The long-anticipated 15th Brics Summit gets underway today in Johannesburg. SA, as the chair, decided the theme of the summit would be on how best the bloc can support the development of Africa so it can be a self-reliant continent living in peace and with full ownership and control of its resources and path to prosperity.
Indeed, if Africa can achieve such a milestone in the next decade, the strategic objectives of the Brics alliance would be achieved sooner than we think. A newly published book by the former UN Permanent Representative of Singapore, Kishore Mahbubani, titled The Asian 21st Century, provides a detailed account of how Asia is now the fastest growing economic region in the world, and how it has already surpassed the US as the world leader in industrial production, infrastructure development and technological innovation.
In addition, China has in the past three years developed into the global leader in peace efforts around the world. The peace plan between Iran and Saudi Arabia that was successfully mediated by China stands out as one of the most historic breakthroughs in the history of the Middle East.
This approach was unique and different from the old model that the US has been providing in that region – which is to fuel conflicts to maintain its economic interests and cause further humanitarian devastation.
These factual revelations about the political, economic and security expansion of Asia are incredibly under-reported by the Western media. In addition, the value that the growth and stability of Asia has added to the Brics countries is also deliberately under-reported.
The Western media promote the impression that the world economy is still driven by the US despite clear evidence that the Global South, where 65% of the world population lives, wants to come together under the Brics umbrella to consolidate the de-dollarisation of the world.
For the past six months, the Western news headlines concerning this summit have been concentrating on a single issue – the diary and travel plans of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Massive media attention has been invested in this story, even in our own media in SA.
Other aspects concerning the Brics Summit and how much of the world is beginning to move further away from the West have been completely ignored. As many as 40 more countries want to join the Brics bloc and accelerate the effort to cut the Global South out of the Western imperialist circuit completely.
Countries such as Argentina, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, and Burundi are the front-runners that this summit should consider and accept. These countries have demonstrated their strong appetite to decolonise and dethrone Empire.
In addition, their economies, resources and land property relations are under state control, and they are purposefully utilised to drive meaningful development for their people.
Such inspirational models of sovereign independence should make this Brics Summit realise that the opportunity to end the unipolar dominance of Washington and the introduction of a multipolar democratic world order that belongs to the majority of the people who live on this Earth is now possible and indeed natural.
In addition, a newly formed “Brics Plus” could begin to place more assets in the New Development Bank (the Brics Bank) so that it can grow to the stage where it can completely replace the World Bank and IMF. This would finally set free the developing world to determine its own path of development, security, self-defence and trade priorities – without the neocolonial control of Western debt, aid and sanctions.
The African continent is going to be crucial in these developments as a resource-rich region with a youth population spread across 54 member states. The claws of neocolonialism are still holding Africa hostage.
European aggressors such as France, Britain and Portugal still profit from the oil, uranium, gold and diamonds of Africa and they also initiate wars, regime change, coups, de-industrialisation and systematic underdevelopment.
If there is one region that needs a de-Westernised multipolar world to set itself free, it is Africa. The struggle by the people of the Global South for economic and political decolonisation requires an astute Brics effort anchored in democratic expansion, sustainable industrial development, climate-friendly technological advancement and the implementation of the Africa Free Trade Agreement in an independent and peaceful Africa that is free from neocolonialism.
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