As fighter jets shredded the sky above Sandton, and those lucky enough to be in the vicinity enjoyed a week mysteriously but blissfully free of load-shedding, a subtle but significant shift in the tectonic plates undergirding the global geopolitical order was taking place at the 15th Brics summit in Johannesburg.
There are a number of reasons that Brics has emerged this year as the belle of the geopolitical ball. The world was already a very different place when the last summit took place in June 2022 in Beijing. Then, as now, B, I, C and S had no collectively discernible view on R’s invasion of Ukraine four months earlier. But the war did bring some of the changes that were already afoot into stark relief, and some nations are still catching up to the new dispensation.
The key word is “multipolar” — a term that appeared on almost every page of the Brics summit agenda.
Multipolarity was mostly theoretical until the 11th emergency special session of the UN General Assembly was convened in February 2022 to table and pass six resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion and calling for “the full protection of civilians, including humanitarian personnel, journalists and vulnerable persons” and suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
The number of nations voting against each UN resolution ranged from as few as five to as many as 24. Between 32 and 73 countries abstained on each resolution, with South Africa having the ignominious record of abstaining on every single vote, while courting an unseemly relationship with Russia — President Vladimir Putin’s mooted attendance of the Sandton summit being one of the bigger scandals we dallied with this year.
The abstentions by South Africa and a number other African nations highlighted the voting heft of the Africa bloc, whose members rightly questioned the international response to the war in Ukraine when the discourse around events in Sudan or Tigray has been comparatively muted, and the response to the coup in Niger seems largely to have been left to Ecowas.
Many so-called developing and Global South nations took this opportunity to question an international order that, until now, has sought to draw them into contestations between the ‘great powers’, while sidelining them at crucial decision-making forums
Many so-called developing and Global South nations took this opportunity to question an international order that, until now, has sought to draw them into contestations between “great powers”, while sidelining them at crucial decision-making forums — including the UN Security Council.
The expansion of Brics to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Argentina and Iran, coupled with explicit statements by several leaders that the bloc should move from its economic focus and involve itself more in political, security and strategic matters, demonstrates a bolder new direction. But if that direction continues to be “impartiality” on such major events as the invasion of a sovereign state, this should raise red flags for members and citizens alike.
Some analysts have argued that the balance between democrats and autocrats in the new, larger Brics constellation still tilts in favour of the democrats, with South Africa, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Brazil and Argentina as the bloc’s standard-bearers for freedom and human rights. We should champion these values unapologetically, as have Brazil and, to a lesser extent, India.
Earlier this year, the Brics share of global GDP (32.1%) surpassed that of the G7 nations (29.9%). The expanded Brics would account for 37% of global GDP in purchasing power parity terms, and represent 3.7-billion people compared with the G7’s 800-million. The Global South is now the global majority.
South Africa is one of the seven African nations that held talks with Russia and Ukraine in an attempt to broker peace. But President Cyril Ramaphosa, in an affidavit to the Gauteng High Court, told the world that respecting our role as a member of the Internationial Criminal Court by acting on the warrant of arrest against Putin would be considered “a declaration of war” by our ally.
The struggle for South Africa’s liberation benefited from international interventions, including sanctions against the National Party government and financial support for efforts to fight apartheid. Yet we have demonstrated little corresponding concern for other nations that find themselves the victims of unjust oppression and even outright war. International condemnation played a huge role in bringing about our open and free society; we should pay it forward, instead of siding with despots under the fig leaf of neutrality.
We have a moral obligation to support other nations in peril, without the need to compromise our national interests. And we need to be clearer on what the fundamentals of South Africa’s national interests are — from security and trade to mutual co-operation and our position as a leader on the African continent. We should be guided by these priorities if we are to navigate this new multipolar order for the benefit of our country and our continent’s people.
Non-alignment and refusal to be pawns in the geopolitical chess games of others is one thing. But as Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
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