." The government's failure to address the dangers of abandoned mines and its punitive approach to artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) have exacerbated the vulnerabilities of marginalised communities.

Lydia

Kally Forrest — 2025-04-03

Dr Kally Forrest, the author of Metal that Will not Bend – a history of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa
(NUMSA) – is a former trade unionist and editor of the South African Labour Bulletin. Now she has written a remarkable
biography Lydia: Anthem to the Unity of Women.

Smuts and Mandela

Gordon Young — 2025-04-03

Roger Southall has written two-and-a-half good books in one. The first is a study of character, placing the two foremost South African statesmen of the 20th century in counterpoint to each other as it were. So we are shown the many unexpected similarities and resonances in their lives, as well as the great differences between the two men and their work. It is not as if there is a shortage of biographies of these two men: over 30 in the case of Smuts, and seven or eight so far in the case of Mandela. Smuts does of course have the advantage of the semi-official full two-volume treatment by a serious historian, Sir Keith Hancock, which Mandela still awaits. Southall brings the two men together in a single treatment and it is illuminating.

Ghandi's African legacy

Bernedette Muthien — 2025-04-03

On the afternoon of Saturday 3 October, Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie’s book, Gandhi’s African Legacy Phoenix Settlement: 1904-2024. A History Through Letters, was launched at the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Centre Foundation1 in Cape Town under the theme of “Talking Rights”. This launch was immediately followed by the Insurrection Ensemble’s multi-media production, Must Gandhi Fall?, under the theme of “Performing Rights”, at the historic theatre2 at the District Six
Homecoming Centre around the corner. These two successive events are inextricably connected. They were part of the Living Rights Festival with its focus on intersectional justice and realising constitutional rights through multi-genre arts.

Political Economy and Critical Engagement in South Africa

Megan Bryer — 2025-04-03

Vishnu Padayachee was a brilliant intellectual, but more than that, he was an engaged scholar, an activist, a cricket enthusiast and a collector of rare books. The essays in Political Economy and Critical Engagement in South Africa pay tribute to his wide-ranging interests and contributions, offering both personal reflections and rigorous academic engagement with the ideas he championed. Many contributors – colleagues, collaborators and former students of his – wrestle with a question that preoccupied Padayachee: the role of the intellectual in shaping societal change, how scholars can move beyond academic inquiry to influence economic policy and progressive movements.

Kidnapped at Sea

Alan Hirsch — 2025-04-04

Kidnapped at Sea tells the true story of a free black teenager, David Henry White from Delaware on the east coast of the United States, who was captured from a transatlantic merchant vessel where he served as a junior member of the kitchen staff and held as a slave on the rebel warship Alabama. Captained by slave-owner and committed rebel Raphael Semmes, Alabama roamed the north and south Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, capturing, burning or ransoming dozens of US merchant ships, fighting off one US warship and finally being sunk in battle by another. White, who could not swim, was abandoned and drowned. nThe arc of the story sweeps from Civil War US, following Alabama from its shipyard in the UK to the US, and then back across the north Atlantic, down to Brazil, to Saldanha Bay, Cape Town and Simonstown, across to south east Asia, back to the south Atlantic, to temporary respite in a French port and its demise in international waters between France and the UK. The story demonstrates how the conflict impacted many and implicated some in its global theatre of war.

A critical engagement Sustainable Development Goals and the problem of ‘race’

Crain Soudien — 2025-04-03

How do we conceptualise and develop a global development agenda that is attentive to the needs, requirements and
entitlements of all the world’s people? In this contribution I problematise dominant approaches to development and the
ways in which these approaches, firstly, conceptualise ideas about the ‘universal’ and, secondly, erase, silence and
marginalise particular groups of people. With this backdrop, I focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
and particularly their conceptualisation. Of particular interest is how the design of the SDGs deal with the fundamental objective underpinning this global intervention – that of inclusion. The argument I will make is that dominant development discourses, including the SDG project, have struggled to deal with the realities and effects of exclusion and marginalisation as they take expression and are manifested in processes of racialisation, gender discrimination and class formation.

Where hearts and minds meet: In pursuit of global ‘citizen diplomacy’

Nazeema Mohammed — 2025-04-03

In initiating the inaugural Living Rights Festival, the Institute for African Alternatives (IFAA) has introduced a new term --
‘living rights’. The term, initially coined by IFAA’s Acting Director Ari Sitas, developed through iterative discussion and was eventually penned by festival organiser Nazeema Mohamed. Once the concept of ‘living rights’ was clear, organisers
deliberated on the what, who, how, when and where? The big questions to Sitas from the team were: Why a festival? Was it appropriate in a world in mayhem? What were we celebrating? And should we even be celebrating at all in the face of global crisis?

Must Gandhi fall? Insurrections Ensemble and the Gandhi Project

Ari Sitas — 2025-04-03

Many people have asked me in a rather bewildered tone, what was it that we staged during the Living Rights Festival at
the Avalon Theatre at the District Six Homecoming Centre in Cape Town? The performance was not a play but felt like one! It was not a political statement although it sounded like one, it was not a musical but it was full of music and it was not an art work but it was full of art! And it was about Gandhi without Gandhi appearing on stage once!

How can we hold the powerful to account in Africa when the ruling party acts with impunity and disregards the will of the voters?

Moira Levy — 2025-04-03

Many countries call themselves democracies simply because they hold regular elections. At a panel discussion in October
2024 as part of IFAA’s Living Rights Festival, participants were reminded that elections are a necessary but not sufficient requirement for democracy. A key question that surfaced in the debate, titled “Holding the Powerful to Account in Africa,” was what actions could promote accountability in a so-called “democracy” in which the ruling party is able to act with impunity and disregard the will of the voters?

Living Rights Festival Art Exhibition, Bertha House, 25 Oct 24

Songezo Zantsit — 2025-04-03

Living Rights Festival Art Exhibition, Bertha House, 25 Oct 24

My Name is February

Diana Ferrus — 2025-04-03

Diane Ferrus is a poet, writer, performance artist, activist, founder member of Bush Poets, the Afrikaans Writers Association (Afrikaanse Skrywersvereniging) and Women in Xchains. She is a member of the Women’s Education and Artistic Voice Expression (WEAVE), played an instrumental role in the repatriation of Sarah Baartman’s remains from France to South Africa and was a recipient of the Minister’s Award for Women. Her work has been published in various collections and some serve as prescribed texts for high school learners. She worked for 25 years at the University of the Western Cape until she retired in 2016. She has completed a postgraduate degree in Women’s and Gender Studies.
Diane performed this poem at the ‘Unbroken Spirits: Concert for Humanity’ that formed part of the Living Rights Festival. She has graciously given New Agenda permission to publish this poem.

Africa Diary

Martin Nicol — 2025-04-03

Dateline Africa

News from the continent

December 2024 to 28 February 2025

A selection of events about, and from across, the continent that are significant or interesting, or both. Compiled by the New Agenda Editorial Collective at the Institute for African Alternatives, we welcome contributions for ideas on what to include.