Is Africa going through a new round of colonisation?

[Dave A]

This thought was triggered by the following article:

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in the Western Cape has asked the Competition Commission to block the sale of Cape Town's V&A Waterfront to a foreign-dominated consortium.

"We're pretty sure that we're going to get them to stop it," Cosatu provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich said on Wednesday.

He said the letter to the commission was sent earlier in the day.

In a statement, Cosatu said the R7-billion sale would be bad for the economy and bad for the development of a "sustainable economy that responds to the needs of South Africans".

Cosatu was concerned that the "crown jewels" of the Cape were being sold off to foreign interests.

The funding for the investment would not lead to huge amounts of foreign direct investment as a significant portion of it was South African capital.

If models in Dubai were anything to go by, poorer communities would no longer be able to afford to visit the Waterfront.

The Waterfront, which attracts up to 22-million visitors a year, was sold off by the parastatal Transnet.

The consortium is led by London and Regional Properties, which holds just over half of the interest.
from M&G here

A few thoughts occur, not least of which is that the Competition Commission does not have a particularly aggressive record of stopping sales and mergers. But it's the drive for DFI that caught my mind.

Some years ago there was a tongue-in-cheek quip that went something like:
"In the past if you wanted to take over a country you sent the military. Nowadays you send businessmen with briefcases."

So we're pushing for DFI. We are selling our assets to offshore buyers. And Africa does not want to be colonised (again).

And there's that little alarm in the back of my head saying something's wrong with this picture.