Global South

In November 2015, the Guardian ran a

A wedge is being quickly driven through Pretoria’s political elite, splitting even those who operated tightly together in the murky 1980s Durban spy scene during the fight against apartheid.

The recent global and national political and economic crises have demonstrated the complexity and stresses of the milieu in which governments function.

In Brazil, a drought combined with an overlapping fiscal crisis and lack of public and market believability in the government’s ability to deal with these, plunged the country into economic freefall.

The drought scorched Brazil’s agriculture sector, hitting exports, income and jobs.

The recent flurry of post-Alternative Mining Indaba (AMI) articles have had their moment of fame until next year, but the discussion is welcome as it raises at least two valid points – raised by others over the recent past.

Lured by its potential profits, proponents of oil exploration in Malawi have been placing their hopes on the country becoming an oil-producing nation over the next few years. They argue that its production will bring much needed foreign exchange and economic prosperity to the country.

CC: Standard Bank (Joint CEO): MR BEN KRUGER

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You could be forgiven for thinking you were attending a side-event at Cape Town’s glitzy annual Mining Indaba in early February, when the opening panel of a civil society meeting repeatedly stressed how crucial mining is for Africa’s ‘development.’

TENT NUMBER SIX

The cold numbers are arresting: in the decade leading up to 2014, 387 people died in mines across Africa owned by Australian-listed giants, including Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and AngloGold Ashanti. The vast majority of these deaths, 244, were in SA.