In 1973, fifty years ago, South Africa experienced a historical turning point. From 9 January 1973, workers of the Coronation Brick and Tile factory in Durban came out on strike. Eighteen months before workers and students in South Africa’s colony South West Africa (today’s Namibia), took dramatic and radical action. Heike Becker writes about how workers made their demands heard across Southern Africa in the early 1970s.

The revolutionary work and activism of Walter Rodney was celebrated in Cape Town as workers and students gathered to read his work in the context of neocolonial capitalism in Azania. Joseph Mullen writes about a weeklong event in June which marked 50 years since the publication of Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

A recent workshop brought together scholars, agricultural practitioners, and activists from the degrowth and the critical agrarian studies communities to discuss visions of agriculture which do not rely on growing productivity. Stefan Ouma, Eugen Pissarskoi, Kerstin Schopp and Leiyo Singo summarise some insights from a vital discussion.

In a debate on radical political economy, economics and economists working on Africa, Franklin Obeng-Odoom and Morten Jerven look at the use of statistics, mainstream economics, power, imperialism, patriarchy, and structural inequality. Both think that mainstream economists get much wrong about Africa, but they differ considerably in their diagnosis of the problem and the way forward.  

In this report on the TWN-Africa and ROAPE webinar on vaccine imperialism held last month, Cassandra Azumah writes that the unfolding vaccine apartheid which has left Africa with the lowest vaccination rates in the world is another depressing example of the profit and greed of Big Pharma facilitated by imperialist power.