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The prevailing optimism gives no true picture of Africa. Short-term exploitation and large-scale agriculture are neither socially nor environmentally sustainable. Economic and social inequalities are growing on the continent.

The current overall African growth rate of about 5 per cent annually is largely based on natural resource exploitation for export, especially of oil, gas and minerals.

A growing African elite and middle class in collaboration with foreign allies have also secured benefits for themselves. Therefore, economic inequality is growing rapidly in Africa,  as in Asia.

As Gaddafi finds new ways to attack Libyans, Libyans unleash their fury against his deployment of mercenaries from West and East Africa as migrant workers from south of the Sahara face increasing attacks and are prevented from leaving the country. Given the racism in Libya and low status of foreign black workers, it was only a matter of time before innocent people were attacked.

The language and subtext being used in some of the reports is cause for concern. In a video by Al Jazeera, ‘Immigrant workers under suspicion’, the US-based Frontlines of Revolution uses the headline ‘White Arab supremacy: Revolution or Moor black oppression?’ There is no doubt that there that racism is rife in Libya and that black foreign workers are being targeted, but language like this and lack of historical or political context only inflames the situation

Nonetheless, the assault on black Africans is disturbing, not least because the uprisings in North Africa have been framed within an Arab/Middle East context, not just by Western media but more importantly by Al Jazeera, which itself has become part of the revolutionary story. This in itself further antagonises Arab–African/Arab–black tensions and also raises the monumental question as to who is an African and what do we mean by Africa. Pambazuka News editor Firoze Manji addresses this in a recent interview with Al Jazeera – could this possibly be a response to growing criticism of their framing the North African uprisings solely in an ‘Arab’ context?

At one level the path toward liberalisation should have been opposed by the SACP, but the South African Communist Party found a convenient formulation to support the capitalist road. Their understanding of the stages theory of Marxism meant that South Africa had to pass through a period of capitalist development before the working class could be ready for an alternative to capitalism. This theoretical understanding of Marxism that twisted the revolutionary ideas of class struggles justified the support for the privatisation of large sections of the economy.

Former apartheid capitalists were exultant as South Africa’s ‘entrepreneurs’ traversed the continent behind the diplomatic cover of the African Renaissance. The African capitalists fronting for the old apartheid structures accepted the rules of the capitalist system, the racist hierarchy and ethnic power bases and looked to ways to maintain the system while seemingly opposing the very same system that they propped up.

In Zimbabwe, the integration of former freedom fighters into the circuits of the Rhodesian state found a new path. After integrating former freedom fighters into the civil service, into the university, into the army, into the police and into the wider bureaucracy, the freedom fighters wanted the land of the settlers. They turned to the language of third liberation to seize the land of the white farmers. What would have been a righteous act of reversing the theft of land from African workers and peasants became one more vehicle for the liberation fighters to become private capitalists. The conditions of the workers on the land did not change as the state became more repressive and intolerant of the wider society. Repression and the privatisation of liberation went hand in glove in Zimbabwe.

France is bombing Mali, the U.S. is expanding its military presence, China is buying up natural resources. It all confirms that Africa is still a coveted gem, and one of the few remaining frontiers for the predators of global capital.

With the fall of Gadhafi’s regime in Libya and NATO’s intervention there, Libya’s loosely associated ethnic groups began to unravel. Some moved into Northern Mali, escalating the insurrection there and complicating an already tense political situation.

As for France, its real aim is to stabilize the region to protect access to natural resources, particularly uranium.

Thabo Mbeki is seen as Africa's most legitimate, self-confident and fundamentally pro-Western leader. If anyone can shake down the World Bank in Washington for debt cancellation, or the WTO in Geneva for trade concessions, it's the primary architect of the miracle transition in recently-liberated South Africa.

From the late 1990s, Mbeki embarked upon an "African Renaissance" branding exercise with poignant poetics. The contentless form was somewhat remedied in the secretive Millennial Africa Recovery Programme (with the acronym "Map"), whose powerpoint skeleton was unveiled to select elites in 2000, during Mbeki's meetings with Bill Clinton in May, the Okinawa G-8 in July, the UN Millennium Summit in September, and a subsequent European Union gathering in Portugal. The skeleton was fleshed out in November 2000 with the assistance of several economists. It was immediately endorsed during a special South African visit by World Bank president James Wolfensohn "at an undisclosed location," due presumably to fears of the disruptive civil-society protests which had soured a Johannesburg trip by new IMF czar Horst Koehler a few months earlier.

AFRICA’S CONTRIBUTION TO EUROPEAN CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT According to Rodney, Europeans went through several phases of desire in Africa: first it was gold, through ivory and camwood to human cargo (slavery). He sketches the slow conquest and penetration due to shipping superiority and the slow breakup of African kingdoms and states in the 16th-17th century leading to the Portuguese slave trade and decision-making role for Europeans in Africa. While dissecting the slave trade he drew parallels between the rise of the European seaport towns of Bristol, Liverpool, Nantes, Seville and the Atlantic slave trade. In a passage that vividly explains the impact of Europe on Africa and its subsequent underdevelopment Rodney asserted that: ‘the European slave trade was a direct block, in removing millions of youth and young adults who are the human agents from whom inventiveness springs. Those who remained in areas badly hit by slave capturing were preoccupied about their freedom rather than with improvements in production’. Rodney pursues the notion that colonisation gave Europe a technological edge and addresses the exploitation of African minerals important for making steel alloys, manganese and chrome, including columbite – critical for aircraft engines. Significantly, in the course of this orbit of exploitation there was incessant African resistance. But European firearms, after reaching a certain phase of effectiveness, as in the use of the Maxim (machine gun) against the Maji Maji and the Zulus and others, in concert with the use of Africans in colonial armies tipped the military balance in favour of Europe and subjugated a continent.

Rodney also attacks the notion, which unfortunately still persists, that there is some universal nexus or equal relationship between ‘hard work’ and great wealth, a myth peddled in the West today. In his tome Rodney swats away this ‘common myth within capitalist thought that the individual through hard work can became a capitalist’.

All of this became painfully obvious in August last year when militarized police forces violently cracked down on a wildcat miners’ strike in the platinum town of Marikana. In the ensuing bloodbath, the most serious bout of state violence since the Sharpville massacre of 1960 and the end of apartheid in 1994, 34 workers were killed after being peppered with machine gun fire at close range.

The story of South Africa over the last 20 years must qualify as one of the most authentic political tragedies of our era. Once upon a time, not very long ago, the country was held up as an example to the world. In 1994, when the apartheid regime finally came to an end and South Africans overwhelmingly elected Mandela as their first democratic President, the world looked to South Africa with a mix of hope and expectation.

In this brave new world, Mandela was a former revolutionary turned philosopher-king; an elder of the global village who came to represent not only the suffering and aspirations of black Africans, but also the hopes and desires of Western progressives. Mandela mingled with world leaders, the European royalty and multi-billionaires; he hung out with popstars and sports legends, but he also maintained a close friendship with Fidel Castro and Muammar Khaddafi. Father Madiba, in a way, was above politics. Or was he?