The South African Pandemic of Racial Capitalism

Madalitso Zililo Phiri

South Africa’s COVID-19 pandemic is one of racial capitalism, entangled with histories of imperial state formation, settler colonialism, and a hierarchical global-neoliberal public policy architecture. Racial capitalism is defined as a hierarchical political economy constituted by war, militarism, imperialism, expropriation, and super-exploitation. The racialised neoliberal-policy approach has limited state social provisioning, emphasising the primacy of markets, cost recovery, and competitive priorities in the provision of public infrastructure and services, including health care.

COVID-19 blatantly exhibited the social inequalities in South African society that have always been predicated on anti-Black racism and genocide. The trajectory is clear: revolution not reform, third world internationalism, and the rejection of reliance on the global financial architecture, the very foundations of which seek to preserve the genetic survival of white life (and white capital) above all others across the world.

For a full read of this brief, click here or on the picture to download the pdf file.