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Cyril Ramaphosa, Comprador

The distinction exists between imperialism and bourgeois national interests. The problem, simply, is that too many compradors believe that their personal interests lie in processes that favour imperialist interests. Ramaphosa, for instance, was one of the hucksters banging the drum for exchange control liberalisation, even in the wake of the 1996 30% crash caused by the Swiss yuppie bondtrader who believed the rumour that Madiba was sick. Ramaphosa is precisely the kind of comprador who favours a mythical neoliberal accumulation strategy, over the interests of most black South Africans. (And over the interest of the two companies whose share value he crashed), in both cases largely because he bought into the notion that borrowing massively with high interest rates, so as to buy shares that were more overvalued than at any other point in the JSE's history, somehow was the modern, up-to-date process of empowerment. And it was, in a parasitical kind of way, until April 1998,