Southern Africa

People from throughout southern Africa - including from Zimbabwe, recently wracked by election fraud and political violence - have been coming to the relatively prosperous if still economically divided and until now more peaceful South Africa for work and safer homes. But last month South Africans rioted against these immigrants. When the South African head of state returned from abroad to rile against the rioters and declare that everything was calm, South Africans snubbed there nose at home by turning not only against foreign workers but also against foreign businesses, burning down a Chinese-owned refinery. My friend Patrick Bond, with whom I studied bank disinvestment in the Philadelphia area, now teaches and has a family in South Africa. Patrick has been criticizing the African National Congress-led South African government for years for emphasizing top-down corporate investment instead of neighborhood development, just as we used to criticize the City of Philadelphia for the same thing. Now, both in turnover in the ANC (and therefore government) leadership and in these new surge of anti-foreign violence, it turns out Patrick may have had some allies around the country, if only implicitly. May peace, justice, and shared prosperity come to all of southern Africa. You tell 'em, Patrick!