“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”: comparing fisheries reforms in South Africa

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The paper argues that the reduction of history to “apartheid” has hamstrung efforts to reform the South African fisheries since 1994, by privileging race over class and state. The salience of the latter in the maintenance and reproduction of endemic inequality is demonstrated by a comparison of the current reform process with that in the 1940s. This reveals a series of striking similarities and shows how the initial redistribution agenda in both instances was subverted in favour of a consolidation of monopoly capital and state control over the marine commons.