In a world fast being polarised
by rich-poor divides and Trumpism, South Africa hosts the 11th BRICS
summit at a critical juncture in our history
A SUFI sage once proclaimed that Creation was perfect, but man wasn’t. The world of
people, he said, was not faultless. The earth was not created that way. If
peace treaties were made only between friends, our enemies would devour us. If
we were flawless in character, we would not need friends.
However,
he added, our challenge was to reach out. We had to make a difference where we
could, appreciating that we were as imperfect as the next person, and needed to
work on our own souls; this all before we criticise others.
Nelson
Mandela – a true world statesman imbued with the wisdom of suffering – profoundly
realised the above. When ‘instructed’ by western interests to spurn the company
of people such as Muammar Gaddafi and Fidel Castro after 1990, he replied that he
would not abandon his friends, those
who had helped the anti-apartheid struggle in its greatest hours of need.
In
some quarters, pragmatism is called realpolitik, traditionally defined as ‘a system of politics based on practical, rather than moral considerations’.
However, in the case of Madiba, realpolitik became practical politics based on
moral principles, whilst fully understanding the existing realities.
BRICS, a body consisting of
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – and representing the rump of the
developing world – is such a case in point. Each country’s politics may raise questions,
depending on one’s view, but the over-arching principles of BRICS are far greater
in import than localised issues.
The stated goals of BRICS – the promotion
of technological information, the primacy of education, economic co-operation, the
closing of the gap between developing and developed nations, climate change and
the establishment of a development bank – are all vital issues for over one-third
of the world’s poorest populations.
To understand BRICS, we have to
contextualise its founding rationale. It was born on the fringes of the G8 Outreach
Summit in 2006, where disappointment was expressed at its failure to rectify its
economic model for managing the global economy, especially in the light of its lack
of success in significantly closing the poverty gap.
A child of the 1970s during the
neo-conservative Reagan and Thatcher years – especially after US President
Nixon had de-linked the dollar from its gold standard – it was felt that the G8
had failed to satisfactorily address pressing global economic issues. The
summits had begun to attract thousands of anti-globalisation protestors, who
felt the system had failed them.
The first BRIC summit was held in
Russia in June 2009, with South Africa invited to make up a vital African
component in 2011. South Africa would host the fifth BRICS summit in Durban in
2013. Interestingly, South Africa was invited to BRIC – not because we would
complete the most convenient acronym ‘BRICS’
as The Economist once chauvinistically
suggested – but because at that time South Africa had the continent’s biggest
economy.
The term ‘BRIC’ was originally
coined by Goldman Sachs in 2001 after a study on the global economy concluded
that China and India would eclipse the Euro zone and the US in terms of
economic power by 2050. Today BRICS represents 20 per cent of the world’s GDP
in a growth area serving 40 per cent of the world’s population.
Themed as ‘BRICS in Africa: Collaboration
for Inclusive Growth and Shared Prosperity in the 4th Industrial Revolution’,
BRICS members meeting in South Africa will be reflecting on issues such as the global
order, inclusiveness, trade and the New Development Bank, a BRICS initiative to
break the fetters of the IMF and the World Bank, particularly resented in the
developing world for their crippling interest rates and unsympathetic pre-loan
conditions.
The 11th BRICS summit will also be a golden opportunity for President Cyril Ramaphosa to
map out the country’s vision, especially after the moribund and unproductive
Zuma years, and to draw Africa closer to BRICS and long-term infrastructural
development for our marginalised communities.
To say
that this will be a critical summit is something of an understatement. For
lurking in the political background is the phenomenon of Trumpism and Euro-zone
right wing-ism – the lawless triumphalism of corporate business marginalising
the poor; this seen in a cavalier disregard for global warming and gross militaristic
misconstructions of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.
Like
any multi-state body, BRICS may certainly not be without its own inner tensions,
but its overall long-term vision in galvanising the developing forces of the
world cannot ever be underestimated.
