Trouble at the tip of the Belt and Road: South Africa's largest industrial mega-project meets eco-social resistance

Abstract:

China's Belt and Road Initiative has many components, but in Africa, one site stands out for its oft-promised mix of industrial development (since 2017) and an ambitious solar energy source (since 2022): the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone (MMSEZ). The main physical location is a nature reserve located at the far northern end of South Africa, near the Zimbabwe border. A revealing controversy has arisen, over whether the two positive aspects of the MMSEZ – solar energy and industrial development – outweigh much more durable problems. Chinese capital is, we will see, expanding onto a terribly rocky terrain, pocked with locally-generated political-economic potholes, vulnerable to international capitalist contradictions, and witnessing a fusion of oppositional activism. The connections so far link critique of environmental injustices by communities with conservationist and bio-diversity advocacy – but can go further still.

Bio:

Patrick Bond, a political economist and political ecologist, teaches at the University of Johannesburg, where he is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Social Change. Patrick was born in Ireland (1961) but studied in the U.S.: economics and finance at Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and then a doctorate (1993) in economic geography at Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of David Harvey. He served as a researcher within Johannesburg’s urban social movements from 1990-94. In 1994 and 1996 he worked in the Reconstruction and Development Ministry within President Nelson Mandela’s office, drafting the democratic government’s first White Paper and other policies. Patrick has taught at several universities in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg; and has authored or edited a dozen books and hundreds of academic articles and book chapters on political economy, political ecology and social change.

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