By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
A BRICS summit in Johannesburg this month will seek to enhance the five-nation grouping’s trade ties with Africa, Department of International Relations and Cooperation said on Monday.
The continent has emerged as a renewed diplomatic battleground, with the West, Russia and China vying for influence amid heightened competition for minerals and international divisions fostered by the war in Ukraine.
The heads of Brazil, China, India and South Africa plus Russia’s top diplomat will gather on August 22-24 under the theme “BRICS and Africa”, according to International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor.
“Our theme reflects our belief in the benefits a partnership with Africa can bring to BRICS,” Pandor told a press conference.
BRICS, an acronym for its member countries, sees itself as a counterweight to Western economic domination.
Talks will also focus on drumming up investments across the continent, Pandor said, adding representatives for other African countries will be in attendance.
China’s president Xi Jinping, Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi have all confirmed they will be in Johannesburg, after speculation the latter might pull out.
Russia will be represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with Russian President Vladimir Putin participating online.
Putin decided against attending in person as he is the target of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant that South Africa is in theory bound to enforce.
Pandor laughed off the possibility of Emmanuel Macron showing up, after the French President made it known he was interested in participating.
“It’s quite amusing,” Pandor said, asked whether the French leader would attend. “No invitation has been issued in that regard”.
Macron’s stated wish to be invited to the BRICS summit presented a litmus test of what the BRICS bloc is becoming: a neutral partnership to objectively boost the development of emerging nations, or a support group for Russia against Western efforts to isolate and sanction it because of its invasion of Ukraine.
Pandor also said there is no intention to build an “anti-West” bloc following the “strong possibility” of Iran’s participation at the summit.
Iran has well-established hostile diplomatic relations with the US.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is expected to attend the summit after receiving an invite from President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Iran – which has battled US-initiated sanctions over its enrichment of uranium and fears it was developing nuclear weapons – has had an antagonistic relationship with the US since the 1950s after a US-backed coup ousted its first democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he tried to nationalise the country’s oil reserves.
Pandor said Iran was one of 67 countries Ramaphosa had invited “with consensus support from his fellow BRICS leaders”.
But she stressed South Africa’s trading partners in the West were “very important” to the country’s “economic progress”.
Pandor added as a minister, she would guard against the expansion of the BRICS grouping that would lead South Africa “down a path where we contribute to increasing conflict in the global community or in any part of the world”.
With inputs from Agence France-Presse.