The AIAC Podcast

Need we say more? Thirty-two teams have converged in the tiny Middle-Eastern nation of Qatar to fight for their national pride, and so far, it is shaping up to be the spectacle that keeps football lovers faithful. But there is no sport without politics, and Qatar’s hosting of the tournament has unleashed a sea of criticism over its dodgy labor practices and poor human rights track record. Should we side with FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, in his accusation that the West is being hypocritical? Or are reactionary elites simply weaponizing woke-ish arguments to deflect warranted scrutiny? And besides the political football, what of the football? Who will win? Who should win? Special guests Sean Jacobs and Tony Karon who host the football podcast Eleven Named People, join Will to discuss the beautiful game.

Sierra Leone will elect a president and parliament on June 24, its fifth election since a devastating 10-year civil war ended in 2002. Incumbent Julius Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) is seeking re-election in a two-horse race against Samura Kamara of the All People’s Congress (APC). The contest is a re-match of the 2018 vote, when Bio won 51.81% of the vote to Kamara’s 48.19%.Like the rest of the continent, the country is facing a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by global economic shocks. In August 2022, protests in this regard in Freetown, Makeni, and Kamakwie triggered a crackdown from the state, and 20 people were killed. When Bio came to power in 2018, having succeeded APC president Ernest Koroma, he promised to undo the legacy of heavy-handedness and intolerance to criticism that Koroma’s presidency became associated with. Now, many Sierra Leoneans are seeing more of the same.Ahead of the elections, restrictions on gatherings have been enforced, as well as a change to the voting system which is causing confusion. Kamara is also facing corruption charges originating from his time as foreign minister under Koroma, and the glacial pace that the case is moving through the courts has resulted in suspicions that Bio is weaponizing the state apparatus to frustrate Kamara’s candidacy.This week on the podcast, we are joined from Freetown by Sierra Leonean and American author Ishmael Beah to discuss the elections. Does Kamara represent much of a difference to Bio? How strong are Sierra Leone’s ethnic divisions, which inform most voting preferences? And, what of the youth who led the country’s cost-of-living protests? Ishmael, is the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Radiance of Tomorrow, A Novel, and Little Family released in 2020. AIAC director of operations, Boima Tucker, also joins as a special guest.

For nearly two months, fighting has continued in Sudan between two factions of the country’s military government—the Sudanese Armed Forces, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, led by Lt General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.. Fighting has been concentrated in the capital Khartoum and Sudan’s Darfur region, with more than 1,500 people killed. The conflict originated in Sudan’s 2019 revolution, when Omar al-Bashir, the country’s military despot, was ousted after 30 years. Thereafter, the military agreed to a power-sharing deal and transition to civilian rule (after massacring protestors in Khartoum in June 2019). But in October 2021, the SAF and RSF joined forces to depose Sudan’s interim civilian leader, Abdallah Hamdok.The proximate causes of today’s fighting stem from a dispute over integrating the RSF into Sudan’s security apparatus. Fundamentally, both sides see the other as an existential threat, a possible foil to their control of vast economic interests, such as gold and gum Arabic. The international community—with its own interests in the Sudanese economy—is also to blame, being overcommitted to the military factions as elite brokers of the transitional process. Excluded in all this are the Sudanese people. Joining the podcast to discuss the roots of the crisis and how ordinary Sudanese people are proving resilient, is Mahder Serekberhan. Mahder Serekberhan is a political science PhD student at Syracuse University. She is the vice chairperson of the Global Pan-African Movement, North America Delegation.

Across the world, renewed social unrest—from public sector wage strikes in the United Kingdom, to protests against pension reform in France—are being read as a repudiation of austerity. The inflationary crisis afflicting the global North has had the knock-on effect of precipitating a debt crisis in the global South as the cost of servicing debt increases. “Repayments on public debt owed to non-residents for a group of 91 of the world’s poorest countries will take up an average of more than 16 per cent of government revenues in 2023,” the Financial Times recently reported. To make repayments possible, government’s usually resort to austerity, cutting social spending on healthcare, education, and social security.This is how we usually understand austerity, as caused by some kind of economic shock. But what if that is not the case? What if rather than being exceptional to modern capitalism, austerity is in fact inherent to its stability? This is what Clara Mattei argues in The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Rather than painful medicine states are forced to administer in times of crisis, austerity is a fundamental tool for stabilizing class relations and increasing market dependence. But if austerity is intrinsic to capitalism, what does this mean for the anti-austerity agenda that has captured the global left? Can we resist austerity without dismantling capitalism? This week on the podcast we explore these questions with Mattei, an assistant professor of economics at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

In December, one of the most right-wing governments in Israeli history came to power. Led by Benjamin Netenyahu—who serves as Prime Minister for the sixth time—the coalition includes figures such as Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler and one time supporter of the terrorist group Kach (Ben Gvir is also known to have hung a portrait of Baruch Goldstein in his living room. Goldstein, also a supporter of Kach, massacred 29 Palestinians at the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron in 1994.)The government has proposed a set of sweeping judicial reforms that, in the main, would drastically restrict the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down laws passed by parliament deemed unconstitutional. The move has prompted mass demonstrations across Israel's major urban centers, such as Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem, with many calling these reforms a threat to Israel’s democracy.However, as Jewish American commentator Peter Beinart wrote in the New York Times, “The principle that Mr. Netanyahu’s liberal Zionist critics say he threatens—a Jewish and democratic state—is in reality a contradiction.” The contradiction is expressed in the reality of apartheid in which five million Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem are under direct Israeli control but are denied basic rights and freedoms. These mass demonstrations are happening amidst an escalation of violence—Israeli forces have killed 65 Palestinians since the start of the year, while 11 Israeli civilians have been killed. Earlier this month, settlers from the Occupied West Bank (illegal settlements in the West Bank number close to 500,000) carried out a violent pogrom in the village of Huwara near Nablus, torching homes and businesses. Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, subsequently made comments calling for the government to “wipe out” the village. On this episode of the podcast, we are joined by Peter Beinart to discuss the political instability in Israel, the trajectories of ethno-nationalism, and whether there are any ways out of the impasse. Could the vision of a secular, democratic state for Palestianians and Jews between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea gain traction? Is this vision compatible with Zionism? And what of the role of the US, the Israeli’s state’s most ardent international backer? Peter Beinart is editor-at-large of Jewish Currents. He is also Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York and author of The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter.

South Africa is currently being gripped by a devastating energy crisis with homes and businesses suffering blackouts for up to sixteen hours a day. The failure of the country’s national power utility—Eskom—to meet electricity  demand has been ongoing since 2007, and is now in its worst period. Many reasons are proffered for how this predicament arose, prominent among them being the widespread corruption connected to the ruling African National Congress’ system of patronage.Successive leaders have been brought in to steer the sinking ship ashore, and all of them have veered adrift. The latest failure is Andre De Ruyter’s, who resigned from Eskom in December last year, and then stepped down with immediate effect after conducting an explosive interview on South African television that revealed the extent of looting at the organization. De Ruyter—whose beginnings were in the private sector—was widely viewed as a steady hand at the wheel. During his tenure, a consensus rose in favor of Eskom’s complete privatization. This would finalize a process inaugurated in 1983 when the apartheid government corporatized Eskom. But, is this the only way? Can there be a public pathway towards rebuilding Eskom’s capacity and decarbonizing South Africa’s energy sector? On the podcast this week, Will chats to Andile Zulu, a writer and regular contributor to Africa Is A Country, who is also the energy democracy officer at the Alternative Information Development Centre in Cape Town, South Africa.

On February 25, Africa’s largest democracy and economy will elect its president and parliamentary representatives. This will be Nigeria’s seventh electoral cycle since the country returned to civilian rule in 1999. In its fourth republic, the People's Democratic Party has won every multi-party contest until 2015, when the All Progressives Congress led by incumbent Muhammdu Buhari clinched two successive terms. Now bearing the party flag is Bola Tinubu, the former governor of Lagos state. The PDP’s candidate is Atiku Abubaker, who served as Olusegun Obasanjo’s vice president from 1999 until 2007.But it’s not these veterans who are captivating hearts and minds. Instead, it is Peter Obi, a wealthy businessman and ex-governor of Anambra state, who is causing a stir. Initially, Obi intended to  compete for  the PDP nomination  but crossed the floor to the Labour Party after being frustrated with the PDP’s primary process. His move to the Labour Party—a hitherto relatively unknown, social-democratic platform—is viewed by many as a bold, anti-establishment move. Young Nigerians are attracted to his seeming “outsider” image, his good governance politics, and his entrepreneurial background, which exemplifies the dream of upward mobility that evades many young Nigerians. Obi has cultivated a cult following, with many of his fans dubbing themselves “Obidients.”Obi’s hype, along with an endorsement from Obasanjo, makes him look like the natural frontrunner. But can Obi really transform Nigeria’s political and economic system, marred by staggering inequality, regional and ethno-religious divides, and corruption? Or is his politics vacuous and empty, based on vague promises to “turn things around?” And how does the Left feature in all of this? What of the initiatives born from the mass mobilizations of the mid-2010s, such as #OccupyNigeria and the Take It Back Movement? And above all, #EndSARS?  This week, Will is joined by the hosts of an exciting new podcast on Nigerian politics, the Nigerian Scam, to discuss the upcoming election and its possible outcomes. Sa'eed Husaini is a contributing editor at Africa Is a Country, who lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria, wrapping up a fellowship at the University of Lagos, and O.A.G has a postgraduate degree in food security, and is a political commentator with great interest in revolutionary thought in and out of the African continent.

Last year, left-wing veteran Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated right-wing Jair Bolsonaro in an historic election for Brazil. The victory was slim—Lula amassed 50.9% to Bolsonaro’s 49.1%. Bolsonarismo—the term used to describe adherence to Bolsonaro’s crackpot ideology which blends neofascism, evangelical Christianity, and neoliberalism—was far from repudiated. And, lo and behold, a week after Lula’s inauguration (for which Bolsonaro was absent, on top of failing to concede defeat in the first place), on the 8th of January Bolsonaristas stormed the country’s main federal buildings in the capital Brasilia, in what many are calling a coup attempt akin to the US Capitol riots.Bolsonaro, for now, remains in self-imposed exile in Florida, while Lula’s government proceeds with arrests of those who bear responsibility for the failed putsch. Just how much of a threat to Brazil’s democracy is Bolsonarismo, and how can its wide, cross-class appeal be explained? And will Lula be able to govern in spite of the country’s ongoing legitimation crisis, the contradictions of his own, broad coalition, and the pressing challenges the country faces such as food insecurity and climate change? As Sabrina Fernandes wrote before Lula’s victory in Africa Is A Country, “The challenge, then, is at least threefold: to elect a progressive government and maintain power, to fix recent losses in a short amount of time, and to propose more ambitious politics that can win the people over.” Sabrina joins will to discuss the prospects and challenges for Lula’s third term, and whether Lula can lead a strengthened effort for progressive, Third World internationalism. Sabrina Fernandes is a sociologist, ecosocialist organizer and communicator from Brazil. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow with CALAS at the University of Guadalajara working on just transitions from the margins, and is also the person behind the radical left education project Tese Onze.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a multi-polar order started taking shape. Determined to impose economic costs on Putin’s regime for its aggression, the West quickly and unilaterally undertook to sanction and isolate it. But these decisions were not without ramifications for other countries in the world, especially large swathes of  the Global South, who are dependent on Russian imports, particularly energy and wheat. Feeling the economic pain of the West’s economic war and keen to capitalize on their need for support, countries in the global South have adopted a strategic neutral stance for better leverage.As Tim Sahay argues, “Countries like China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have refused to sacrifice their national interests to punish Russia. Most importantly, they believe their bargaining power in the new Cold War will result in sweeter trade, technology, and weapons deals from the West.” Although the old non-alignment was rooted in moral and political principles, today’s one is driven by pragmatism.  Tim joins Will to discuss the future of non-alignment in the era of great power competition between the West and the China-Russia axis. Will non-aligned countries mount a co-ordinated response to global challenges such as energy and security? And, how will they respond to the coming debt crisis precipitated by the West’s monetary policy tightening to contain inflation?Tim Sahay is currently the senior policy manager at Green New Deal Network, a coalition of labor, climate and environmental justice organizations growing a movement to pass national and international green policies. Articles referenced:Tim Sahay, ‘A New Non-Alignment,’ Phenomenal World https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/non-alignment-brics/Rana Foroohar, ‘A new world energy order is taking shape,’ Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/d34dfd79-113c-4ac7-814b-a41086c922faDylan Riley & Robert Brenner, ‘Seven Theses on American Politics,’ New Left Review https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii138/articles/dylan-riley-robert-brenner-seven-theses-on-american-politics

On December 7, 2022, Peruvian President Pedro Castillo was impeached. Castillo ascended to the job in a watershed election in 2021, carrying the hopes of Peru’s poor, downtrodden and marginalized despite facing a hostile, right-wing Congress. This was the third impeachment attempt by the legislative body, and it came after Castillo first tried to avoid removal by dissolving Congress and announcing a “government of national emergency.” Castillo was unsuccessful, and despite attempting to flee the country, was arrested and imprisoned. His deputy president, Dina Boluarte, broke ranks with Castillo and has since become the country’s president.These events have triggered a nation-wide backlash, with protests in the capital, Lima, as well as Peru’s rural highlands. Protestors are calling for Boluarte to step down, and for elections to take place immediately. Others are calling for Castillo’s reinstatement, and others still, for the wholesale secession from Lima province, given Peru’s stark regional divide between the metropole and the rest of the country. So far, the military repression has been intense, and more than forty people have been killed by security forces.What comes next for Peru? Will these protests generate momentum for a new constitution to correct Peru’s deep inequalities? Or are they the beginnings of another democratic backslide? This week, Will is joined by Nicolas Allen and José Miguel Munive Vargas to discuss. Nicolas is a graduate student in Latin American history, commissioning editor at (US) Jacobin Magazine and managing editor at Jacobin America Latina. José Miguel is a Peruvian PhD student in Latin American history at Stony Brook University with interests in Andean history (particularly Peru); race, gender, and nationalism.

This year’s FIFA Men’s World Cup is now in its business end. So far, it’s exceeded expectations in terms of spectacle. From Vincent Aboubakar’s incredible solo goal for Cameroon against Brazil (after which he celebrated by removing his shirt, earning himself an instant red card), to Japan’s heroics, and of course, to Morocco’s incredible advance to the semi-finals (after dispatching footballing titans in Spain and Portugal). It has also delivered the politics too—although the debate over Qatar’s hosting of the tournament has ebbed, a new one has been ignited over whether anyone can justifiably support Morocco—who are now the most successful African and Arab team in the tournament’s history—while its government occupies Western Sahara. The Palestinian flags displayed by Morrocan fans and players are ubiquitous, but where are the ones for the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic? On this episode, Will, Sean, Tony and Boima debate and discuss!

In 2019, legendary African writer and public intellectual, Binyavanga Wainaina, passed away. A few weeks ago, a collection of Wainana’s early writing was published as How To Write About Africa (Hamish Hamilton, 2022). On this special episode of AIAC Talk, we bring together Wainana’s friends and colleagues to discuss his towering legacy, and the lesser known writing, which demonstrated his irreverence, curiosity, and charity best.The editor of the collection, Achal Prabhala is a writer, filmmaker and public health activist who lives in Bangalore, India. Neo Musangi is an experimental self-taught queer artist whose practice uses performance, text, visual and audio installations. Neo also teaches gender studies at American and St. Lawrence Universities. Dayo Forster is an internationally published novelist who also has a parallel career in financial inclusion. Originally from the Gambia, she lived in Kenya for several years.

The legacy of apartheid displacement and dispossession was meant to be remedied in democratic South Africa. Although the government has delivered more than three million homes, the social need has outstripped capacity and the collapse of the ANC-run state due to corruption has not helped. In this context, scores of South Africans take charge of their own accommodation by occupying land (sometimes privately owned, often state-owned) and erecting their own shelters. Although one expects the neoliberal state to embrace this form of self-provisioning, land occupiers are opposed by the state, and typically violently evicted. How come?Zachary Levenson’s latest book, Delivery as Dispossession: Land Occupation and Eviction in the Postapartheid City (OUP, 2022) seeks to make sense of land occupations and housing struggles in South Africa. Why does the state see them as an obstacle to housing delivery? And if, as the left tends to represent them, they constitute social movements, what kind of movement is a land occupation?Zach, a regular AIAC contributor, is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, a Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and a senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg.

August marked 10 years since the Marikana massacre, when police in South Africa shot down 34 striking mineworkers at a platinum mine in the North-West Province. This episode provoked a deeper public awareness of rampant police violence in post-apartheid South Africa, which continues to repress poor and working-class communities and entrench class, racial and gender inequalities. Are alternatives possible? What could those look like in a country rife with crime, and where many people genuinely desire public safety, but mistrust the police?In his new book, Shoot to Kill: Police and Power in South Africa (Inkani Books, 2022), regular AIAC contributor Christopher McMichael places the institution of policing in its wider, historical context, and argues that democratic and humanistic alternatives for public safety are possible. A world without police need not mean a world without safety.Christopher is a cultural critic and political commentator. He has a PhD in political science from Rhodes University and writes on power, crime and culture.

It goes without saying that the climate crisis is the problem of our time. Yet, despite rhetoric from governments and big corporations that structural changes are imminent, none seem to be forthcoming and emissions continue apace. How come? Professor Matt Huber joins Will to discuss his latest book, Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet (Verso, 2022). Professor Huber argues that the only way to confront climate change is to build working-class power on a planetary scale. What kind of politics does this entail, and if the working-class is the agent of change—who, exactly, is the working class? Professor Huber is an assistant professor of geography at Syracuse University and is also the author of Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital.

Will is joined by returning guest, Nihal El Aaser, to discuss the roots of Egypt’s ongoing economic crisis. In The New Arab, Nihal argues that “These conditions eventually became the economic foundations of the Arab Spring, the 2011 uprisings that gave us the famous slogan 'Aish, Horreya, Adala Egtema’eya,' meaning 'Bread, Freedom & Social Justice'.” Could Egypt be heading towards another cycle of social revolt? Or does Sisi’s regime of brutal repression, which includes the ongoing imprisonment of thousands of activists (like Alaa Abd El-Fattah), make organizing on the scale required unlikely. Nihal is an Egyptian writer and researcher based in London and has contributed to various publications, including Jacobin, Verso, and Africa Is A Country.

Will is joined by Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, to discuss her latest book, Disorder, Hard Times in the 21st Century (OUP, 2022). Since the 2008 financial crisis, many analysts have scratched their heads to make sense of the crisis of liberal democracies, the decline of neoliberal hegemony, and the emerging multipolar world where the West’s dominance is challenged by China and Russia. Professor Thompson argues that a key factor driving these interlocking geopolitical, economic and political crises, are the predicaments around energy - how it is produced, distributed, and consumed. As the climate crisis makes structural change an existential necessity, how much of the coming world will change - and how much of it, will stay the same? Especially, for the global South, which is rich in clean earth metals - the energy resource of a green future?

Will chats to Professor Vivek Chibber about his latest book, The Class Matrix: Social Theory After the Cultural Turn. Why, despite the powerful antagonism capitalism generates between bosses and workers, is it so resilient? Why did class disappear as an analytical category for the international left? Can the left rebuild class consciousness through organizing, or are the multiple crises the world faces too insurmountable, and the obstacles to organizing too great?Vivek Chibber is a Professor of Sociology at New York University and the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital and Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India. He is a contributor to the Socialist Register, American Journal of Sociology, Boston Review, the New Left Review and Jacobin. He is also the editor of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy.

Organized through the Academics Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), academics at Nigeria's public universities are on strike. They're seeking to force the Nigerian government to implement a 2009 agreement promising increased pay and greater investment in tertiary education. Over the years, the government has been steadily defunding public universities and encouraging privatization. In this episode, Will chats to Sa'eed Husaini and Temitope Fanguwa to understand the origins of the strike, as well as the role of academics in Nigeria's left politics. On the heels of #EndSARS, could Nigeria be on the cusp of its own #FeesMustFall moment?Temitope is a Marxist historian with a central focus on African economic history in the Department of History and International Studies, Osun State University, as well as a budding social justice activist and epistemic-decolonizer; and Sa'eed is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Lagos and a contributor at Africa Is a Country plus Jacobin Magazine. Sa’eed is also a regular guest host of The Nigerian Scam, a leftist podcast examining politics, history, and the fraudulence of bourgeois society from class and ideological perspectives—be sure to check it out.

Earlier this week, AIAC editor Sean Jacobs asked: “Where do African countries fall in the threatened invasion of Ukraine by Russia? Will African states side with the US or their European allies or with Russia?” The question is no longer speculative: Russia has invaded Ukraine. As Russia seeks expansion at its borders, its expanding influence beyond its borders is viewed as a push for global hegemony against the US, EU and China. Is Russia's involvement on the continent just part of another Scramble for Africa? Does Africa have any agency?Will chats with John Lechner about whether Russia seeks influence for its own sake, or whether its motives are more nuanced. And whether, war with Ukraine means African countries will at some point, have to pick a side. John is a freelance journalist writing on the politics of the former Soviet Union, Turkey, and Africa, and is a recent graduate from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.