Unity and solidarity between South Africa’s Africa policy and brics interests

There is unity and solidarity between South Africa’s Africa policy and BRICS interests. Its policy towards Africa complements key interests and purposes of BRICS. BRICS interests and purposes also complement South Africa’s Africa policy. A study supported by the ministers of finance and the heads of central banks of BRICS members highlights the complementarities of their economies, their roles as growth drivers of the global political economy. It also emphasises the strategic importance of their cooperation and the strengthening of their economic links.²⁵⁵

BRICS members are countries of crucial strategic importance within the global political economy. They are sources of primary products, goods and services, markets of manufactured products, outlets for export of capital and reserves of cheap labour within the international division of labour. They are of strategic importance in a hierarchy of political, economic, trade, financial, human resources development, technological and military international power relations. They constitute forty three per cent of the world’s population. They comprise enormous land share of the world. They are endowed with enormous natural resources. Brazil, the fifth-largest country in the world, surpassed only by Russia, Canada, China and the United States of America, covers forty seven percent of South America. With around sixty million hectares of arable land, it is enormously rich in resources such as coffee, soybeans, sugar cane, iron ore and crude oil.

Russia, known for its massive deposits of oil, natural gas and minerals, possesses around twenty per cent of the world’s oil and gas reserves. It has 121.5 million of arable land. It is an oil-supply economy with a surplus in general public accounts. India, a strong service provider, is second to China in being the fastest growing economy within BRICS. Together with Brazil, it is strong-internal demand-based economy. It is second to China as the country with the highest levels of saving and investment. China, the world’s third-largest country in land size, surpassed only by Russia and Canada, possesses about twelve percent of the world’s mineral resources. The global manufacturing workshop, it has a highly skilled and disciplined workforce and relatively low cost wages in the world. South Africa is the world’s largest producer of platinum and chromium. It has the world’s largest reserves of manganese, platinum group metals, chromium, vanadium and alumina silicates. It generates forty five percent of Africa’s electricity. Its public power supplier provides the fourth cheapest electricity in the world.

BRICS members have enormous opportunity in enhancing their position within the global socio-political and economic system through increased coordination of their political, diplomatic, economic, and financial and trade policies and strategies. Their strategic agenda for forging closer working relations is central to the consolidation and expansion of their role in global affairs.

While India and China are some of the world’s leading importers of oil and other natural resources, Brazil, Russia and South Africa are some of the world’s leading importers of oil, mineral resources and other natural resources. This means, among others, that there are enormous opportunities for increased trade relations among BRICS members in particular and among countries of the South in general. This puts BRICS members in a position that would help them to increase not only the North-South economic and trade relations, but also to make these relations better serve the needs of Africa, the rest of the South and the world. They have a high level of human resources development²⁵⁶ which is an indispensable asset in their efforts to achieve their internal and external objectives.

The leaders of BRICS members made an important declaration at the group’s fourth summit on 29 March 2012 in New Delhi, India. The overarching theme of their discussion was “BRICS Partnership for Global Stability, Security and Prosperity.”²⁵⁷ They committed BRICS to strengthen their partnership for “common development” and take their “cooperation forward on the basis of openness, solidarity, mutual understanding and trust.” They explained that BRICS is “a platform for dialogue and cooperation between countries that represent 43% of the world’s population, for the promotion of peace, security and development in a multi-popular, inter-dependent and increasingly complex, globalising world.” BRICS is for a future characterised by “global peace, economic and social progress.” It is committed to the strengthening of representatition of developing countries in the multilateral global governance institutions in order to enhance their effectiveness.

BRICS heads of state and government work with leaders of other countries to achieve the group’s objectives. They recognise, for instance, the ‘vital importance’ of stability, peace and security in the Middle East and North Africa” for the rest of the world. They maintain that Russia and China emphasise the importance of Brazil, India and South Africa in international affairs and support their aspirations to play a greater role in the United Nations.²⁵⁸ This is supportive of the fact that BRICS members aspire that all of them be permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and, as such, Russia and China will support Brazil, India and South Africa to become permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Increasing growth and sustainable development, together with food and energy security and creating jobs to improve people’s material conditions are of critical importance in advancing economic development, eradicating poverty and combating hunger and malnutrition in many developing countries. They attach the special importance to the realisation of peace, security, growth, development and progress in Africa. In their words in the Delhi Declaration of the Fourth BRICS Summit:

We attach the highest importance to economic growth that supports development and stability in Africa, as many of these countries have not yet realised their full economic potential. We will take our cooperation forward to support their efforts to accelerate the diversification and modernization of their economies. This will be through infrastructure development, knowledge exchange and support for increased access to technology, enhanced capacity building, and investment in human capital, including within the framework of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development.²⁵⁹

Through their investment, financial and trade relations with Africa, South Africa’s BRICS partners particularly China, are playing a role which is of strategic importance for development and progress propects for Africa. With BRICS serving as a new global actor in its pursuit of its agenda of transforming the world for better for the developing countries and the rest of the world, Africa stands to benefit from this agenda. BRICS’s position that the current operations of the global system with its multilateral governance institutions and organisations controlled by the Western powers are not compatible with the achievement of a progresssive, better world and its proposals in providing their alternatives is the structural invaluable support to South Africa’s Africa policy. It is also support to Africa in its efforts to transform itself and its relations with the rest of the world. Directly related to this support factor, is the reality that South Africa maintains that the present operations of the global system should be changed for a prosperous, peaceful, democratic and truly independent and united Africa to be realised and that it is an important active participant in this process for continental and global change and transformation. Africa is bound to be at the centre of its development and progress prospects, not only benefitting from BRICS’s investment, financial and trade relations with it, but also in being provided with more leverage in negotiating better investment, financial and trade deals with Western governments and companies. Thanks to the collective position of BRICS members within the global political economy and their intensified expansion into the continent, Western companies and governments face unprecedented increased competition in Africa. This socio-historical development provides African countries with more room for maneuver in their relations with the Western powers and other countries.

They now have a solid alternative to accepting the dictates of the international financial institutions and of countries which control them. BRICS as a new global political, economic, trade, human resources development, financial and technological actor is Africa’s ally in advancing a global environment in which the continent’s interests are no longer taken for granted. Closer Africa-BRICS relations constitute a socio-historical opportunity for the continent. It is the responsibility of Africans to ensure that the continental and global political, economic and ideological space provided for by BRICS for development and progress prospects for their continent is used effectively to constitute a solid qualitative political leap forward towards its economic independence. BRICS is already shouldering greater responsibilities as a new global actor of increasing importance in international relations and cooperation in the interests of Africa, the rest of the South and the world. Its role in African affairs is structurally forcing Western powers to regard the continent as “a subject of independent decision” no longer as “an object of direction”²⁶⁰ in a global order of priorities. Through its creation of this global political, economic and ideological environment, BRICS has earned for itself a progressive role and prospects for the continent’s development and progress in the interests of the masses of its people.