BUILDING BRICS BIGGER

Several developing countries view BRICS as an alternative to global bodies dominated by the West and hope that membership will unlock benefits such as development and increased investment.

- JOHN DOBSON

‘The world is changing”, said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the opening of the plenary session of the BRICS summit on Wednesday. “New realities call for a fundamental reform of the institutions of global governance so that they may be more representative and better able to respond to the challenges that confront humanity”, he continued. Chinese President Xi Jinping added a couple of dramatic words declaring, “The course of history will be shaped by the choices we make”.

It has now been 14 years since BRICS was founded. The acronym, which did not originally include South Africa, was coined in 2001 by the then Goldman Sachs chief economist and later British government minister, Jim O’Neill, in a research paper that underlined the growth potential of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. South Africa joined the group after a Chinese-initiated invitation in 2012, a boost for the then President Jacob Zuma’s administration, which was eager to pivot further towards the east. The bloc also benefited from having a key African player and regional leader. Zuma was, however, jailed in 2021 for defying a Constitutional Court order to appear before a commission of inquiry investigating allegations of corruption during his tenure as president from 2009 to 2018.