Tag: Pravin Gordhan

In South Africa’s fight between hostile brothers – the “Zuptas” and “White Monopoly Capital” – a new consensus appears By Patrick Bond

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5 October 2017 — Pambazuka News

Former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and super-consultant Iraj Abedian, two solid bourgeouis representatives, have made an unusually passionate case against what is sometimes termed White Monopoly Capital. Th[i]s surprising breakthrough indicates that corporate-state degeneracy is now so extreme, that the truth will out.

Last week a conceptual barrier carefully constructed by elites since 2015 was suddenly cracked at the University of the Witwatersrand Great Hall by two of South Africa’s leading economic personalities: Pravin Gordhan, who served as a pro-business Finance Minister for seven years until being fired in March, and super-consultant Iraj Abedian, who in 1996 had co-authored the country’s post-apartheid homegrown structural adjustment programme. Two more solid bourgeois representatives would be hard to find.

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The Bank Loan That Could Break South Africa's Back By Patrick Bond

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13 April, 2010 — MRZine/Monthly Review

Just how dangerous is the World Bank and its neo-conservative president, Robert Zoellick, to South Africa and the global climate?

Notwithstanding South Africa’s existing $75 billion foreign debt, last Thursday the bank added a $3.75bn loan to Eskom for the primary purpose of building the world’s fourth-largest coal-fired power plant, at Medupi, which will spew 25 million tons of the climate pollutant carbon dioxide each year.

SA Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan repeatedly said that this is the bank’s “first” post-apartheid loan, yet its 1999 and 2008 Country Assistance Strategy documents show conclusively that Medupi is the 15th credit since 1994.

Gordhan also claimed the loan will now help South Africa “build a relationship” with the bank. He forgets the bank co-authored the 1996 Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear) programme, which led us to overtake Brazil as the world’s most unequal major country, as black incomes fell below 1994 levels and white incomes grew by 24 percent, according to official statistics.

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WHATS THE WORD IN JOHANNESBURG AS FINANCIAL CRISIS ROCKS “THE RAINBOW NATION” HOPES FOR PROGRESS? By Danny Schechter

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29 October, 2009

Unemployment and Debt Rises as a Made In The USA Crisis Goes Global

Johannesburg: There was lots of skepticism when I came to South Africa two years ago to show my film IN DEBT WE TRUST. While my critique of consumer debt resonated, the film’s forecast of a financial crisis didn’t. Their economy seemed to be doing well and it was hard to tell a society that tends to look inward that they would be affected by a financial crisis in America, l0,000 miles away.

Most believed it would pass them by.

It hasn’t. A year ago, the International Monetary fund warned that 200,000 people would be affected. People living on $2 a day might end up surviving on $1 or not surviving at all. These victims around the world are mostly not part of the US debate or our media coverage. The faces and stories of these victims are as conspicuous by their absence as have been stories of the one million families that had their homes foreclosed upon in the last quarter,

As if South Africa doesn’t have enough problems—the AIDS Pandemic, massive poverty, and simmering unrest, the Finance Minister yesterday discussed the impact that the global economic crisis is having. There’s been a loss of 500,000 jobs and a fall off of taxes and an increase in expenditures.

The projected deficit will soar with a shortfall doubling to 7.6% of GDP. The government has to cut costs that will mean a further cutback in social services at the very time of growing protests against service failures and neglect of the poor. South Africa will now be forced to go deeper into debt, to borrow more money

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