... of the ‘win-win’ kind, working in the narrow and technical arena of supporting ‘policy-making’. In a blistering polemic, Desai and Bohmke (1997) capture what they term the ‘retreat’ in the thinking ... class, power and struggle have gone out the window in development discourse in many parts of the world, mainstream economics has jumped into develop-ment thinking and policy (including in South Africa ... ‘anti-politicsmachine’ that ‘depoliticises’ development, and: marginalizes or displaces investigation and understanding of the sources, dynam-ics and effects of typically savage social inequality in the South, ...