Last week, a delegation from the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Social and Environmental Compliance Unit travelled to the Vhembe district to meet residents and key

The saying that true life is stranger than fiction is borne out by the events leading to the endorsement of the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone

The Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone (MMSEZ), a pet project of President Cyril Ramaphosa since 2018, arising from China-South Africa bilateral economic initiatives, was approved on 23

The incubation of the Musina Makhado Special Economic Zone is a surprisingly long one. Former minister of trade and industry Rob Davies endorsed special economic

The Brics Summit of 9 September may have seemed a low-key virtual event. But consensus was during moments to do with anti-terrorism and Afghanistan rather than Covid-19 vaccines or

The long-awaited final Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone (MMSEZ) environmental impact assessment (EIA) report was released on 1 September, coinciding with a carefully orchestrated investor conference-webinar roadshow.

Let’s face facts, as a nation we expected fallout from the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma and at the same time we cheered the constitutional

Until last week, the scale of the envisaged Musina-Makhado metallurgical zone (MMSEZ) was mind-boggling: an 8 000 hectare dirty industry complex with a 3 300

After three public participation rounds in September and October 2020 and in January 2021 it is hard to imagine that the directive for more thorough public participation

The flawed public participation process of the proposed mega-toxic Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone (MMSEZ) left people in the dark about its negative livelihoods and environmental risks. The

Carbon sequestration is a naturally occurring process whereby carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. Trees play an important role in this process since they

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation address revealed a new direction in economic policy: “import substitution industrialisation”: producing goods locally where possible. The approach

The Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (Brics) bloc met late last year in Brasilia, just more than a year after the Forum on

This book aims to bring together a series of analyses on international development assistance in the BRICS, the group of countries that includes Brazil, Russia, India,

Summary Aid, in the form of financial aid and investment, has become increasingly prevalent in both bilateral and multilateral partnerships in the BRICS. In Africa,

We conclude with thoughts about the agency for resistance to these neoliberal policies, both ones in existence since the early 1990s (Bond 2014) and those

As the world economy spirals into crisis stage, with fully-fledged deglobalisation and a new round of financial turmoil, the South African context is just as

In addition to China, Africa is meant to be one of the most critical markets for South Africa’s SEZs, and attracting other investment, trade and

The most crucial factor in whether South African SEZs succeed may well be the complicated role of China. There are three aspects worth discussing: overall

Trade and currency wars, financial volatility and economic turbulence are now the most important features of the world economy. The elements of a new international

Given both short- and longer-term trends in the world and South African economies, there is a danger of government and society placing inordinate hopes in

ABSTRACT In this paper we examine the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) bloc’s stated commitment to collective, inclusive development through the creation of the civil society participatory