To say that the lead-up to the 2023 Brics summit in Sandton, South Africa, in August has been tumultuous, seems milk-toast mild.
The International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, issued on 17 March 2023, thrust South Africa’s foreign policy, in all of its inter-governmental disarray, into the centre of the post-Covid global geostrategic political economy power shift.
This shift, to a rebooted, more robust form of South-South cooperation, is described as a value and norm re-alignment to reflect the common emerging market developmental status of the Brics states and aligned blocs such as the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
China’s economic power is the driver behind the shift in global power dynamics, and South-South cooperation is predicated on China’s expanding footprint in Brics states, and, very significantly, within South Africa.
South Africa, as the smallest of the Brics economies, has achieved heightened geostrategic significance in Brics as a result of its “gateway to Africa” status. Over the past decade, China has become the largest trade partner in South Africa and Africa. South Africa’s positionality within the bloc is evidently of great diplomatic importance to the US and Western Europe.
The rise of Brics, led by China, as a counterweight to the US-dominated global institutional networks, has occurred gradually over the past decade and a half. Until quite recently, Brics summits were dismissed as talk shops, and the idea of South-South cooperation as a reality has been drawn into sharp question, due to the differences between Brics states in size, political orientation and economic power.
These differences have turned out to be less of a hindrance than critics had anticipated. Trade, International Development Assistance (the Chinese Government’s term for Aid) and Investments have reached unparalleled levels, despite Covid-19’s effect on the Chinese economy well into 2022.
