Patrick Bond

PART 1: BEFORE

‘I don’t have the stomach or the taste to serve any more at this level,’ said the normally ebullient Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils, as he quit after fourteen years of service to the South African government. It was late September 2008, just after Thabo Mbeki was palace-couped.

In 2007, former World Bank chief economist Nick Stern termed climate change the worst ‘market failure’ in history – since those who pollute greenhouse gases are not charged, and since they threaten future generations and vast swathes of natural life – and at that moment, even the 1991 ravings of

The latest acts in this country’s intensifying political drama include a sizzling summer-long battle between the young and old within the African National Congress (ANC), last week’s State of the Nation speech by president Jacob Zuma and the release of the ANC’s ‘research’ on alternatives to mini

January opened as the South African city of Durban’s first time since 2002 without City Manager Michael Sutcliffe.

Looking back now that the dust has settled, South Africa’s COP17 presidency appears disastrous. This was confirmed not only by Durban’s delayed, diplomatically-decrepit denouement, but by plummeting carbon markets in the days immediately following the conference’s ignoble end.

What, now, are the prospects for a climate deal by Friday?

There they fell during 2011, one after the other in past-their-prime domino descent: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from Tunis, Hosni Mubarak from Cairo, Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Muammar Gaddafi from Tripoli, Georgios Papandreou from Athens, Silvio Berlusconi fr

You can sympathise with our city’s community, environmental, labour and faith leaders who in preparing for the world climate summit here in one month’s time, must wake their sleepy flocks to the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.

In these days of dire economic and environmental crisis, with political elites under attack from Athens to Washington, the establishment is desperate for legitimacy. Even International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff now publicly endorse ‘social justice’ at the same time they tighten austerity screws.