In its somewhat jittery response to US president-elect Donald Trump’s social media strafing of the idea of a Brics currency, our international relations spokespeople ironically resorted to the Trump playbook, blaming “incorrect reporting” and “false narrative running wild” — or, as they would say across the Atlantic, fake news!
But there’s nothing fake about discussions about a Brics currency. Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have spoken about the idea. Consequently, Donald Trump is well within his rights to have an opinion.
The problem for the SA department of international relations &co-operation is that up until this point it has not said much. And it was in our own backyard, at the Brics summit in Johannesburg no less, where Lula da Silva said that the creation of a Brics currency “increases our payment options and reduces our vulnerabilities”. Our public diplomacy spokespeople were quieter then.
Trump, in his inimitable way and with nothing more than a tweet, has bounced the department into taking a position — and it has dutifully fallen in line.
Irrespective of Trump, a Brics currency was always a woeful idea — little more than an utterly unworkable mechanism for countries to avoid Western sanctions and to supercharge corruption and illicit payments. Those “false narratives” are narratives the department seemed happy to watch “run wild” during the course of the Joburg Brics summit, and the weekend’s rather semantic defence that Brics decisions are “taken by consensus” was true then, which raises the question — why not say it then too? It would have saved a lot of bother.
Trump’s tweet will vanish from memory soon enough, but we should learn from its implications. We are now the hosts of the Group of 20 (G20) and we need to develop more confidence and stop this dreadful habit of seeking the most accommodating coat-tails to cling to.
This is not an approach other Brics nations struggle with. India is nobody’s fool and does not behave as some kind of geopolitical imbongi. It has a very tense relationship with China but also isn’t bothered with Western bullying on Russian oil, for example. India’s Reliance Industries, which runs the world’s biggest refinery, is buying discounted Russian oil in roubles.
Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, supports more trade being conducted in Brics countries’ currencies, such as rupees and rand. Last year, India and the UAE agreed to do more trade in local currencies.
India engages with the world as an equal and puts what it believes are its national interests first. India treats Brics as a vehicle for some of its interests, not as its family. It gets what it needs out of it. We should take inspiration from this, and make the absolute best of hosting the G20, remembering that the only team we need to be behind is Team SA and if we’re worried about a club, it should be the Southern African Development Community.
It was Sygnia’s Magda Wierzycka who rather sharply observed that the “S” in Brics is a whole country, not merely the indication of a plural. It’s an important point.
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