By Patrick Bond, Durban

August 10, 2015 – a version was first published in TeleSUR English, submitted to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal by the author -- Foreign direct investment (FDI) is always prefaced with the two words ‘much needed”, my colleague Sarah Bracking insisted last week at a Zimbabwe NGO conference. “Have you ever heard FDI referenced without those two words?” We all shook our heads.

The meeting in Harare was dedicated to fighting illegal capital flight from across the African continent. But would some of the region’s sharpest economic-justice NGOs take the next step and also consider fighting legal financial outflows – in the form of profits and dividends sent to transnational corporate (TNC) headquarters, profits drawn from minerals and oil ripped from the African soil?

In other words, in this neoliberal era, can a more general case be made against TNCs based on their excessive profiteering and distortion of African economies? If so, are exchange controls the easiest antidote, prior to nationalisation and socialisation?

To do the latter requires a profound social revolution, with the current leaders of all Africa’s present governments swept away. Meantime, the question is whether enforcing patriotism on the business elite is possible using policies like exchange controls. That less intimidating challenge was mine to argue.

The worst FDI tends to come solely in search of raw materials, but commodity prices have been crashing over the past year: oil by 50%, iron ore by 40%, coal by 20% and copper, gold and platinum by 10%. Far greater falls can be traded to prior peaks in 2011 and 2008. Far worse is to come as China devalues its economy.