The African continent has for decades struggled with seriously high – and unpayable – levels of debt. The permanent debt crisis besieging them has not resulted from short-term market failures or from business cycles that will rebound, and that it is not fully a consequence of governments’ mismanagement of finances or deep-rooted corruption.

Dossier no. 42 explores how the enduring and expanding presence of foreign militaries in Africa continues to impede the realisation of political unity and territorial sovereignty.

Dossier 53 discusses the land question in South Africa, looking at the role of white farmers who have long benefited from the labour of exploited Black farmworkers. Beginning with a historical account of the plight of farmworkers, it argues that those who work the land deserve to be its primary beneficiaries, but, instead, they have been excluded from the profits and stability of owning land for generations. Faced with this reality, dossier no. 53 discusses what a land reform agenda that centres the perspectives and needs of farmworkers would look like.

The ideas of the radical Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire had a profound impact on popular struggles in South Africa. Initially taken up by Steve Biko and others in the Black Consciousness movement in the early 1970s, Freire’s ideas spread to the trade union movement and to the community movements. Today, Freire’s ideas continue to be used in progressive organisations in South Africa and to guide the work of many people undertaking political education work.