Scar on the Conscience of the World
Review of 'Class Struggle and Resistance in Africa', ed. Leo Zeilig, New Clarion Press £12.95
Tony Blair's stance towards Africa effectively sums up that taken by the rulers of the world more generally. At the Labour Party conference last October he called Africa 'a scar on the conscience of the world'--before authorising the sale to impoverished Tanzania of a military air traffic control system that even the World Bank has condemned as inappropriate. Africa, in other words, is a basket case, there just to be exploited economically and militarily.
The plight of Africa is indeed grim. Giovanni Arrighi sums it up in the latest issue of New Left Review: