Content area
Full Text
Bond, Patrick. 2006. LOOTING AFRICA: THE ECONOMICS OF EXPLOITATION. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. 172 pp. $25.00 (paper).
A surprising development in the debate over the cause and the solution of Africa's underdevelopment since the late 1970s has been the convergence of the views of African leaders and the international community. African leaders have abandoned their dependency interpretation of the African dilemma-an interpretation that blamed the historical injustices suffered by the continent and the continued dependence on external forces as the cause of the crisis (OAU 1981)-and accepted the neoliberal diagnosis, which suggests that increased integration of the continent into the global economy provides a way out of the crisis (NEPAD 2001). Patrick Bond's book is an update of the dependency explanations of Africa's underdevelopment. It focuses on the looting of Africa in the era of neoliberalism and the willingness of African elites and leaders to embrace such ideas. Quoting extensively from Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, and other critical writers, Bond argues persuasively that "Looting is a system driven from capitalist institutions in Washington, London and other Northern centres, and accommodated by junior partners across the third world, including African capitals, especially Pretoria" (p. xiii). Bond expertly takes the discussion beyond the typical north-south dynamics by highlighting South African's role as the Northern imperialist countries' junior ally, willing to play the role of a subimperialist for them.
Bond, beginning his analysis with a critique of the report of Tony Blair's Commission for Africa, charges that the commission not only neglected the historical legacy of looting of the continent, but succeeded in coopting key African elites into producing a "modified neo-liberal-free[-]market project" (p. 1). He discusses two processes that have eased the looting of Africa: the south-north resource flow, which has created a "global apartheid"; and the role of powerful local elites who act as agents of foreign interests in creating adverse internal class formation, poverty, and inequality. He argues that "African rulers keep their people poor because they are tied into a system of global power, accumulation and class struggle" (p. 3, emphasis in original).
Bond...