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In this review essay ROAPE’s Peter Lawrence discusses Alex Callinicos’ new book The New Age of Catastrophe. Callinicos has written a book that admits to the mind-numbing scale of the catastrophe that confronts humanity but provides enough ammunition to those who want to see a more optimistic future. Lawrence argues that Callinicos makes a strong case for socialism as the solution and mass mobilisation from below of the organised working class as the only way to achieve it. 

Since the start of the month, Senegal has seen major demonstrations, rioting, and violence. In an interview with ROAPE, Ndongo Sylla explains what is happening. Supporters of opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, are furious at the regime’s attempt to frustrate next year’s elections by framing Sonko on false charges. Sylla examines the social and political forces that are engulfing the country and threatening to overturn the political class and the neo-colonial settlement.

ROAPE’s Peter Lawrence argues that there are strong echoes across Africa of the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The reappearance of recession, debt and structural adjustment to the continent reminds us of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism. Based on his editorial in the forthcoming ROAPE issue 174, Lawrence concludes that there are alternatives to the continent’s enduring entrapment in a global financial system that works for the global financial corporates that dominate it.

Massive exposure of some African economies to Chinese-owned debt is making it difficult for Beijing to sustain official narratives that suggest equality with African countries. Tim Zajontz, Ricardo Reboredo and Pádraig Carmody show that the response of the Chinese government to political “backlashes” over debt has been to emphasise alternative vectors of engagement with the continent. The deepening African debt crisis is directly linked to inter-capitalist competition at the expense of the working people of the continent.

The world is confronting an unprecedented multidimensional crisis - ecological, economic, geopolitical - each interacting with the other. Yet it is the Global South that yet again is becoming the sacrificial zone, providing the resources for the countries of the North. In a powerful statement from the Global South movements challenge the existing neo-colonial energy model and offer a just alternative.

Kenyan activists Faith Asina and Gathanga Ndung’u deliver powerful and sharp criticism of the role of the Kenyan police as the oppressor of the masses. They explain in detail how police terror has manifested itself on issues such as the crackdowns on activists, the aftermath of elections, state-led campaigns against terrorism and informal settlements. They also take the time to commemorate fallen activists and inform us about ongoing grassroots movements against the violence of the police, which they believe needs radical surgery or a total overhaul.

In early January 2019, Ugandan activist, and University of Cornell doctoral student Bwesigye Mwesigire was violently attacked on a bus in Uganda and sent into a three-day coma because of his political work. Four years later, he explains what led to the attack and makes some observations on the role of the intellectual in the Ugandan situation. Through this piece, he informs us about the importance of international solidarity, the challenges facing opposition to dictatorship in Uganda, and how radical intellectuals can potentially relate to the masses.  

ROAPE speaks to Nigerian socialist and activist, Alex Batubo, about the elections this month, and the political and economic situation in the country. Batubo focuses on the struggle of labour, and the possibilities of a radical alternative emerging from the challenges (and opportunities) of the present.

Roberto Sirvent interviews Koni Benson about her new book Crossroads: I Live Where I Like, that tells a sidelined story of the creation of the city of Cape Town, and the central role of movements led by African women in campaigning for public services. Benson speaks about how today there are over 2 million people in informal settlements, in a so-called ‘World Class’ city in the ‘Rainbow Nation’ - the great myth of the 1994 miracle.

ROAPE contributor Yusuf Serunkuma asks if the pillage we are witnessing on the African continent—mostly from the 1980s-onwards—is worse than the exploitation of the 1884-1960s, where is the resistance? Serunkuma writes that even after decolonisation has been achieved (the academy decolonised, stolen artefacts returned, Rhodes, and others, fall), Africa will remain an impoverished and looted continent. The reason for this absurd state of affairs is that the African intelligentsia still struggles to see and expose the performative, informal, localized, and seemingly benevolent manifestation of new colonialism.