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![]() A VIEW FROM SOUTH AFRICABRICS FROM ABOVE Heads of state, Business Forum, elite allies BRICS FROM THE MIDDLE Academic Forum, trade unions, NGOs BRICS FROM BELOW Grassroots activists whose visions run local to global JEALOUS PRO-WEST CAPITALISTS Most white organic intellectuals of capital connected to Old Money, multinational-corporate branch plants, Business Day, northern-centric big biz, Democratic Alliance and their ilk. BRICS 2023 ANALYSIS AND PROTESTS BRICS 2018 Analysis and protests
![]() PICTURES FROM THE MARCH
![]() Click on image for more information PICTURES FROM THE NDB PROTEST
Why should we break the BRICS?: 10 Reasons to march on Sandton, July 26, 11amThey're back in the news here in Johannesburg, because in six weeks the BRICS heads of state and BRICS Business Council meet. Also, several Brics-from-the-middle forces have been active: the Academic Forum last week, the Civil BRICS in a couple of weeks, the BRICS Youth now in Moscow and the BRICS Trade Union Forum later in July. This too has generated some interesting debates as you see below; next time I write, I'll send out the two statements from the intellectuals and Civil BRICS that I have. But we are in a very uncertain situation geopolitically now. The terrain now of centrifugal economics and politics is now more uneven than when I last wrote you, last August. Even in past days, Donald Trump has opened up the possibility of a wedge involving Russia, which I'd be grateful if anyone has seen good information to help interpret. At the micro level, we've just seen the BRICS New Development Bank prove its unwillingness to consult with affected people, as a new $200 million loan to the corruption-riddled South African transport parastatal comes under opposition in South Durban for very good reasons. (The BRICS Business Council will, as a result, attract a protest when they meet in Durban on July 22.) Here's a little video about the last BRICS visit to South Africa - Durban in 2013 - and the resistance movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taFtYFmFXEE In between there are a great many objections to the BRICS elites - see the draft call to action below - including very intense forms of rising social resistance. I will send more information on activist initiatives soon. But one begins soon here in Johannesburg: a community-labour-women's-youth-environmental coalition forming, called "Break the BRICS." Below the advertisement for the strategy session, are some links to articles I've written over the past six months. I'll send out more in coming days, as we construct educational and intellectual resource packages. Cheers, Patrick |
CRITICAL THINKING ON BRICS VIDEOS AN INTRODUCTION TO BRICS POLITRICKS: RECOMMENDED READING BRICS Leaders Are Reinforcing, Not Replacing, the Global System of Power Patrick Bond (August 2018) Can the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc rise to the occasion, as Donald Trump jerks Western imperialism out of traditional alignments? With war-talk against Iran blowing through Trump’s tweets, and with Washington’s trade wars raging against both China and traditional allies, there was talk here in Johannesburg about counter-hegemonic prospects during the last week of July. Chatter about reforming multilateral economic power structures, launching a new BRICS credit ratings agency and prospects for leapfrog technology within the ‘4th Industrial Revolution’ (4IR) also filled the air. The most vainglorious elements of South Africa’s ruling elite were thrilled that BRICS leaders descended for several days of pageantry. Visiting heads of state Michael Temer, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping – joined for a day by ‘BRICS-Outreach’ and ‘BRICS-Plus’ tyrants Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Faure Gnassingbe, Joseph Kabila, Paul Kagame, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Yoweri Museveni and Ali Bongo Ondimba among others – were welcomed at the Sandton Convention Centre, in the heart of the world’s most corrupt corporate district (according to regular PricewaterhouseCoopers ‘Economic Crime’ surveys). Revealingly, the business establishment is often split in such instances. The main Western-oriented corporate rags – Business Day and Financial Mail – regularly ridicule (for very good reasons) BRICS Business Council chairperson Iqbal Survé, whose allies include Siyabonga Gama, the oft-accused chief executive of Transnet. READ MORE Global Geopolitical Economy and BRICS Sub-Imperialism Dominic Brown (July 2018) Ten years after the 2008 global financial crisis, the global economy is still stagnant and there are few prospects for a recovery. As a result, we have seen a deepening of the social crisis with rising unemployment and inequality, which is what underpins the war against women, increased crime and violence, and the unravelling of the social fabric, especially here in South Africa. This process is not new, it has been unfolding over several decades and has given rise to the phenomena of neoliberalism, globalisation and financialisation. These are capital’s means to overcome the crises of capitalism globally. The crisis has subsequently developed into multi-dimensional, overlapping crises of the global economy, environment, energy, food. At its core, this represents a crisis of over-accumulation of capital, with too many products and too few consumers. We cannot understand the current political shifts (nationally and internationally) without putting them in the context of (a) historical changes in the capitalist economy (b) the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism. READ MORE The BRICS, Climate Catastrophe, Resource Plunder and Resistance Farai Maguwu (July 2018) The heads of state from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are meeting in Johannesburg’s corruption-ridden financial district of Sandton for a two-day annual summit. Pretending to challenge Western imperial hegemony over poor nations of the South, this bloc has itself proved to be no different. If anything, two of the BRICS powers – China and India – are investing billions of dollars in coal-fired thermal-power generation in Africa while winning global applause for increasing their solar and wind power at home. This contradiction and policy inconsistency is one of many which makes the BRICS a farce. China is funding coal projects in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, yet is a global powerhouse in renewable energy. It put on hold more than 100 coal plants in 2017 with a combined installed capacity of 100 gigawatts. In 2016 China’s energy regulator also halted coal fired projects amounting to over 300 gigawatts, mainly due to overcapacity but also health and local pollution concerns. Yet last month Zimbabwe concluded a $1.4 billion agreement with the Export-Import Bank of China (Exim Bank) for the construction of a 600 megawatt coal-fired power plant. READ MORE BRICS States and Capital Surveil Their Societies: Anti-Imperialist or Subimperialist? Jane Duncan (July 2018) When it comes to control of the populace, what are the imperialist, anti-imperialist or subimperialist characteristics of the BRICS network of countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa? Can the BRICS deliver progressive outcomes – as some of its proponents claim – or not? READ MORE State of BRICS Youth Struggle: About Us, But Without Us Njabulo Maphumulo and Lynford Dor (July 2018) The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will meet in Johannesburg from 25-27 July for the 10th BRICS Summit. Prior to the Summit a number of other BRICS dialogues are taking place, including the Business Council, Academic Forum, Civil BRICS and BRICS Youth. BRICS Youth was set up in 2013 to put youth voices on the BRICS agenda and to promote and popularise BRICS amongst young people ages 15-34 in each country. At the time, in March 2013, President Jacob Zuma promised that the Durban BRICS Summit would “contribute immensely to satisfying the employment and development needs of our young population” and that youth employment would be “central to our engagements and discussions with the grouping.” But the fight against South African youth unemployment has been lost. We reflect here on whether, five years later, SA’s hosting of the BRICS Youth participatory processes show any indication of improving prospects for youth in BRICS countries and South African youth in particular. READ MORE State of the BRICS class struggle: Part 1 - repression, austerity and worker militancy Patrick Bond (July 2018) Across the world, trade unions are under unprecedented threat, as just witnessed in the United States in the Janus vs. AFSCME Supreme Court decision which denudes an already weak labour movement of public sector power and funds. Where, then, does organisational hope for working people lie? The greatest potential for labour internationalism may one day exist within the largest combined proletariat: the Brazil-Russia-India-China- South Africa (BRICS) bloc. The BRICS state leaders meet in Johannesburg from July 25-27 and union officials gather in Durban the following weekend. Since 2012, the BRICS Trade Union Forum (BTUF) has brought labour leaders together, attempting to traverse extremely difficult terrain using an ever-changing roadmap. Unfortunately, it is becoming obvious that along this path, BTUF leaders suffer a well-known problem: signaling to the left while driving the vehicle towards the right, as the ground underneath the vehicle keeps shifting. For the BTUF to reach the desired location would require major adjustments in navigation, new passengers and very different maneuvers. READ MORE State of the BRICS class struggle: Part 2 – ‘social dialogue’ reform frustrations Patrick Bond (July 2018) Across the world, trade unions are under unprecedented threat, as just witnessed in the United States in the Janus vs. AFSCME Supreme Court decision which denudes an already weak labour movement of public sector power and funds. Where, then, does organisational hope for working people lie? The greatest potential for labour internationalism may one day exist within the largest combined proletariat: the Brazil-Russia-India-China- South Africa (BRICS) bloc. The BRICS state leaders meet in Johannesburg from July 25-27 and union officials gather in Durban the following weekend. Since 2012, the BRICS Trade Union Forum (BTUF) has brought labour leaders together, attempting to traverse extremely difficult terrain using an ever-changing roadmap. Unfortunately, it is becoming obvious that along this path, BTUF leaders suffer a well-known problem: signaling to the left while driving the vehicle towards the right, as the ground underneath the vehicle keeps shifting. For the BTUF to reach the desired location would require major adjustments in navigation, new passengers and very different maneuvers. READ MORE BRICS and Civil Society 2018: Social Justice versus the Diplomacy Game Bandile Mdlalose and Lisa Thompson (July 2018) The annual BRICS Summit at the Sandton Convention Centre attracted much hype and generally affirming media coverage. Part of the reason for relentless positivity towards the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) alliance is press coverage in the country’s leading newspaper chain arranged by Iqbal Survé. As head of the Independent newspapers as well as the BRICS Business Council, his own picture appears regularly on his front pages, pronouncing on the enormous value of BRICS to South Africa. Debate amongst academics and civil society has been intense, especially on whether engagement in official processes amounts to a legitimation of BRICS rulers. For critics, the governance credentials of China, India, Russia and Brazil are appalling, along with widespread corporate corruption, exploitative economic trade and investment strategies, and the world’s most severe pollution, including greenhouse gases. READ MORE BRICS From Above, Seen Critically From Below Patrick Bond (July 2018) The Durban rapper Ewok captured the spirit of progressive social forces in South Africa with his condemnation of elite politics at a March 2013 protest outside the Durban International Convention Centre: “You dropping BRICS from above? We’re throwing bricks from below!” For the second time, the leaders of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-SA (BRICS) summit in South Africa, this time at Johannesburg’s Sandton Convention Centre from July 25-27. The bloc has great potential to change the world in positive ways. But under increasingly desperate capitalist rule in each country, this potential simply cannot be realised, and evidence has accumulated of much more harm than good The best example of intra-BRICS collaboration combining top-down and bottom-up politics was when fifteen years ago, Treatment Action Campaign activists wonfree AIDS medicines (once costing $10 000/year) for several million South Africans (hence raising life expectancy from 52 to 64) thanks partly to a Brazilian state precedent and Indian generic pharmaceutical support. Progressive BRICS crumbling READ MORE BRICS Bank should have consulted before lending corrupt Transnet Desmond D’Sa and Patrick Bond (June 2018) Last month’s approval of a New Development Bank loan of US $200 million to expand the Durban container port occurred without the Sandton-based bankers doing adequate consultation or analysis. This is not only unacceptable in a democratic society, especially for such an important and controversial project. It also makes mockery of claims the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc acts differently than arrogant Washington bankers. For decades, the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA), with members from all races and classes, has opposed the ultra-polluting port-petrochemical complex. Container trucks are especially damaging, with one careening off Field’s Hill in 2012, killing two dozen kombi passengers – just one of an annual average 7000 truck crashes in Durban. SDCEA is opposed to the massive truck logistics park proposed for the Clairwood Racecourse due to its threat to nearby schoolchildren’s safety. Although concessions were belatedly won from Engen, British Petroleum and Shell on long-overdue sulphur scrubbing at the continent’s largest refinery complex, it was not long ago that Merebank’s Settlers Primary School had a 52 percent rate of asthma, the highest ever recorded at any school. Leukaemia is still a South Durban pandemic, with rates 24 times the national average. READ MORE Scholars get drunk on their own rhetoric in South Africa Patrick Bond (May 2018) A ‘think tank’ is sometimes a group of people paid to think, by the people who control the tanks (as Naomi Klein once remarked). Here in Johannesburg, one of South Africa’s highest-profile intellectual vehicles appears to be a victim of drunken driving by scholars from whom we otherwise expect much stronger political navigation skills. In the luxurious central business district of Sandton, a large gathering of state-funded intellectuals (staying at the 5-star Intercontinental Hotel) is conferencing in heart-warmingly hedonistic style, replete with national Brazil–Russia–India–China–South Africa songs and dances. The May 28-31 BRICS Academic Forum and SA BRICS Think Tank meeting at the Sandton Convention Centre must be South African scholars’ most expensive event of the year, in spite of the theme, “Envisioning Inclusive Development through a Socially Responsive Economy.” READ MORE After Jacob Zuma’s Firing, South Africa Risks Budget Austerity and Even Renewed BRICS ‘Poisoning’ Patrick Bond (February 2018) Cyril Ramaphosa’s soft-coup firing of Jacob Zuma from the South African presidency on February 14, after nearly nine years in power and a humiliating struggle to avoid resigning, has contradictory local and geopolitical implications. Society’s general applause at seeing Zuma’s rear end resonates loudly, but concerns immediately arise about the new president’s neo-liberal, pro-corporate tendencies, and indeed his legacy of financial corruption and class war against workers. There is still a lack of closure on the 2012 Marikana Massacre, in spite of his February 20 speech to parliament pledging atonement. New legislation Ramaphosa supports will limit the right to strike, while the new budget has cuts and tax increases that hurt the poorest. Internationally, the emergence of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa alliance in 2010 (when Beijing invited Pretoria on board) was Zuma’s main legacy, he believed: BRICS offered enormous potential to challenge abusive Western hegemony. The reality, however, has been disappointing, especially in the most unequal and troubled of the five countries, South Africa, where Moscow-trained leadership expertly talked left… but walked right. After Zuma, more extreme fiscal austerity and a return to mining-centric accumulation under Ramaphosa will amplify the misery locally – while likely leaving South Africa’s commitment to the BRICS project in the doldrums. The first evidence of this came on February 21 when Ramaphosa’s inherited finance minister, the corruption-tainted Malusi Gigaba, imposed austerity and liberalized exchange controls. READ MORE BRICS Xiamen summit doomed by centrifugal economics Patrick Bond (September 2017) The Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa summit in Xiamen from September 3-5 is already inscribed with high tension thanks to Sino-Indian border conflicts. But regardless of a welcome new peace deal, centrifugal forces within the fast-whirling world economy threaten to divide the BRICS. South Africa, which plays host to the BRICS in 2018, is already a victim of these trends – even as President Jacob Zuma continues to use the bloc as a primary crutch in his so-called “anti-imperialist” (talk-left walk-right) political survival kit. Beijing’s logo designers for this summit, perhaps unconsciously subversive, illustrated how the formerly overlapping, interlocking BRICS are now thin and flimsy, wedging themselves apart. Such a prospect was predictable earlier this year as a result of Donald Trump’s ascendance. Both Washington’s neo-conservative ‘Deep State‘ and the (fast-disappearing) paleo-conservatives were intent on ramping up conflict with China – though early on, BRICS splintering towards the US included not only proto-fascist India, for elites in Russia and Brazil also sought friendly relations. A deeper reason for pessimism is that at the 2015 BRICS summit in Russia, just as world commodity markets began to collapse, Chinese premier Xi Jinping invoked the laws of physics. He asked fellow leaders “to boost the centripetal force of BRICS nations, tap their respective advantages and potentials and carry out cooperation in innovation and production capacity to boost competitiveness.” That’s the bloc’s theory – but practices are very different. READ MORE Falling BRICS Endanger Their Citizens’ Health, Starting With South Africa’s Jacob Zuma Patrick Bond (August 2017) As he launched the African Regional Centre of the New Development Bank (NDB) in Johannesburg on Thursday, nearly 18 months behind schedule, South African President Jacob Zuma must have had mixed feelings. Strife-riven Brazil, Russia, India and China are more risky allies than Zuma reckoned when in 2010 he accepted Beijing’s invitation to join the club. “I was poisoned and almost died just because South Africa joined BRICS under my leadership,” Zuma told rural supporters at a Phongolo African National Congress (ANC) Cadres’ Forum in his native KwaZulu-Natal on Sunday. He offered no proof for the startling claim, which dates to his illness during a mid-2014 US trip. But his wife Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma was initially blamed, then banished from his notorious Nkandla palace by Zuma’s security minister David Mahlobo in early 2015, and subsequently charged with attempted murder. Is this new narrative plausible, given the celebratory role BRICS have played in world capitalism? Recall the bloc’s initial 2001 rationale offered by Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill: “It seems quite clear that the current G7 needs to be upgraded and room made for the BRICs in order to allow more effective global policymaking.” Last year, just after Goldman Sachs had closed its main BRIC investment fund due to poor performance, O’Neill asked, “How on earth can South Africa be economically in the same class?” However, he conceded, “Politically, it is very important that South Africa is part of BRICS.” READ MORE |
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