In May 2022, the CEO of BlackRock declared that “the Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalisation we have experienced over the last three decades”. He undoubtedly has a point. The war in Ukraine has brought to a head the conflicts that have been brewing between the major powers for some time.

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The invasion of the National Congress, the Planalto Palace and the Supreme Court yesterday (8 January) by Bolsonarista groups – in opposition to the electoral result and demanding military intervention – must be firmly repudiated and fought by the labour, popular and student movements.

Just a week before the ANC’s 55th National Conference, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa is embroiled in a scandal involving the theft of huge sums of undisclosed foreign currency from his Phala Phala game farm in the Limpopo province. This scandal has deepened the factional fighting that has seen the ANC lurch from one crisis to the next for nearly two decades. At bottom though, this is part of a struggle within the ruling class for control of the party.

The past few months have seen central banks scrambling to raise interest rates to control inflation. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve introduced another 0.75 percentage point hike, and the Bank of England will follow suit today. This spate of rate hikes caused mortgage rates to multiply, government borrowing rates to spiral, and now a recession looms. This will be painful for ordinary people, but will the ruling class achieve its aims?