Posters advertising the XV BRICS Summit line a street in Johannesburg. [Picture: Yandisa Monakali/DIRCO]
Maude Street is an upscale lane in Sandton, Johannesburg; a posh street cutting through the heart of Africa’s richest square mile and home to the elite Michelangelo Towers. Next week, it will roll out the red carpet to dozens of delegates of the XV BRICS Summit, scheduled to take place at the Sandton Convention Centre.
This would probably be the most prominent summit of the BRICS group – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – since its inception on the sidelines of a General Debate at the United Nations Assembly in 2006. Initially intended as an economic bloc, it gained significant political interest in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The leaders will meet in Johannesburg between August 22 and 24, with representatives from more than three dozen other countries expected to attend. This has fueled speculation about expansion. It has also sparked debate about the group’s interest in Africa and its potential to become a coalition for the Global South.
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Expansion of BRICS
There has been increasing focus on the possible expansion of BRICS at the upcoming Summit. According to South Africa, this year’s host, more than 40 countries have expressed interest in joining the group.
In the words of Professor Gilbert Khadiagala, this has been cause for much “excitement”. The Jan Smuts Professor of International Relations at the University of Witwatersrand believes any move to expand BRICS to include other African countries would face scrutiny over the question of “what is Africa’s position here?”
He reflects on South Africa’s admittance to the group in 2010, which was touted as having the potential to increase the country’s leverage globally. “It still begs the question, ‘what do you mean by playing with the Big Boys?’ In a very tangible sense, BRICS hasn’t actually increased South Africa’s global leverage.”
Professor Stefan Wolff is a German political scientist currently based at the University of Birmingham. Speaking out of the United Kingdom, he believes that experience elsewhere has taught that “enlarging a club like BRICS potentially carries the danger of watering down a brand or value proposition that exists and not necessarily making it stronger”.
He also believes any expansion would simply make Africa a “tool” for Chinese foreign policy. He suggests it might deepen the bipolar global political landscape already fraught with divisions.
“We have to be careful not to think that we are necessarily heading into a world of multipolarity. The way I look at it is that what we are moving into is a new bipolarity where you will have one US-led and one China-led camp. BRICS, at the moment, looks like it’s probably going to be sucked into the China-led camp,” he warns.
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Grain and Ukraine
Africa has a grudge about grain. When Russia pulled the plug on Black Sea Grain Deal – a move which saw millions of tonnes of grain be exported from Ukraine unhindered by Vladimir Putin’s bombardment on his neighbour – it left many African countries grumbling.
The Kenyan government, for one, described the move as a “stab in the back”. Others snubbed Putin at his Russia-Africa Summit in July – only 17 heads of state showed up, compared to 43 at the 2019 edition.
“There is an expectation that the grain deal will come up very prominently at the BRICS Summit,” said Khadiagala. He wondered whether Russia’s peers within BRICS might have a chat about it, now that the grain issue made the war a “bigger international crisis”.
“Is it possible to have more honest discussions around issues like the grain deal in a BRICS Summit or is it possible to have a discussion about how this war will end? These are peers who should actually speak honestly to each other,” he noted.
While Khadiagala might hold out more optimism about those two related issues being discussed at the summit next week, Wolff says he’s “not holding my breath” for any condemnation of the invasion. It might be discussed behind closed doors, he says, but Russia will not be publicly excoriated by the rest.
“Ukraine will be a major issue, but we may just not necessarily hear all that much about the hopefully ‘honest discussions’ as Professor Khadiagala put it,” he says.
The outcome of discussions at the summit is yet to be seen. While Johannesburg residents cuss over congested streets and no viable public transport alternative, the ‘Big Boys’ – to borrow Professor Khadiagala’s phrase – will have much to deliberate at their retreat at Hyde Park, followed by the actual business of the summit in Sandton.
