A brief analysis on why and how South Africa has fallen from prominence in the world

This post was originally written in August 2008. Things have moved quite rapidly since then. South Africa is now a member of the Brics group of countries, and there is a significant improvement in, at least, the relationship among member-countries. The basic points I made about the Brics remain relevant. So let me tighten up the original post and drop the irrelevant part — especially my research project that was included in the original post.

My old friend and colleague Arthur Goldstuck’s post on how South Africa seems to have fallen off the map of the world is, actually, a very serious issue.

There was a time in the late 1999s and early 2000s, when South Africa had the opportunity to join an emerging alliance with Brazil, Russia, India and China that presented a challenge to the dominant “Quad” group in international political economic affairs. (The Quad being the United States, Canada, the European Union and Japan). Through a combination of personal (individual) agency, tendencies and policy decisions, South Africa aligned itself with the powerful. In step with mainly Britain and the US, the government adopted stringent neo-liberal policies by putting “the fundamentals in place” and sitting back as if matching text book formulae (and not purposefully rolling back the worst iniquities and injustices that apartheid had bequeathed a democratic South Africa) were the object of government policies. Because of these decisions and blind obeisance to market fundamentalist principles, three important things have occurred.

1. Research by mainstream international and regional institutions has shown that the gap between rich and poor in Britain, the US and South Africa has grown over the past 10 years, or so.
2. Having chosen to sup with the rich and powerful, South Africa lost an opportunity to associate itself with the Bric group (Brazil, Russia, India and China), and ironically/sadly,
3. Research by a high-powered financial institution suggests that the Bric would surpass the Quad in development, growth and the generation of wealth in the next four to five decades.

The tentative conclusions of my own research suggest that through a combination of personal (individual) agency, tendencies and policy decisions to strengthen alliances with the rich and powerful, the government (leadership) has played an important role in the marginalisation and increased peripheralisation of South Africa. This is not to say that South Africa has severed bi-lateral relations with countries of the Bric — especially those, like Brazil, that have kicked sand in the face of the US. In fact, former president Thabo Mbeki is on record having said that poor countries would benefit from joining anti-globalisation forces. But, as the title of one book says, South Africa talks left and walks right in its international political economic relations. Countries of the Bric have been bolder in their relations with the powerful.

For example, when in 2005 the US offered Brazil several million dollars in aid for fighting HIV/Aids, the Brazilian government told Washington to keep its money. The reason: because the US wanted Brazil to implement changes based on the evangelical principles of the right-wing US government. Brazil rejected $40 million for fighting Aids, which was described as “a rejection of Washington’s head-in-the-sand linkage of neo-con morality and foreign aid”.

“Biblical principles [are] their guide, not science … this premise is inadequate because it hurts our autonomous national policy,” said Pedro Chequer, director of Brazil’s Aids programme.

There is, of course, no guarantee that South Africa’s membership of the Brics will amount to significant overnight growth, as fast as, say, India, and (at least) reduce inequality and (at least alleviate) structure and systemic poverty. Nonetheless, the Bric as a bloc (nice phrase) is emerging as the next nexus of power in the global political economy — and South Africa appears to have grabbed the opportunity to formally be part of that alliance. As the prominence of the Brics increases the Quad will pay more attention to them. The Brics is an exciting project. In a separate post I will write more on what it may mean for global political economic power and international relations in the 21st century. What is important is for South African leadership to be bold and decisive. South Africa is in the Brics — political leaders should make it work for the country.