The African National Congress and its Critics: 'Predatory Liberalism', Black Empowerment and Intra-Alliance Tensions in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by centralized, neo-liberal policymaking that perpetuates, and in some cases exaggerates, socio-economic inequalities inherited from the apartheid era. The African National Congress (ANC) leadership’s alignment with powerful international and domestic market actors produces tensions within the Tripartite Alliance and between government and civil society. Consequently, several characteristics of ‘predatory liberalism’ are evident in contemporary South Africa: neo-liberal restructuring of the economy is combined with an increasing willingness by government to assert its authority, to marginalize and delegitimize those critical of its abandonment of inclusive governance. A new form of oligarch power, combining entrenched economic interests with those of a new ‘black bourgeoisie’ promoted by narrowly implemented Black Economic Empowerment policies, diminishes prospects for broad-based socio-economic transformation. Because the new policy environment is failing to resolve tensions between global market demands for increasing market liberalization and domestic popular demands for poverty-alleviation and socio-economic transformation, the ANC leadership is forced increasingly to confront ‘ultra-leftists’ who are challenging its credentials as defender of the National Democratic Revolution which was the cornerstone in the anti-apartheid struggle.

Short reflections on the history of African communication

This article aims to propose a chronological subdivision in the history of African communication. African communication today is one of the most important axes for implementing development strategies, sustaining education, health, and schooling programmes, and so on. However, many of these programmes fail due to a lack of or ineffective communication between international organisations, local elite and lay people. The reasons for this situation must be found in Africa’s history of communication, which has undergone radical transformations in its different phases. Using the functionalist analysis drawn up by Jakobson, this article proposes a new chronological subdivision of Africa’s history of communication, reflecting on the current contradictions in contemporary communication in Africa.

Molecular cloning of a novel putative potassium channel-blocking neurotoxin from the venom of the North African scorpion, Androctonus amoreuxi

Scorpion venoms are a particularly rich source of neurotoxic proteins/peptides that interact in a highly specific fashion with discrete subtypes of ion channels in excitable and non-excitable cells. Here we have employed a recently developed technique to effect molecular cloning and structural characterization of a novel putative potassium channel-blocking toxin from the same sample of venom from the North African scorpion, Androctonus amoreuxi. The deduced precursor open-reading frame is composed of 59 amino acid residues that consists of a signal peptide of approximately 22 amino acid residues followed by a mature toxin of 37 amino acid residues. The mature toxin contains two functionally important residues (Lys27 and Tyr36), constituting a functional dyad motif that may be critical for potassium channel-blocking activity that can be affirmed from structural homologs as occurring in the venoms from other species of Androctonus scorpions. Parallel proteomic/transcriptomic studies can thus be performed on the same scorpion venom sample without sacrifice of the donor animal.