Bheki Gila
The BRICS Summit of 2023 is slated to convene in August in Durban. It gives South Africa another stab at making history. For indeed, against the backdrop of the current global political context and its myriad subtexts taken jointly and severally, this particular summit will be a paradigm-changing milestone.
South Africa has had very unique opportunities to host momentous events which eventually became important to the collective memory of the global commons. What she does with this fortuitous privilege, considering the ruling party’s record of mixed outcomes every so often it is so reposed, is anybody’s guess. It is fervently hoped that the Netanyahu curse does not afflict them. It simply asserts that this is a country that never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
It is no exaggeration that for whatever reasons which have been fated by the vicissitudes of chance or the odd temperament of war permutations, South Africa is settling for a slow-moving political shock against which there is no magic panacea. And neither can her denizens conceive of a prayer to prevent it, notwithstanding the charitable weight of their unquestioned patriotism. That shock is the fact that they may be coerced into cancelling the summit, especially at the pain of being slapped with a comprehensive package of economic sanctions for some ruse or another.
Worse still, when the Office of the President approbates about the country’s membership of the International Criminal Court (ICC), inclining towards its withdrawal, and the very next day, the same Presidency reprobates, it is emblematic of a ruling party uncertain of its policy position on weighty topics of the day. But the power to approbate and reprobate at the same time is reserved only for the divine sovereignty, causing the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the reprobate.
When playing godly games it must be said, you must be a god, dexterous at divine moves, so that whatever the move, no other power will be capable of suborning it.
Without confirmation, there is an estimation that there are 19 countries that have applied to join the BRICS fraternity. The Cape Town meeting of June 2 will confirm the founders’ preferred vetting process, the admission criteria and the confirmation of the applicants, especially those recommended to the summit for admission. Notwithstanding how each of these candidates have expressed their intention, we have officially been told of the three confirmed ones. Algeria, Argentina and Iran.
Without doubt, there is an overweening energy vortex that flows unseen, permitting for quiet and dedicated back channels between and among chanceries of the BRICS’s capitals and their extended partner blocs.
To be sure, all the countries that are said to be considering joining the BRICS grouping, bring their own weight of political, economic, diplomatic and strategic importance into the mix. A few of the countries in this group include Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Türkiye and Egypt. At this rate, in the immediate future, BRICS will mutate into a titular secretariat for a number of countries. And about these countries, they are motivated by a singular visceral instinct, which is the demilitarisation of currencies.
It comes from a profound understanding that the spectacle of hegemony and world domination, played out on war theatres across the globe, does so at the back of a dominant currency. In that wise, there have been a lot of things that have been happening in the background, providing momentum to the advance of the multi-polarity of political spheres and the demilitarisation of currency exchanges. Countries like Uruguay, Egypt and the UAE have already joined the New Development Bank, or BRICS Bank as it is colloquially known.
The conceivable hypothesis is that the BRICS economic construct will be supported by four pillars. The first critical one is the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, covering the greater extent of Asia, West Asia and the Far East. The second is South America. With President Lula da Silva as its indefatigable champion, it presents a veritable pillar in that hemisphere. The third is the Arab League, with all its resource heft and strategic location. With the current Arab League visionary leadership, there is no time in history when the region leverages a critical nexus in the movement for peaceful co-operation and economic prosperity than the present. The fourth is the African continent, the pre-eminent host of the world’s most natural resources.
It could just as well be that there is concern whether or not the BRICS Summit will indeed convene on the appointed date. Justified or otherwise, there are persuasive permutations that could result in the postponement of the event or complete cancellation as a consequence of a “manufactured” force majeure.
For one, reading from the voices of belligerence from the collective West, especially the US and its Nato allies, there is a chance that China could be attacked by the coalition against the puerile pretext that by reintegrating Taiwan into the political control of the mainland, its actions represent an assault against the western imagination of democracy.
That may sound both scary and unfathomable. But what may be scarier is an attack on a nuclear armed China with superior territorial leverage, with the hope of wiping 1.4 billion people off the face of the planet. The other more bizarre likelihood, however remote, is that when the tensions in the Strait ultimately erupt into a hot war, the ICC would issue an arrest warrant against President Xi Jinping. This may also mean that it is not about President Putin not attending the summit. It is just that the summit must not hold. Period.
Yet there remain lingering doubts whether or not such a historically important event will be suffered to come to pass without incident at the least or at the most, completely prevented from convening at all. The conflicts in Europe and the raging violent conflict in Sudan remind us not so subtly that any perturbation of the privileges of the global hegemon is dearly priced in the blood and treasure of the citizens of the country or countries concerned. Someday, some conflicts may eventually prove that hypothesis out just as Iraq and Libya have. Still, about paying the supreme price, blood will flow, and in copious amounts.
For whatever reason the historians may conjure up all the cogent and persuasive justifications why the Collective West conspired and ultimately formed al-Qaeda, ISIS and many other brutal organisations of their ilk, blithely assassinated presidents at will and deposed governments they abhorred. No matter.
It is just that it is simply inconceivable that a platform that could provide an opportunity to dethrone the hegemony of the US dollar may be treated with casual indifference. Rather, I make bold to assert that it will be treated in the same way as the Defenestration of Prague which triggered the Thirty Years’ War that culminated in the Treaty of Westphalia.
All things considered, South Africa, marching very close to the core values that facilitated the liberation of its masses, the Durban convocation may become the Waterloo of Bretton Woods. If the ruling party could heed the clarion call of history and listen to billions of voices yearning for peace, just perhaps, the August summit may minister of hegemony’s endgame.
If the latter-day trap of Thucydides needed a date, it would be August 2023 and its Peloponnesia would be Durban.
Ambassador Bheki Gila is a Barrister-at-Law. The views expressed here are his own.