South Africa in BRICS
Salvation or ruination?
William Gumede
Tafelberg
A Dramatic Shift in Global Power
The world is undergoing structural transformations. In a way not seen in generations, these are dramatically altering global power in general, the power relations between developed and developing countries, and power relations within countries themselves. The post-Cold War consensus forged after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, where Western countries provided the global leadership in politics, economics, ideas and innovation, is now being eroded.
The slowdown in the US economy and the debt crisis in Europe caused by the global financial crisis started in 2008. The simultaneous economic rise of emerging countries such as China, Brazil and India has the potential to remake the world and to refashion existing unequal global power relations between developed countries and developing countries – traditionally skewed in favour of developed countries.
According to a recent World Bank report[1] emerging markets will account for more than half of all global growth by 2025. The US dollar may no longer be the dominant global currency and the global monetary system will be more multi-currency in nature. Projections show that by 2060 emerging markets such as China, India, Russia, Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia will produce around 70% of global trade.[2] It now stands at 30% of world exports.
Companies from emerging market corporations are increasingly becoming key drivers of global investment flows. Of the Fortune 500 companies, 96 come from the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Companies from emerging powers now control some of the largest Western brands. The former Swedish carmaker Volvo is now owned by Chinese tycoon Li Shufu’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, and Indian group Tata bought Jaguar-Land Rover from Ford.
The crisis in many leading Western powers is not confined to their economies alone; there are widespread crises of leadership and a poverty of ideas. Many of the democratic institutions are either vulnerable, under siege or losing domestic credibility. In the past these Western institutions were seen as benchmarks for developing countries to emulate.
The moral authority of leading Western countries and leaders is rapidly eroding. In many model Western democracies, human rights and individual liberties are under threat. In June 2013, it was revealed that the United States, under the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama, spied on the Internet data of its own citizens until 2011, watching who Americans exchanged e-mails with and the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of their computers.[[3]] In May 2013 it was revealed that the US Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press, in what the agency’s CEO Gary Pruitt called a ‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’ into how news organisations gather news.[4]
The UK has introduced a plethora of anti-terrorism legislation that civil groups say undermine civil liberties. These include 2007 anti-terrorism legislation that includes extending a 28-day limit on detention without charge to 90 days; the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which took away the right to trial by jury and the right to silence under certain circumstances; the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which removed the freedom to communicate privately without surveillance; and the Terrorism Act 2000, which removed the freedom to protest under certain conditions.[5]
But global institutions of governance – such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), United Nations and the International Court of Justice – also face crises of credibility. These global institutions are seen as biased towards Western countries at the expense of developing countries, and their policy precepts are perceived to a large extent to have failed. The World Bank and IMF have not only failed in their interventions in developing countries, they have mostly mishandled recent global crises, including failing to resolve the global financial and Eurozone crises.
The UN has failed in Western-led interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, where the organisation was used by Western powers for their own self-interest. It has also failed to act to stop conflict in Syria, Somalia and Rwanda. The International Criminal Court, the world’s first permanent criminal court, has consistently been accused of prosecuting only Africans and those from developing countries while Americans, for example, are exempted from prosecution by the court.
The global financial and Eurozone crises have also turned economic convention upside down, and the dominant Anglo-Saxon version of capitalism consensus that has held sway in the West in the post-Cold War era is now being critically examined. Western countries are bailing out commercial banks with state money, supporting strategic industries that are failing with public money, and building higher trade walls to protect their industries.
New emerging powers are increasingly displacing former colonial powers in Africa. For example, Brazil is increasingly investing in former Lusophone colonies, displacing the former colonial power, Portugal. Angola is even investing in its former colonial power, Portugal, which is suffering from a recession – a form of reverse colonialism.
Rivalry, by means of trade, between industrial countries and the new emerging powers is increasing. The United States and China frequently accuse each other of spying. In June 2013 the US Justice Department accused China’s largest wind turbine company, the Sinovel Wind Group, of stealing US proprietary wind turbine software technology from AMSC, the US technology company (previously known as American Superconductor).[6] In the same month, former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden accused the US spy agency of snooping on Chinese targets, including hacking Tsinghua University in Beijing, which houses one of six ‘network backbones’ that route China’s Internet traffic.[7]
Africa is increasingly becoming a trade battleground between industrial countries and the new emerging powers. Old industrial powers are also re-entering Africa to secure resources to reboot their own flailing economies. At the same time, new emerging powers are dramatically entering Africa, seeking its resources to keep on growing. Africa can either cleverly leverage the new interests in its resources, or it could face recolonisation if it does not secure better trade terms with these new investors.
Although emerging powers are fast growing in influence, they do not yet have the collective institutions, ideas or economic power to replace the old industrial powers. Most of the emerging powers have deep inequalities between the rich and the poor, huge pockets of poverty and non-accountable, weak or non-existent democratic institutions. This makes them ‘systemically vulnerable’.[8] The public protests sweeping across some of the emerging markets shows how brittle its economic growth is. An example is Brazil, where more than a million people took part in protests across 100 cities over high transport fees, corruption and the costs of the 2014 FIFA
