This is the text of Patrick Bond’s opening address to the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) Network Pre-G20 Conference, held at the Birchwood Hotel, Ekurhuleni (eastern Johannesburg), 25 September 2025
‘Amandla, Awethu!’ Power to the people!
You don’t want to know those two words.
But I know that here, that the heterodox economists, the feminists, the post-Keynesians, the institutionalists, and the Marxists amongst us – maybe anarchists too – you don’t qualify: you do have to learn these two words.
However, if you are going back to the United States, since we have a good team here putting all this on YouTube, you should be quiet, right? When you hit U.S. Immigration, if the YouTube is picking up your knowledge of our two favorite words – Amandla, Awethu!
And we have to say, not just the U.S. It turns out that Britain is also now in the same category.
And Jeremy Corbyn is actually here the day after tomorrow, to promote Palestine. It’s in a venue about 40 minutes away from here. And after the chaos you might have heard of, in Corbyn’s attempt to start a new party, I think we should prepare to welcome him, into exile.
And also those of you who are laboring under various repressive regimes, the worst being of course the U.S., where freedom of intellectual work, freedom of academic expression is fading fast. And Britain. But also from the continent. Johannesburg is a very good address right now.
Palestine solidarity versus the neoliberal mentality
And you probably learned that on Tuesday, when you heard Cyril Ramaphosa speaking at the United Nations General Assembly. Especially in his heartfelt commitment to ending the genocide by Israel in Gaza.
But you know that Johannesburg – and South Africa – is a very dialectical place, and you know that we have a tradition in our favorite movement, our ruling party, which is called, well, I call it: ‘talk left, walk right.’
And you may know that while President Ramaphosa is railing in such an eloquent way about the need for Palestine to be free, his brother-in-law, whose name is Patrice Motsepe, is preparing 170,000 tonnes of coal – coal that will wreck the environment – to be loaded onto the Navios Felix ship today in Richard’s Bay. That’s our main coal terminal.
And that coal terminal is then, for the 18th time, supplying two million tons of coal to the genocide. And so our dialectics include regular protests against Cyril Ramaphosa’s brother-in-law, Patrice Motsepe, and his African Rainbow Minerals.
But he’s really just the ‘black economic empowerment’ front man, because we have a class formation process in which racial assimilation into some of the worst circuits of capital has been managed, by Glencore, which is the main supplier of that coal. And they were Ramaphosa’s main business partners in South Africa, when he was a coal mining tycoon: Glencore.
And our trade minister, Parks Tao, has said he will not intervene in the extraction from Mpumalanga – which is just the next province over – against the export of coal to Israel because the WTO doesn’t allow us to do so, because of its “non-discrimination provisions.”
Now, that’s the mentality. It’s exactly what Jomo said, with the ‘paleo-conservative’ – as they call themselves on the Trump terrain – the paleo-conservative forces in the US, leaving the door open for very weak European neoliberals. And now the opening is for the BRICS to be neoliberal, as exemplified by Parks Tao.
This city’s (subimperial) gold curse
And it’s very appropriate in this city of Johannesburg – though where we are is called Ekurhuleni – that we pick up some of the traditions here. Because it’s an important city, if we especially include Pretoria. Because about 30 minutes north of here on that R21 [highway] you’ll find Jan Smuts’ mansion and his library.
Has anyone from South Africa been up there? It’s in Irene, and you’ll find the 1944 correspondence where John Maynard Keynes had really wanted Jan Smuts – still in the British colonial terrain in the Commonwealth – to be an ally in Bretton Woods, to unite with the debtors of the world, against the main creditor.
But underneath us was half the world’s historic gold – right underneath us, in this strip that goes from about 50 km to the east, to about 250 km to the west and south. Some of the mines, the gold mines being 4 kilometers deep, that’s our deepest mine in the world, in Carletonville. And so half the world’s historic gold being dug out from this area, meant that Jan Smuts felt, well, where’s the other half? Oh, it’s in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
So in 1944, the dealmaking that went on, included Harry Dexter White working with Jan Smuts and his delegates at Bretton Woods, to ensure that the dollar had an ‘exorbitant privilege’ right from day one.
So we’re very embarrassed by that, and we hope that a new Bretton Woods might come out. But will it come from the G20, in which, similarly, a western elite in 2008, in November in Washington, then in April 2009 in London, and then in Pittsburgh and on and on, and now in a place called Nasrec, which is the November 22-23 summit site? Some of us went by there yesterday, coming out of Soweto.
And when the assimilation from the imperialist west during a financial crisis, includes – may I use a word that our Brazilians taught us? A man called Ruy Mauro Marini, a wonderful dependency theorist, and he understood the word – he created it, in a way, for this purpose, I think – ‘subimperial.’
So the assimilation of subimperial-into-imperial is absolutely appropriate for hosting the G20 in our region.
Johannesburg then degraded
Because this is the most unequal city in the world, according to EuroMonitor in 2017, the last data we have.
It’s also the most corrupt city – but not who you may have heard of. You may have heard that we have politicians and bureaucrats who are corrupt.
But if you look at Transparency International, which is, I think, still the gold standard for the ‘Corruption Perceptions Index,’ we’re actually 107th most corrupt. That is, we’re not even – out of 180 – we’re not even in the top half of corrupt states.
Why do I say the most corrupt city? Because there’s a very important conslutancy, I mean consultancy – I always get that wrong – it’s called PwC.
Some of you have flown in on SAA? That airline was basically wrecked by PwC. It really knows corruption. So when it does the bi-annual corruption, what’s called Economic Crime and Fraud – Survey, you know, ‘it takes one, to know one’, I take it seriously.
And our Johannesburg lads – and mostly you can tell them by the color of their skin [indicating white skin] – they win the PwC biannual Economic Crime and Fraud surveys. They’re in Sandton, but they’re also in Stellenbosch, central Cape Town and Umhlanga.
So, if some of you are out wandering around, and you’re pulling out your plastic, yeah, just be careful, because this is a town full of world-class ‘tsotsis’ [criminals]. The currency manipulation by the banks and various other aspects prove that.
Sorry about Musk
And we also have to apologize to all of you, because probably the most damaging man in recent history was taught here, in Johannesburg – well, Ekurhuleni right next to Johannesburg – at Bryanston High School, and he grew up in Pretoria. Does anybody know whom I’m talking about?
Just to give you a sense, the Lancet, the British medical journal, has issued a report predicting 14 million deaths, unnecessarily, thanks to this man. Who is that? Wake up folks. This is a problem.
His name is Elon Musk, and he was bullied badly at Bryanston – he said, nearly to death. And I think he was a beautiful little smart, brilliant, autistic lad, going to a high school, to learn – as whites of that generation did – how to run the apartheid system, or how to run the most corrupt corporate city in the world.
We need to do an offset. Do you do carbon offsets when you fly?
Well, we did give you Trevor Noah from Johannesburg. Ok, some of you smile, because you also appreciate the best comedian, I think, in the world. And we gave you this wonderful young singer who grew up a few kms from here, Tyla. She just won some Grammys. We also had, also from Benoni, just next door, Charlize Theron.
So we’re trying our offsets. (We don’t believe in carbon offsets, but anyhow.)
Uncivil society
Well, just to give you that final sense of why it’s such an exciting city. And we must really thank Mayada and Lucia, because the IDEAs team – especially the African-based cadres I’ve gotten to know – are you here in the house, Mayada – fantastic – and Lucia, around? No, not now. But waow, if we had the young scholars, again and again, bringing us – I’ve seen over the past few days – the ability of Mayada to gather and nurture our youth, we [old men] don’t have any problem, we can retire with confidence.
However, we have to also appreciate not just the radical reformers in the house, who are coming up and finding their way into the states. But the uncivil society forces. And we heard a little bit yesterday about advocacy.
But I think uncivil society in this city also deserves credit partly because, some of you know, we are getting this lovely clean water, right? [holds up hotel’s bottled water] Do you know that there was a water war in this city, 25 years ago, and actually it was against privatization. It was against Suez, the big French company, and we were able to force them out, along with the place you may have heard of, Cochabamba, Bolivia. We were able to force them out and demand ‘free basic water!,’ which the then water minister Ronnie Kasrils delivered.
And we were able to get the sense that water is a ‘public good’ and that we can make arguments for the ability, let’s say, of ‘free basic electricity’ to have spillover effects, multipliers. For example, small businesses which wouldn’t otherwise operate. Or women, who are by patriarchy’s tradition, doing the cooking and therefore needing clean electricity, not dirty energy. Or children needing lights, not candles, for studying.
In so many ways, in which, if we can bring our economic analysis into focus, the people that we were with yesterday on our tour of Soweto, taught the society that electricity is a human right – and 86% of Sowetans get their electricity free in ways, that we understood, yesterday, could be described as Robin Hood.
And in that sense that when I see privatised bottled water I get so fucking angry [throws water bottle]. Sorry about that. But you know, it just makes me think, waow, our layers of the comfortable petit-bourgeois in places like Birchwood, we really have to keep remembering back to when we had these struggles.
Vote Trump off the G20 island
And I’m so glad that we have got, to conclude, the spirit of systemic critique that can allow us to do this kind of deep thinking, particularly because we just heard from Philani [Mthembu] about the need for a systemic analysis.
And I think I’d close by recalling maybe the most empowering single word we heard in the opening last night. Does everybody remember, the word we heard from Philani’s colleague Mika Kubayi?
“G19”
What does G19 mean? To me, that’s the most extraordinary opportunity to ensure that, instead of the Doral Country Club in Miami next year, where all of the work that we’re trying to do now gets tossed in the rubbish bin. In very eloquent remarks [on September 24] Rob Davies reminded us that Donald Trump has pledged, that there won’t be any climate or public health or inclusion. There won’t be any genuine change in the G20, as an imperial-subimperial alliance to shore up finance.
There may be a G1 – which is Trump – who wants paleo-conservatism. And there may be a BRICS that’s promoting a much stronger, but not reformed, not genuinely reformed, IMF, World Bank, WTO, just more of the same neoliberalism.
But nevertheless, what work we do will be rubbished next year. And then [at the following year] when there’s – what’s his name again? – Prime Minister Nigel Farage, in 2027. Oh, I’m sorry for those of you insulted by that prospect, but it’s real.
And in that sense, is it not time to see exactly what Mika said last night: the potential to ‘vote Trump off the island.’ And then a G19 to be held – where would it be best [in 2026]? Claudia Sheinbaum’s Mexico City, perhaps?
I say that with a bit of a smile, because in all of these respects, what we have to do is raise the temperature and put it, exactly as the European embassies did to our friends at Institute for Global Dialogue: the potential and the need for our world elites to wake up and make structural changes.
If not, work that we do becomes classically think-tank oriented. And that means, really, I will conclude, the people who are paid – I’m using a definition Naomi Klein taught me – what’s a think tank? “People who are paid to think, by the people who control the tanks.”
Some of you are smiling, because you know some people who work for think tanks. I’m so glad that Philani and Mika do not qualify to be in a proper T20, since they’re bringing such structural analysis.
So we welcome you – and when you come back, for a massive protest march against the G20 on November 22 from Soweto, just across the mine dunes, over to Nasrec, we’ll really welcome you, with those two words: Amandla, Awethu! No, no, not everybody heard. And I know we don’t have, here, any petit-bourgeois, careerist reformers, or people trying to cross the U.S. border.
One more time: Amandla! Awethu! Thank you, dear comrades.
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