ANTHONY BUTLER: SA further from the table as Brics family grows

Ramaphosa puts diplomatic skills to use at summit but SA is unlikely to be a major beneficiary

First published in Business Day

1 September 2023

When President Cyril Ramaphosa ran the fast-growing National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in the mid-1980s, the union needed money from international donors. The trouble was that labour solidarity was complex and unions were divided into hostile camps.

A World Trade Union Federation brought together the workers’ representatives of the Soviet empire. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions was the do-good social democratic umbrella for the West European proletariat. The American Federation of Labor/Congress of International Organisations, meanwhile, was a rich but stridently anti-communist US competitor. 

While many labour leaders fell foul of divisive politics, Ramaphosa had little difficulty negotiating the terrain. He was happy to solicit funds from American labour unions one day, and from the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions of the Soviet Union the next. The NUM became a more powerful political force than any of its diverse sponsors could ever have imagined. 

This was in some respects useful training. The decision of the current members of Brics — Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA — to invite Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join them in 2024 will have required great diplomatic dexterity. Ramaphosa has received a fair amount of praise for successfully steering this expansion. 

But sceptics are not so sure about the substantive outcome. Is the newly expanded Brics a mere “hodgepodge” of unrelated and discordant elements, as an Institute for Security Studies senior researcher suggested last week? Or, on a more positive reading, is it in fact a “bricolage” — a remixing and institutionalisation of materials currently to hand in the South, one that will create fresh and unexpected capabilities and throw open new political possibilities? 

The case for the “hodgepodge” view is strong. The political systems of Brics member states, old and new, range from functional democracies to brutal autocracies. Some are ostensibly “non-aligned” while others are hostile to the West. 

Many members are at loggerheads over important issues. Parts of India and Russia feature on Chinese official maps — as parts of China. It has meanwhile proved famously difficult to establish any uncontested economic rationale for the existence of the grouping, let alone for its expansion.

Faltering

Originally conceived two decades ago as a group of fast-growing economies, most have grown slowly and there are now reasonable concerns that even China’s extraordinary boom is faltering.  

Political grievances and aspirations will, for the time being, serve as the primary connecting threads in the new Brics. These currently revolve around historical injustices, modifying the allocation of positions in the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions and reducing the vulnerability of states to what they see as the arbitrary and unearned power of the US and its Group of Seven (G7) allies.  

Hostility towards Western-dominated governance structures will not on its own turn the Brics mishmash into a cohesive alliance for change. But the recent summit has created a rudimentary but real sense of possibility — an enticing idea that substantive changes we cannot yet fully discern could yet find fertile ground and support among these states. 

Because the Brics expansion has not been accompanied by any deeper institutionalisation of its functions, the grouping still lacks capacity to formalise policy positions and demands or to discipline non-compliant members when the going gets tough. 

In Ramaphosa’s way of putting it, Brics is a “family” rather than a powerful international alliance. This means SA is now a less influential “relative” in a larger extended family. 

Ramaphosa’s role in overcoming conflicts and brokering solutions may be remembered as a pivotal moment in the emergence of the first credible counter to Western dominance in the Global South — should this transpire. However, the failure to cement the status of early members means SA is unlikely to be a major beneficiary of such an accomplishment. 

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.