South Africa truly is a beautiful country, however, beneath the silky veneer of a newly formed “credit class” of Black people, zooming in and out of traffic in the latest shiny “German machine”, lies the reality that too many refuse to confront — the majority of this country is living under back breaking poverty! The rest meander from pay check to pay check, anxious about the banks seizing their homes and cars so they eschew all political speak. There’s a lot wrong with my country, I wont bore you with an exhaustive list, but in light of the recently concluded BRICS Summit held in Johannesburg this week, the focus will be loadshedding, foreign trade and relations as well as our future development as a country.
It’s as clear as day that all other members of BRICS+ know exactly what they want to extract out of the arrangement/grouping. But what does South Africa want? I get the platitudes about fostering partnerships and whatnot, and not to pour cold water on all the excitement emanating from this week’s festivities, but precious little by way of a South African agenda has come to the fore. It’s as if being accepted as a member to these exclusive groupings is our end, instead of a means to an end. Whether at BRICS, the UN, the G20 etc., our (mis)leaders are all too eager to maintain our status as vassal states. The laissez-faire approach to politics adopted by many South Africans doesn’t help either, the public is content to sit on the sidelines hoping for the best, when they should be applying pressure on leaders to ensure they negotiate the best deals possible re: foreign trade and domestic development.
Consider this: China is our biggest trade partner. One of our major exports is chrome. This ore is exported raw, meaning no additional value is created through refinement or beneficiation. In order to create the much needed jobs to grow our economy, a change in this philosophy is therefore a necessity. China likely won’t be happy… despite them having donated (read: DUMPED) about $170 million worth of emergency power equipment (generators and such), which will be dispatched in 500 public institutions to “alleviate the burden of loadshedding” or something to that effect. We need loadshedding to end, not be reduced! We need baseload capacity, not generators or so-called “Green solutions”… China is incidentally the leading manufacturer of solar PV, but they also lead the world in new coal power build projects. I see how China will continue to benefit through maintenance etc. but I ask, what does The Republic of South Africa want?
Brazil, another partner within the BRICS bloc, is partly to blame for the collapse of our poultry industry through the DUMPING of their unwanted chickens from San Paulo. Dumping, unlike normal imports, kills local industry. Dumping is where exports are sold at a lower price than the normal price in the domestic (exporting country’s) market, making it impossible for our local producers to compete. With friends like these who needs enemies? Speaking of, AmeriKKKa is also notorious for flooding our markets with their turkey-sized GMO chickens, half of all our imported volumes! Those with an affinity for western hegemony are too blind(or dishonest) to see that deals such as AGOA have disadvantages for the South African economy, no different to any deals that arise from BRICS. The key is to give primacy to your own interests (agenda), which is what has been conspicuously absent from this week’s happenings in Africa’s economic hub.
Another aspect worth considering is the fact that some of the newest members to the expanded BRICS+ arrangement or bloc, already have well established agreements, for example Egypt and Russia, who are collaborating to construct Egypt’s first nuclear power plant at El Dabaa. This project will add 4.8GW of power to Egypt’s power grid, almost equivalent to the entire coal powered fleet in Mzansi. Egypt will also become the beneficiary of a new $10 billion wind farm financed through the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has pre-existing trade relations with South Africa too and there is plenty of potential to exploit closer ties through BRICS+. SA should also look to expand trade in agricultural products (meat, fruits, vegetables) to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, instead of being bullied and victimised by the EU, as is often the case. The avenues for growth and development are endless: oil, gas, water, textiles and other industries stand to benefit.
All SA needs is a visionary, imaginative and courageous leadership to steer this ship through these choppy waters. Acting in one’s own interests is not commensurate with declaring anyone an enemy — Africans are not the world’s children! Our mineral resources should be the primary driver of the development of our industries and the related infrastructure benefits that accrue, therefore the betterment of the entire sociopolitical economy. The extraction of gas discovered in
Mpumalanga will require a lot of financial investment, our existing oil refineries that were shelved need to be fired up and the capacity increased, we also need to take the issue of water scarcity much more seriously and begin exploring partnerships in desalination with our new “mates” from the Gulf — who live in the literal desert. We must rebuild our textiles industry with a view to increasing exports to these same Middle Eastern “chums”.
In all our foreign policy endeavours, we should always have an eye on ensuring that Afrika’s resources are used primarily to uplift the native sons and daughters of these lands — there is no need for us to hold out a begging bowl to anybody. Western puppets must fall, but equally, those who have designs on selling out the masses to our newfound “allies” to the East should think again. “We the people” should play a more active role in politics, and deal harshly with corrupt officials to ensure that rent-seeking and corrupt practices and patterns of behaviour are eradicated. Politics is about decision making, but all too often things tend to just happen, haphazardly, because the electorate is divided (or distracted) along imaginary lines, which opens up opportunities for unscrupulous politicians to exploit the mineral wealth of this country in cahoots with economic elites for their personal benefit.
We need agreements that have the express intent of ending loadshedding, boosting trade and developing or building new infrastructure to grow this economy and create millions of jobs, with clear targets for implementation and an outline of the consequences for failure. MOU’s re: avocados and even beef are great, but this is more representative of a recovery to pre-Covid levels than the impact of new investment in manufacturing equipment and other implements boosting total output. We need new industries, we need increased agricultural output and new markets to export to, all of which is yet to become apparent in the aftermath of conference. South Africa is endowed with many of the minerals the world needs to manufacture technological products, machinery and other final goods, it’s time we stop paying lip service to the aspirations of the masses to share in the wealth of this country as is guaranteed by the Freedom Charter.
My greatest fear is that comrades will use BRICS+ as a vehicle to fundraise for next year’s general elections as well as funding the operations at Luthuli House — how else do we make sense of the scant planning and the lack of commentary from the “leaders of our society” pertaining to how they intend to leverage these latest geopolitical developments?
Who am I kidding anyway, the BRICS summit is over now; it’s the weekend so no doubt most are back to pretending we have capable leaders at the helm, armed with the “best policies”, life can once more carry on as (ab)normal in what remains the most unequal society in the world.
Peace and Black power.