Extractive capitalism and hard and soft power in the age of Black Lives Matter

Abstract

As we go to publication, Omicron appears to be on the wane but there is no guarantee that it is the last of the Covid variants. Indeed, medical opinion seems to be accepting that Covid-19 in whatever variant may become endemic and be treated like influenza, with vaccinations as the means of keeping it under control. This was not the first reaction to Omicron, however, which was for the rich global North to reward South Africa, which had first identified the new variant and alerted the rest of the world to it, ironically by stopping South Africans entering their countries. While it has been hypothesised by medical scientists that the high number of South Africans with autoimmune disorders and illnesses, most notably HIV/AIDS, may have allowed more variants of Covid-19 to develop there so rapidly, it became clear that the Omicron variant had developed independently elsewhere. The irony of barring entry to travellers from South Africa was compounded by the global North’s ‘vaccine apartheid’ denying the South the power to protect their own populations. While the expectation in the global North may be that it can live with the virus, even though some countries, notably China and New Zealand, have successfully followed a zero-Covid strategy, the global South, lacking the same level of health care, with autoimmune diseases and a shortage of vaccines, cannot expect to be able to live with the virus without negative consequences leading to further impoverishment. The winner in all of this is of course Big Pharma. Oxfam International (2021) reports that corporates such as Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have received US$8 billion from public funds while at the same time refusing to share their knowledge with countries of the global South that have neither the technological nor manufacturing capacity to produce the vaccine themselves. Meanwhile, it is reported that during the pandemic, from March 2020 to November 2021, the 10 richest men in the world have doubled their wealth (Oxfam International 2022), while Africa’s five richest men have seen their aggregate wealth grow by 38.5% over the same period (Africa Report 2021). The rest of this section of the editorial covers some recent developments which we see connecting the withdrawal of US and UK troops, following the Taliban victory in Afghanistan, to the French withdrawal in Mali. We discuss the outbreaks of civil and military conflict across Africa focusing on Ethiopia, Sudan and Mali, noting in the last case how the intended withdrawal of French troops mirrors the withdrawal of US and UK forces from Afghanistan in the sense of the imperial powers placing greater emphasis on ‘soft’ power. In particular, we focus on the soft power of foreign aid and how that has to some degree replaced the military involvement in Afghanistan and is intended to do so in Mali. We go on to discuss the particular case of the Commonwealth and its role in the spread of soft power and combating poverty – seen as a key cause of conflict. We place the connected issues of aid and imperialism in the context of the movement for decolonisation and the age of Black Lives Matter, raise the question of the role of the member countries of the global South in pressuring the North for action to bring about a reduction in global inequality, and conclude with a brief reflection on the role of ROAPE in this context.