India successfully landed a craft on the moon on Wednesday, in the lunar southern pole region, just days after a Russian attempt to land ended in disaster. India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, attending the Brics summit in Johannesburg, hailed the landing as an “unprecedented moment”. For India, that is.
The Indian landing means that of the four nations to successfully land a craft on the moon three are members of Brics. Halala! Seventy-five percent of the countries with landings on the moon are from the Global South and members of Brics.
That’s another huge fact to pile on the summit. Brics represents more than 40% of the world’s population, more than 20% (or is it 30%?) of the world’s economy. Of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, two of the five are also members of Brics. That’s like 40%! Permanent members of the Security Council can veto any decision they don’t like, no matter how many other members may support it.
If you’ve been even faintly watching the summit coverage this week you’ll know that superlatives and hubris rule the day, until that is the leaders take turns to complain how badly they’re treated by the West. Russia’s Vladimir Putin complained on a virtual link. China’s Xi Jinping did the same, targeting the US in particular.
All the while they insist they are picking no fights themselves. Perish the thought, as Russia bombards civilian targets in Ukraine and China annexes vast parts of the South China Sea and subjects the Muslim Uyghur population in its Western reaches to unspeakable repression.
Needless to say there is great anticipation in Johannesburg that SA may actually be able to materially benefit, to actually show one single thing from the Brics and this summit. But beyond all the fine words it is business as usual — we will just, as ever, have to wait and see.
For instance, there was much made of an agreement on electricity between SA and China on Wednesday. But it wasn’t new. Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan came back from China months ago and announced the very same deal — the Chinese will supply generators and solar panels to hospitals.
It’s not very much at all, and anyone who knows this country knows that the difference between our public service taking delivery of shiny new generators and those same machines being properly installed and maintained at far-flung hospitals is huge.
And there was President Cyril Ramaphosa demanding the Chinese import more value-added products from us. Like what? Cars? Pumps? That’s not going to happen. The Chinese reopened their market to our beef, closed because of a foot-and-mouth outbreak. That’s big, but no-one in rural SA dips their cattle any more, so there’ll be more foot-and-mouth.
They also opened their market to our avocados. Avocados are a seriously value-added product so that’s a brilliant breakthrough. But while we do business like this, government to government, disappointments are inevitable.
Leaders discussed ways to use their own currencies rather than the dollar, in trade with each other. Good luck to them, particularly as they also talked at length, and agreed, to increase the membership from five. To how many, and on what grounds, we don’t yet know. Sentiment will play a huge role though. If SA has a say, expect Cuba to become a member of Brics.
Which would normally cause a roomful of serious people to fall on the floor laughing. China apparently wants Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to join. Even Modi was persuaded to agree to the expansion of the group. But you either grow Brics or you create a competitor to the dollar. You can’t do both.
India is the Brics member to watch. I remember visiting the Hindustan Aeronautics factory in Bangalore back in 1982. Writing for a British newspaper, I was allowed to inspect a locally-produced UK Jaguar fighter. I remember someone hurrying over to stop me going through a door from the room I was in. Why, I asked? Because inside there is a MiG-27, I was told.
India has been buying Russian arms for decades, but it may be on the move strategically. Its troops trade fire with the Chinese on their short land border in the Himalayas, and the Indians worry about the sudden profusion of Chinese military facilities popping up either side of it — in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
However big the Brics becomes — and the more it grows the less effective and more unwieldy it may end up — it can never be big enough to hide the coming contest between India and China.
Our century is still young. The world will change more than once before it ends, and for small countries like SA in Brics the danger is always going to be double-edged. First, you are assumed to be taking sides even though you may swear you are not. This is simply because the big players in Brics like the Chinese and Russians will take sides whether you like it or not.
The fact is that Brics is saved, for the moment, by the democracies in it — India, Brazil and SA. Yet it is China and Russia that make all the noise.
You may survive this for a while, but sooner or later you have to accept that while you can’t always be judged by your family you can be judged by your friends — Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba ... the list is long. These are not democracies. Their leaders are for life. Their elections are a sham and they all prey on their own people. And we call them friends. Really?
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
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