When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, they say. It appears SA has a lot of lemons. I applaud the opinion piece of Justin Chadwick, the CEO of the Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa, published by Business Day on Monday. He argues that as our traditional market in Europe tightens regulations, it is crucial that SA’s government and businesses work together to focus on the Brics market.
The success story Chadwick used to illustrate his point is the signing of the revised lemon protocol in 2021 between SA and China. This protocol will result in increased production by 175,000 tonnes by 2024, resulting in revenue of R325m and 800 new jobs in the lemon sector. SA needs more trade agreements like this. Not only with China, but India, Brazil and Russia are also untapped markets with immense potential.
The Brics summit will take place later in August in the Sandton Convention Centre, where every African head of state has been invited to come, and about 40 developing countries that have expressed interest in joining Brics are likely to send representatives. It seems to me we in SA have missed the point somewhat.
Over the recent past, the media frenzy has been on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend and whether SA will execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest order if he attends. All this huffing and puffing plays to the Western media about the good West against an evil Russia. This controversy has done little to address SA’s own economic problems.
With the rand depreciating and economy sputtering, the focus of the government, business and the media ought to shift from a war SA has no influence over to how we can maximise economic benefit from the Brics summit. How many new trade protocols are we going to sign? How many new contacts are our trade officials and business delegates going to make? What economic benefits and jobs will result from this international event?
Brics is what we make of it. For Russia and China, Brics is an important platform for international political power. Russia and China want to use Brics as a platform to establish an alternative to the dollar-dominated international financial system.
For SA, while we are keen to even the playing field of the international financial system, we are not in the same security position as Russia and China. I think SA should focus on using Brics as a platform to unlock new export markets and attract investment, starting with Brics countries and then all the other countries that will send delegates to Sandton during the summit. And, of course, SA represents African countries’ interest in Brics and we need to focus on maximising benefits for Africa.
As for Brics’ expansion, it appears India and Brazil are not keen for the bloc to become a radical anti-West alliance and are not in favour of expansion. SA will probably not be able to resist the lobbying by the members, but my view is that because SA is already the smallest member in Brics it is not in our national interest to dilute our influence in this organisation even more. We should kick the can of expansion down the road to be discussed at a later summit, probably indefinitely.
Brics is what its five members make of it. SA has already paid the political cost by being threatened with exclusion from the US’s African Growth and Opportunity Act. We should make lemonade and focus on leveraging our Brics membership to open up markets to SA products. We should leverage SA’s membership to lobby candidate countries to open their markets and send investments to SA.
Ultimately, Brics is about politics and politics is about power. SA has some power and we should maximise this summit to our economic and trade advantage.
• Kuo, a former lecturer at the Shanghai International Studies University in China, is adjunct senior lecturer at the Graduate School of Business at UCT.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.