South Africa as the new BRICS Chair
By Madeleine Burke
Around early January, South Africa took over the BRICS chairmanship from China and will play host to the group’s annual summit this year. If you don’t know what BRICS is, it's an acronym for the five leading emerging economies among countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Originally, the group was known as BRIC, however with the addition of South Africa, the group became BRICS.
In response to opposition from this decision, the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa claimed that, “We want to use this opportunity to advance the interests of our continent, and we will therefore through the BRICS summit be having an outreach process or moment,” The President claims that joining BRICS will finally give a voice to the people of Africa. The President goes on to state that joining BRICS is in both the interest of the people and of the economy.
The possible advantages for South Africa go on, better trade market access, increased bargaining access, and a louder voice in international issues. Overall, there’s a sense of appeal for African to join a group as powerful as BRICS.
However, there are downsides to such an important decision for South Africa. For instance, there seems to be a strong correlation between a rise in authoritarianism within member nations of the BRICS such as Brazil and India. While China and Russia could be deemed mere coincidences, it is an undeniable fact that becoming a member of BRICS causes new members to appeal towards Russia and China, become less democratic, and then begin to promote authoritarian ideals into society.
All in all, while there may be obvious benefits to South Africa becoming a member of BRICS, there is always the possibility of them becoming pawns to the control of high powers such as China and Russia.
To learn more about BRICS: https://guides.loc.gov/brics
Sources Cited:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26889978
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600818.2022.2033191