Jaya Josie
Since 2009 the BRICS group has developed into a multilateral counterweight to the dominance of the unipolar world order. In 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia invited Brazil, India, and China to a summit to address the fallout from the 2008 world financial crisis that had brought the world economy to its knees.
All these countries were leading emerging economies and were extremely concerned about the longterm impact of the financial crisis on their economies.
Following the summit, the international media labelled the group with the acronym BRIC.
In 2011, South Africa, as the leading emerging economy on the African continent, was invited to join the group.
The BRIC group was now the BRICS and South Africa hosted the 5th BRICS Summit in Durban in 2013.
One of the decisions of the summit was to set up a BRICS Think Tank Council (BTTC) and invite the CEO of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Professor Olive Shisana, to chair it and co-ordinate a study for a BRICS long-term strategy for the group.
The HSRC is the pre-eminent South African statutory national social science research institute in the country. I was a senior researcher in the HSRC’s Economic Performance and Development unit.
Professor Shisana invited me to co-ordinate the research and preparation for the BTTC’s long-term strategy study in consultation with other BRICS members of the BTTC.
The final version of the study was called “Towards a Long-term Strategy for BRICS” and presented for discussion and support at the BTTC meeting in Rio de Janeiro in March 2014 and, for possible endorsement at the 6th BRICS Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil.
The BRICS heads of state summit welcomed the study and supported the BTTC focus on the five pillars upon which the BRICS long-term strategy for co-operation will rest.
The heads of state called on the BTTC to develop strategic pathways and action plans that will lead to the realisation of the long-term strategy.
The five pillars include promoting co-operation for economic growth and development; peace and security; social justice, sustainable development, and quality of life; political and economic governance; and progress through knowledge and innovation sharing.
This year it is will be 10 years since South Africa hosted its first BRICS heads of state summit and, nine years since it submitted the BTTC study on a BRICS long-term strategy.
Perhaps it is time to evaluate South Africa’s role in BRICS over the past 10 years.
Among the BRICS countries, Brazil, China, India and South Africa have been active in the current geopolitical issues plaguing the world. China’s assertive entry into the milieu was followed by Brazil, South Africa, and India.
South Africa is in the midst of preparing its third BRICS summit taking place next month. Media reports have been extremely charged about South Africa’s international relations.
Business Day reported on two events in President Ramaphosa’s heavy schedule from the middle of June. Following the African peace mission to Ukraine and Russia, he attended the New Global Financing Pact summit in France on June 22 and 23, where he was invited to make the closing remarks for the summit.
Business Day (June 26) reported that the president did not mince words in his criticism of the West in its approach towards Africa’s access to vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic. This assertive statement followed China’s involvement in brokering peace in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and seeking to facilitate peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Brazil and India are also playing a role in attempting to bring Russia and Ukraine to the peace table.
Despite the negative sentiment towards South Africa’s neutral and nonaligned position in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, South Africa’s president, at the Global Financing Summit, reasserted his country’s standing as Africa’s voice in the world.
According to Ramaphosa, who was chair of the AU during the Covid-19 pandemic, Africans were made to feel like beggars when it came to vaccine availability.
He said: “We felt we needed access to vaccines and the northern hemisphere countries had bought all the vaccines in the world and they were hogging them and they didn’t want to release them at the time when we needed them most. We felt like we were begging … We resented that, and it got worse when we said we want to manufacture our own vaccines.
“And when we went to the World Trade Organization, there was a lot of resistance … We kept saying: What is more important? Life or profits by your big pharmaceutical companies? That too, I must tell you, generated and deepened the disappointment and resentment on our part, because we felt like life in the northern hemisphere is much more important than life in the global south. These are issues that need to be addressed.”
In the same issue of Business Day, Sisanda Mbolekwa reported on Ramaphosa’s reflections in his weekly newsletter on the summit in France. Here again the president laid the blame for the climate-change crisis at the door of the industrialised nations.
Mindlessly developing their industries at the expense of poorer nations, the developed world should take measures to now compensate and assist developing and emerging economies to develop their own economies. Many of these economies, suffer the consequences of corruption, crime, poverty, inequality and unemployment compounded by poor infrastructure.
Many people in South Africa, China, India, Russia and Brazil are looking at what the BRICS summit in August will bring to the table.
The BRICS countries have established its international status as an important international economic and political group, to the extent that many other countries in the world are seeking membership of the group to rebalance international power relations.
South Africa’s hosting of the BRICS summit is an occasion for the BRICS group to evaluate and consider the five pillars South Africa presented to the BRICS summit in Brazil in 2014.
Some goals have been achieved with the setting up of the BRICS New Development Bank; establishing new trade and monetary arrangements; the BRICS heads of state are also making a concerted effort to promote global peace and security.
In addition, BRICS countries were in the forefront in efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic in the developing world, especially in Africa. President Ramaphosa made this clear in his address to the recent Finance Summit in Paris. China’s One Belt One Road initiative has made enormous impacts in infrastructure investment in developing countries and other BRICS member states.
In education, health and social services, BRICS countries are looking at sharing innovation and technology to fast-track service delivery in many member economies and regional partner economies.
Perhaps it is too early for the achievement of all the goals of the five pillars, but at least, as the country prepares to host the BRICS events and the summit, it will be with a sense that it has contributed in some degree to the building of more multi-polar world order to the benefit of humanity in general.