Blog: WorldView

The BRICS summit in Durban underlined both the importance and limitations of this grouping, especially from India’s standpoint. The announcement of a Contingent Reserve Arrangement and the intention to create a new Development Bank suggests that this grouping could be more than a talking shop. Yet the idea of such a Bank has some distance to go before it becomes reality. Further, whatever steps the BRICS may have taken on the economic and financial front, the grouping is punching well below its weight on political and security issues.

At this year's BRICS think tank gathering, which traditionally occurs two weeks prior to the BRICS Leaders' Summit, academics and anlysts from the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa agreed on a list of recommendations for the 5th BRICS Summit on March 26.

There have been heated discussions over the role of BRICS recently. Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm, wrote an eye-catching article in the New York Times in late November, proclaiming that BRICS is nothing more than a catchy acronym. 

The BRICS nations represent over 43 percent of the global population that is likely to account for over 50 percent of global consumption by the middle class - those earning between $16 and $50 per day - by 2050. On the other hand, they also collectively account for around half of global poverty calculated at the World Bank's $1.25 a day poverty line.

What, then, is the mortar that unites these BRICS?

For South Africa and India, 2013 promises to be a year of "Chinese interesting times" in navigating the IBSA-BRICS equation at a pivotal juncture for both groupings. The BRICS forum convenes in Africa in March with South Africa hosting the 5th Leaders’ Meeting in Durban. Later in the year, in October, India will host the 6th IBSA summit marking the 10th anniversary of the Brasilia Declaration which launched this troika.

The Observer Research Foundation's Samir Saran says it is time for BRICS to ask some blunt questions, and that it will be counterproductive if South Africa’s chairmanship ends up representing Africa.

In the past fortnight two significant leadership processes  engulfed the world. The first was the US Presidential election: it saw Barack Obama returned to the White House with a decisive win over Mitt Romney, especially in the votes he obtained in the electoral college. The second was the more orderly 18th National Party Congress of the Chinese Community Party in Beijing.  

In the September edition of The Thinker, former President Thabo Mbeki laments the deferral of the promise of the African Union (AU) on the occasion of its 10th anniversary. His critique of the AU is to be taken with the utmost seriousness in as much as it is much more than AU-centric.

As Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma takes office in Addis as the first woman leader of the African Union Commission, I would encourage her to focus on five quick wins. They are: