Mining

Minus the big hair, crown, and french accent, Julius Malema may well be South Africa’s own Marie Antoinette. This is especially true in light of his most recent talk-left walk-right statements concerning nationalisation of mines, a reality he apparently gleamed from President Zuma’s state of the nation speech. "If we don’t do it (nationalisation)," he continued, "we’ll always stay poor."

Malema went on to demand, "60% of Anglo-American’s money", further stating "what Anglo does with the other 40 percent is their business." Malema’s right hand man, Floyd Shivambu, cautioned the ’mediocre’ media not to take the statement out of context.

"In the proposed model for nationalisation of mines, the ANC Youth League said... it should entail that after its establishment, the state-owned mining company should take a minimum of 60 percent of the existing privately-owned mining corporations," he said.

Of course, there is a glimmer of mangled truth in Malema’s statements.

South Africa - presently one of the world’s most unequal societies (and arguably getting poorer in real terms), is constructed around a political economy that is defined by resource-seeking corporations, and managed by a revenue-seeking ’landlord’ government.

In SA, key elites manipulate ’political capital’ as a means of raking in mad money from multinationals. As in many developing nations, liquidation of unearned resource revenue is proposed as a crucial source of income. And many of these countries, like South Africa – which lost an estimated 27% of GDP to capital flight in 2007 – do not benefit from resource revenue, precisely because revenue is so easily looted.

For these states, whether governed by electoral democracy or not, the corporate-state relationship is the only one that matters. In 2009, for instance, almost half of Zuma’s executive cabinet were found to hold active directorship or membership status in 184 companies on CIPRO. Citizens are largely irrelevant as political ’rights’...