New Africa BRICS members decry preferential treatment for South Africa

BRICS is expanding – but perhaps inevitably, more members mean more opportunities for disagreement, including between African members.

This became apparent at the recent BRICS foreign ministers meeting in Rio de Janeiro. Unusually, the gathering failed to issue a consensus communiqué because of objections from the two new African members who joined in 2023 – Egypt and Ethiopia.

Until then, the only African member was South Africa, which Brazil, Russia, India and China admitted in 2010. At their 2023 Johannesburg summit, the five BRICS leaders invited Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join. Argentina declined, and Saudi Arabia said nothing, so BRICS became a club of nine with Saudi Arabia as an observer.

Last year, under Russia’s presidency, BRICS invited Indonesia to join and 13 new countries to become ‘partners’, offering a route to membership. Indonesia became a full member in January this year while Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda and Uzbekistan were accepted as partners.

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Not all five core members have been equally enthusiastic about expanding. Russia and China were most keen, India and Brazil least, with South Africa somewhere in between.

The Rio meeting exposed divisions within core BRICS members and among African members. Host country Brazil proposed a declaration, which was to become a draft for the leaders to adopt at the July summit. The declaration included the usual paragraph demanding United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reform to make it more globally representative.

But ‘usual’ is a relative term, and the devil was in the detail on this delicate issue. Over the years, BRICS has always obliquely supported Brazil, India and South Africa’s aspirations to acquire permanent seats on an expanded UNSC. However it never stated that explicitly, suggesting that the two BRICS members who already have permanent seats, China and Russia, were opposed to new permanent members.

In the 2022 Beijing Declaration, “China and Russia reiterated the importance they attach to the status and role of Brazil, India and South Africa in international affairs and supported their aspiration to play a greater role in the UN.”

In 2023, the Johannesburg II Declaration gently pushed the envelope by supporting the “legitimate aspirations of emerging and developing countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including Brazil, India and South Africa, to play a greater role in international affairs, [particularly in the UN], including its Security Council.”

South African officials welcomed this, noting that the wording: ‘including its Security Council’ was the closest Russia and China had come to supporting Brazil, India and South Africa’s aspirations.

But by last year’s summit in Kazan, Russia, Egypt and Ethiopia had joined the club, bringing pressure for caution from a new direction. Africa’s Ezulwini Consensus states that the continent should get two permanent seats on an expanded UNSC – and decide which of its countries occupies those seats.

And so the Kazan Declaration, while recognising Johannesburg II, supported “the legitimate aspirations of emerging and developing countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including BRICS countries, to play a greater role in international affairs, in particular in the [UN], including its Security Council. We recognise the legitimate aspirations of African countries, reflected in the Ezulwini Consensus and Sirte Declaration.” No mention was made of Brazil, India or South Africa.

Then came last month’s Rio meeting. The ministers failed to agree on a communiqué or declaration because Ethiopia and Egypt had “opposed parts of a previously approved plan to reform the UN Security Council by giving South Africa a permanent seat,” Africa Confidential reports.

But Chrispin Phiri, spokesperson for South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola, told ISS Today that: “The divergence in negotiations arose solely between Brazil, India, Ethiopia and Egypt, pertaining to the specific mention of potential new permanent UNSC members. South Africa did not engage in this debate.” He said South Africa ‘fully’ supported the Ezulwini Consensus.

Another South African official told ISS Today that Brazil – and less so India – had decided that Brazil, India and South Africa’s aspirations for permanent seats should be mentioned. It seems Brazil and India were miffed that these three original BRICS members’ aspirations were being stifled in the club’s expansion.

At that point, Egypt and Ethiopia objected because they believed South Africa was being given preference over other African states. Eventually Brazil removed the reference to South Africa and reverted to the Kazan language, though with a specific mention of Brazil and India. But Ethiopia and Egypt refused to endorse a communiqué anyway. And they insisted that even the lesser ‘Chair’s Summary’ record their objection to the paragraph on Security Council reform.

Why? One official’s impression was that Egypt and Ethiopia wanted to move away from the old language, but more so, they sought to punish Brazil for what they regarded as a divisive negotiating strategy. If this spat did nothing else, it illustrated how deeply divided African states are on this issue of who gets those permanent seats.

Arguably, it also suggests that by accepting new members, South Africa at least has weakened its position in the world. Just as it was making progress in persuading Russia and China to accept its aspiration to permanent UNSC membership, it got hit by a regression to Ezulwini – which Pretoria’s African rivals have always used to curb its ambitions.

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If one believes in the paradoxical notion of conceding national sovereignty to gain greater collective sovereignty, South Africa might be stronger in a bigger BRICS – as perhaps Egypt and Ethiopia are. But one wonders if that greater strength is much more than rhetoric.

As Africa Confidential points out, the Kazan summit was strong on politics – such as attacks on the West’s sanctions against Russia, Israel’s assault on Gaza, and the Bretton Woods Institutions. It was less successful in setting up a Cross-Border Payments Initiative, an alternative to the SWIFT payment system that excludes Russia, and other proposals by Russia to circumvent Western sanctions.

“If the BRICS can’t agree on policy, it stands little chance of becoming a geopolitical rival to the G20 or the European Union,” the journal concluded.

Of course it’s early days. BRICS is still expanding and its future is unclear. But the Rio spat suggests that more members mean greater difficulty in reaching agreement on substance.

Peter Fabricius, Consultant, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Pretoria

(This article was first published by ISS Today, a Premium Times syndication partner. We have their permission to republish).