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The BRICS Summit should remind us of our high school days, with pressure on South Africa to declare where it stands on the dividing lines of schoolyard cliques, writes Mitch Illbury.
Chants of anti-establishment frustration echo across Johannesburg this week as leaders from China, India, Brazil, and noticeably, not Russia, descend upon South Africa for the XV BRICS Summit. The chorus will ring: western dominance is over; it's time for a new world order.
The dividing lines between East and West, global North and global South, have not been this stark since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, just like then, the differences are narrative-based, sold on the reputations of past, present and future identities.
It’s like high school all over again, with camps forming around who will be the cool kids. South Africa seems lost or awestruck; the default will be relegation to a loser clique.
Schoolyard tactics
If you look at the landing page of the brics2023.gov.za website, which could have been coded in the 1990s, every one of the five national leaders is smiling except for Vladimir Putin. Granted, he has never been a happy-go-lucky guy, but his sour pout looks incredibly lemony in contrast to the other leaders grinning with apparent excitement.
President Ramaphosa is notably beaming from ear to ear. He has good reason. Doing what he does best, he has somehow managed to dance on the pinhead of diplomatic negotiations to convince Putin to attend the summit virtually, presumably via Zoom, not Teams.
It’s a massive relief for South Africa's diplomatic corps, even though I don't believe Bheki Cele has the guts or ideological will to arrest Putin if he had come. Still, Cele's probably ruing the chance to make a stunning front-page spread with his latest fedora feather.
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The current international rules-based system provides the framework and legitimacy for our sovereign actions. It's a bit like being in high school - we can rebel, grow our sideburns, or hike our skirts above the knees, but detention is looming if we misbehave. It's school rules.
South Africa has been hormonal over the last 18 months. We've been scribbling secret letters spilling our teenage crushes on Russia and China while gossiping about the hypocrisy of our capitalist quarterback ex-boyfriend.
All the while, bully battle lines are being drawn across the global schoolyard. China stands with both fists clenched on one side of the chalk staring at the United States on the other. When the bell rings for break, South Africa must choose sides or be wedgied by its fence-sitting.
When the bell tolls
Argentina, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and dozens of other countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS. The five-member power bloc has been relatively ineffectual to date, but if these countries do join, it will mark the most significant geopolitical shift in world order since the Bretton Woods Agreement in the aftermath of WWII.
De-dollarisation could be the key thread underpinning the transition. Brazil, Russia and China already use the yuan for trade among themselves, and China is desperate to extend this. Its popularity will go a long way if it could shove aside the greenback as the world's reserve currency.
Now throw this spanner in the works: de-dollarisation coinciding with a Trump presidency. He is a tool, and his hammer-like pugilism will not let US dominance go quietly into the night. Trump will come out punching, emboldened by a momentum-riding comeback. The futility of the fight against something as intangible as de-dollarisation will only make him more dangerous – the bully with no obvious victim will jam his finger at everyone to deflect his own vulnerabilities.
A transition in world order from one popularity clique to another will involve economic, political, and cultural collateral, with the potential for military conflict on a world-war scale.
So, which clique will South Africa choose?
The party is starting
The alignment consequences will be significant no matter which direction South Africa chooses. I sensed great concern in the executive team of a JSE-listed company I worked with recently. They all worried about a key US client vowing to remove all investment in South Africa in the wake of the Lady R scandal. It is not just a matter of reputation for US firms doing business with South Africa; it's about legality.
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The schoolyard power plays that global politics is continually shifting. As hard as we have tried in the past to play along and paint our nails Barbie pink, put metal rings in our noses and plugs in our ears, or wear our caps backwards like preppy Paul, we haven’t yet found our high school identity - we neither fully align East or West, nor represent part of the developed or developing world. We seem unprepared, overwhelmed, and far too ready to please everyone.
The BRICS Summit is an opportunity to scan the schoolyard and decisively pick a side.
- Mitch Ilbury is a best-selling author and director of the specialist strategy firm, Mindofafox.
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