In 2019, South African dairy giant Clover was taken over by Milco, a consortium led by Israel’s Central Bottling Company – which also operates in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Since November 2021, Clover workers have been striking against the restructuring campaign that Milco seeks to implement, which includes widespread retrenchments and factory closures; as well as the takeover itself, seen as economic collaboration with Israeli apartheid. In this episode of AIAC Talk, Will chats with Mametlwe Sebei, who is the president of the General Industries Workers Union of SA (GIWUSA), one of the unions involved in the strike.

And then, Will talks to Na’eem Jeenah about Israel’s efforts to acquire accreditation at the African Union, and the dearth of Palestinian solidarity on the continent. Na’eem is Executive Director of the Afro-Middle East Centre, a research institute dedicated to studying the Middle East and North Africa and relations between that region and the rest of Africa

Pio Gama Pinto was a Kenyan socialist activist and intellectual who was assassinated in 1965, shortly after Kenya won independence two years prior. Who was he, why was he feared, and why was his legacy erased? This week, Will chats with Lena Anyuolo and Nicholas Mwangi, two members of the Organic Intellectuals Network in Kenya that have put together a volume of reflections on Pinto and his legacy called Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Reflect on the Legacy of Pio Gama Pinto (Daraja Press, 2021). Along the way, they also address the state of Kenya’s left, the prospects left unity and how it is approaching the upcoming general election in August.

In the last year and a half, military takeovers have occurred in Chad, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, and last week, in Burkina Faso. It happens that all of these countries belong to a region below the Sahara known as the Sahel, stretching from Senegal to Sudan, and comprising Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, northern Nigeria, southern Algeria, Eritrea, and northern Ethiopia. The reason for ex-Burkinabé president Roch Kaboré’s overthrow is widely attributed to his inability to manage the destabilizing conflict in the central Sahel that Burkina was dragged into in 2015. For now, the coup has popular support—but where next for the country, and its democracy? Returning to AIAC Talk is Dr. Lassane Ouedraogo, an analyst of political governance, media, and conflict in Sahelian West Africa, a 2020 AIAC inaugural fellow and an adjunct lecturer at Université Joseph Ki Zerbo in Ouagadougou. Although the coup’s proximate cause is Burkina’s deteriorating security situation, has the country become caught up in a cycle of military insurgency that even revolutionaries, like Thomas Sankara, are partly responsible for? Does this doom liberal democracy in Burkina, or was it ill-suited to begin with?

Are South Africa’s unions relevant? Are they still too closely connected to the politics of the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress? (The party still enjoys an alliance with the country’s largest trade union federation, the Congress of South Africa’s Trade Unions (COSATU).) Can they rebuild to unite workers, communities and the unemployed? What we know is that South Africa’s labor movement is in crisis. Only 27% of workers are members of a trade union and soaring joblessness leaves many outside of employment relations altogether. In this episode, Will chats with Karl Cloete, the former deputy general secretary of South Africa’s largest trade union, the National Union of Metalworkers South Africa (NUMSA).

China’s involvement in Africa is typically viewed with skepticism. Many think its development initiatives seek to trap African states in exploitative economic relationships, and that China, like the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, is competing against the United States to spread its political model globally. In this episode of AIAC Talk, Will talks to Professor Tang Xiaoyang, who is Chair of the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University. Professor Tang’s new book, Coevolutionary Pragmatism: Approaches and Impacts of China–Africa Economic Cooperation (CUP, 2021) challenges the idea that China wants to export its ideology to Africa. So then, what does China want to achieve?

The 33rd edition of the African Cup of Nations football tournament began today, Sunday, 9 January, in Cameroon. AIAC founder and editor Sean Jacobs joins Will to talk about the history of the tournament, its contemporary politics, and its relationship to the hegemony of European football. The most important question of all, of course, is who will win this year’s showpiece? Listen in for some predictions.

In the final episode of AIAC Talk for the year, Will is joined by AIAC founder and editor Sean Jacobs for a conversation with Steven Friedman; a South African newspaper columnist, former trade unionist, and political scientist who specializes in the study of democracy. Professor Friedman is the author of two new books reflecting on South Africa’s tortured past and its dysfunctional present, namely Prisoners of the Past—South African Democracy and the Legacy of Minority Rule, as well as One Virus, Two Countries: What COVID-19 Tells Us About South Africa. Why has South Africa been unable to implement wealth distribution for the masses despite its transition to a robust, liberal democracy? In the throes of a political impasse, which social forces are capable of bringing about change? Or is a further slide to disorder more likely?

The arrest in July of former president Jacob Zuma in connection with an investigation into widespread corruption sparked an eruption of unrest and violence, mainly in the province of his base, KwaZulu-Natal. Yet the upheaval reflects a broader crisis underpinned by the failures of the African National Congress (ANC) to deliver on the hopes of national liberation, and the neo-liberalization and contradictions of the ANC in power. Soaring levels of unemployment and inequality have been exacerbated by the pandemic and government austerity policies, and in November, municipal election results (where the ANC and official opposition Democratic Alliance under-performed) confirmed widespread discontent. In this episode of AIAC Talk, William Shoki and Sean Jacobs speak with Lee Wengraf (contributing editor at ROAPE) about the roots of South Africa’s political crisis.

2021 is being roundly pronounced as “a great year for African writing.” From Zanzibar-born Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Nobel award to South African Damon Galgut nabbing the Booker—the list of African and diaspora writers winning prestigious literary prizes this year is long. Does this represent a paradigm shift in global literature, typically dominated by Western authors? Do these victories do anything to advance African publishing and literary culture? Joining us in this week’s AIAC Talk to unpack these themes, are Ainehi Edoro, Bhakti Shringarpure and Leila Aboulela.

Haiti is going through hard times. From the assassination of a sitting president to an earthquake soon after, preceded by years of economic stagnation and devastating natural disasters. In this episode of AIAC Talk, we chat to Pooja Bhatia about the roots of Haiti’s manifold crises. Pooja Bhatia is a writer and has written about Haiti for outlets such as The London Review of Books and the New York Times. Though it may seem like Haiti is just a country down on its luck, we chat to Pooja about how the decay of its institutions and the erosion of its sovereignty are the result of centuries of foreign interference—first from France, its former colonizer, and now from the United States, a neocolonial power. Yet, despite the doom and gloom, are there signs that Haitians are collectively mobilizing for a better future, harnessing the legacy of its profound revolutionary past?