Africa: Did somebody say BRICS?

Five years ago, if somebody said “BRICS” the meaning of the saying would be that of an ambitious economic block of countries of the Global South that are politically punching above their geopolitical and geoeconomic weight.

Presently, however, to say BRICS might be a claim of some cataclysmic civilisational change of a global extent. BRICS has suddenly become a phenomenal player in the world system, a player that scares the powers that be under the present sun.

It is politically interesting that BRICS as an alliance of economies and polities was not named by its members but by a Goldman Sachs economist, an American, Jim O’Neill in 2001, when it was still BRIC, without the ‘S’ at the end of name that came with South Africa joining the alliance in 2010.

As I write, the name BRICS will soon enjoy or endure, depending on where one stands, fundamental change as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, United Arab Emirates, Argentina, and Egypt are joining the alliance of countries of the Global South. A talented poet, this time from the Global South, might be needed to craft another name.

BRICS was such a good name as it, at least in sound, signified the brick for building economies and polities. Not only the name of the entity is changing but the geographic landscape, economic stamina, human population, and political gravitas that it had is set to significantly grow. The military might behind the alliance, even at a symbolic level, is about to balloon.

My piece today is not about an analysis of the meaning of BRICS, past, present, and future, but about the geopolitical, geoeconomical and military significance of a Global South alliance of countries. I am sold to the views that what is afoot is a civilisational shift that will change the world forever, and one that Africa must approach with decolonial wisdom.

Breaking Bread with Fellow Travellers

The question of the rise of the Global South to contest and possibly eclipse the Euro-American Empire in global dominance is not being raised for the first time in this short article. Debates that have attracted historians, philosophers, journalists, and activists have been going on from before, during, and after the Cold War. Today I might just omit meaningful reference to Francis Fukuyama and his teacher and interlocutor Samuel Huntington.

The two argued over their fundamental agreement that the West had, with the end of the Cold War, achieved global dominance for perpetuity. Fukuyama preached the ‘end of history’ where the whole world would happily become western economically and politically, and culturally. Huntington agreed but saw a cultural problem where civilisations, led by the Western Christian versus the Eastern Islamic, were headed for a “clash of civilisations.”

History has proven Huntington partially right but still wrong in that beyond the Islamic world, western dominance is being resisted in the greater Global South.

In 2007, celebrated British economic journalist, Will Hutton, wrote a punchy book; The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century, observing the problem that the West has with the rise of China from poverty to prosperity and power in the world.

To Hutton, as Euro-American as he is, it was clear that the 19th Century was British, the 20th Century American, and the 21st Century Chinese. It is notable that the rise of China since 1978, from there to here, can be compared to the rapid rise of the USA between the Civil War and the First World War.

The USA rise was not unique and could be done by China, and allies. Euro-American political, economic, and military exceptionalism is, thus, a colonial myth. With political will and strong leadership any country can, politically and economically, rise from grass to grace.

As recently as 2018, Kishore Mahbubani, the Singaporean scholar and diplomat published a pulsating book: Has the West Lost It: A Provocation, in which he pleaded with the Euro-American Empire to accept that China and India were back to claim their place as world empires that were older and stand to be stronger than the western one.

Like Hutton, Mahbubani asks the West to swallow pride and not lose power angrily and violently. If the West listened to Mahbubani and Hutton, not their pundits in the many American and European think-tanks and spy agencies, the war in Ukraine and the impending military explosion in Taiwan would be avoided. The many wars in Africa that are not African but are proxy and sponsored wars of feuding super-powers that are playing out in Africa would not be happening.

In 2020, Mahbubani was back with; Has China Won?: Chinese Challenge to American Supremacy. This time the scholar and the diplomat was counselling both China and the USA to choose diplomacy ahead of war, one superpower in its rise and another in its fall, were being asked to assume a diplomatic posture.

Diplomacy would ensure that no country loses and no country wins, but only humanity becomes the victor as civilisational dominance changes hands and places. In other words, the shift of civilisational power should make humanity the victor not any individual country and its allies. That is the political wisdom of this moment in the planet.

From Russia, in 2009, Aleksandr Dugin, the political philosopher, published: The Fourth Political Theory, where he challenges the Euro-American trinity of classical liberalism, Social Conservatism, and economic liberalism by adding the need for ‘existence’ for the one and others as what should be the philosophical agenda of all in the world. Dugin demands a multipolar world against a unipolar world that is imprisoned in Euro-American liberalism with its colonial and imperial limits.

The wisdom that leaks from the many debates, I have only elected a few scholars for highlights, is that what is needed is the victory of humanity and the realisation of a multipolar world, not the triumph of one Empire and one civilisation. What the place and the meaning of BRICS in all this is the question to which I wish to contribute one day. It’s too early in the day to think about answers as history is still on the march, we can only ask strong questions that await strong answers.

Africa in the BRICS Century
It is sad that no one has ever imagined the possibility of an African century, yet. Discourses of ‘Africa rising’ and ‘the African Renaissance’ have been circulated but an African epoch has not been declared or at least imagined. As the BRICS alliance expands, Africa should learn from its own history and get into any alliance with decolonial wisdom.

The continent should selfishly position itself to benefit from civilisational shifts. Never again should the continent risk its liberation and happiness for the pleasure and power of any empire. As a third-player, and the one that empires are contesting to own and control, Africa should opportunistically position itself to be the centre of the world, the powerful meeting point of civilisations and therefore the true civilisation.

What Africa needs in short is to unite in decolonial Pan-Africanism and resist being dominated and marginalised while maximising the gains on its wealth of resources.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from the University of Western Cape, in Cape Town, South Africa. Contacts: [email protected].