CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Genealogies, Elements

and Implications of a ‘BRICS Order’

David Monyae and Bhaso Ndzendze

Introduction
This volume discusses aspects required for the advancement of the
BRICS, foremost being infrastructural development and the production
of knowledge relevant to these countries. The book highlights infrastruc-
ture—hard and soft—as the nerve centre of development. Ports, airports,
road and rail networks, are central to economic activity, backed by soft
infrastructure—health, education and capacity development.
The setting up of the New Development Bank (NDB) and subse-
quently the launching of its African Regional Centre in Johannesburg,
South Africa, in August 2017, illustrated the importance that the BRICS

D. Monyae · B. Ndzendze (B)

University of Johannesburg Centre for Africa-China Studies, Johannesburg,
South Africa
e-mail: [email protected]
D. Monyae
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 1

Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
D. Monyae and B. Ndzendze (eds.), The BRICS Order,
International Political Economy Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62765-2_1
2 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

countries attach to the quest for an alternative financial regime to under-

write its development projects. The Shanghai-headquartered NDB is one
of the tangible achievements of the BRICS since inception, and is proof
of its quest to reorder the post-Cold War financial order. The NDB is
poised to play a major role in the development of Africa and the emerging
markets. The World Bank, a symbol of the Western hegemonic influence
in global financial affairs, often bypasses certain ventures in Africa for
lack of immediate returns. Once the NDB expands beyond the BRICS
member states it will complement China’s established engagement with
Africa: investing in Africa’s infrastructural development. The NDB shows
that the global South has staked its claim to play a role in its own devel-
opment and financial institutions. The bank affords the global South an
alternative to the domineering Western-leaning financial order manifested
through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The book also teases out the nexus between knowledge and economic
activity. It shows that besides trade pacts, the BRICS countries must
accent collaboration in research by universities to reduce dependence on
the Western canon.
The contributors explore the emergence and evolution of the BRICS
countries in relation to each member, and teases out the place, role
and unique contribution of each one of them to the bloc. It highlights
the indisputable influence of BRICS in international relations without
glossing over inherent challenges that militate against the bloc oper-
ating as it should. The BRICS is composed of countries which, although
strategic in their respective regions, differ in power and influence owing to
economic size, military capability, skills and level of poverty. South Africa,
despite being the smallest on almost all indices, has for long punched
above its weight through soft power. However, as Africa’s representative
in the bloc South Africa does not enjoy unanimous endorsement across
Africa as the continent’s leader. India and China are yet to resolve the
Himalayan border dispute, and have competed for economic and political
interests in the Asian region, in Africa and even globally. The chapters in
this volume show that whereas the BRICS has the potential to reconfigure
the global power distribution, and chip away at the monolith presented
by the United States and the EU, it is imperative that it addresses its
inherent fault lines.
The chapters flag out normative inconsistencies within the BRICS
bloc. The BRICS countries are at different stages in the democratisa-
tion process. Questions of progression and evolution are also gaining
momentum with unparalleled perturbation. In particular, the fourth
industrial revolution is a theme the book explores: specifically how the
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 3

BRICS will contribute to this technological age defined by artificial intelli-

gence, big data and the Internet-of-things, among others. The advantages
and disadvantages to the BRICS bloc of this rapid technological age are
worth explaining. The impact of new technologies in medicine, mining
and the manufacturing sector is phenomenal. But the flipside of artificial
intelligence is that it has the potential to exacerbate unemployment and
inequalities. The book will seek to nuance this subject.
This introductory chapter will preface the book by exploring the back-
ground to the formation of the BRICS and briefly detailing the global
economy since 2000, and then tracing the origins of the BRICS from
Bandung through IBSA, the emergence of the BRICS within the post-
2000 global economy, and the subsequent rise and outcomes of BRICS
summitry.

A Brief Portrait of the Global Economy

Since 2000: Locating the BRICS Rise
Various elements and indeed key events in the global economy of the
twenty-first century have their origins in the middle of the century which
preceded it—in particular, the end of the Second World War in Allied
(United States, Soviet, French and British) victory in 1945, and the
ensuing Cold War between the two dominant coalition partners and their
slew of satellites. The need for reconstruction and mutual isolation and
containment between Washington and Moscow, representing competing
versions of the world order, led to the foundation of a number of interna-
tional political and economic institutions and determined their trajectories
for the remainder of the period between the late 1940s and the early
1990s, with consequent legacies reverberating well into the present—and,
moreover, with important patterns remaining intact.
Widely seen as the moment in which globalisation would take hold,
the post-Cold War era, and the subsequent twenty-first century produced
economic crises which, while vindicating predictions of increased
economic integration, also gave rise to contagious economic crises. The
2008–2009 global recession and the subsequent euro debt crisis were
to also mark a new moment in history as they were contrasted by the
continued, if uneven, rise of the BRICS countries.
4 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

The Great Recession and Its Aftermath, 2008–2018

In the year 2009, global GDP growth was low, low enough to be 5.8
percentage points behind what it had been in 2007. ‘The downturn in
emerging and developing countries was almost the same as in devel-
oped countries’ (Dullien et al. 2010: 1). Countries in Eastern Europe
and Central Asia were the most severely affected, their GDP growth
rates declining by a combined average of 15.2 percentage points between
2007 and 2009. Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa saw declines of
7.6 and 4.8 percentage points respectively for the same period. ‘Even in
developing Asia growth rates dropped by 4 percentage points between
2007 and 2009’ (Dullien et al. 2010: 2). The 2008–2009 global finan-
cial crisis was rooted in financial mismanagement. Andre Roux (2014:
171–3) breaks down the 2008 crisis to a series of five stages: (1) global
imbalances and liquidity build-up, (2) bursting of housing bubble (3)
consumer panic, (4) global recession and (5) policy attempts at a cure.
These will be examined in turn.
Following the crisis, especially between 1999 and 2009, there was
an almost exponential growth in the foreign exchange reserves held by
the developing world; they grew from US$500 billion in 1999 to about
US$4.5 trillion in 2009. As a consequence, there was a ‘sea of liquidity
and, by and large, interest rates … were very low in many parts of the
world’ (Roux 2014: 171). Secondly, as a consequence of the low interest
rates consumers borrowed extensively in order to acquire residential prop-
erties and there developed a housing boom. The world’s major banks
started to give loans through the sub-prime market to households that
could not afford the loans. Soon, the bubble burst. By 2007 and 2008,
many families defaulted on their mortgages (‘especially since interest rates
started rising again amid inflationary concerns’ (Roux 2014: 172)). The
demand for new houses soon declined, as did the prices—the banks
incurred huge losses and hence the financial meltdown in late 2008.
The third phase of the crisis was the resultant panic. By the end
of 2008, millions of consumers ‘suddenly’ realised that they were in a
financial predicament; they were heavily indebted and the value of their
assets—especially residential properties—had plummeted. As a result,
many began to take individual austerity measures, and this fed into
the fourth stage of the crisis with the banks’ reluctance to lend and
consumers’ equal reluctance to get into further debt—this led to a
domino effect that had a deepening effect on the recession.
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 5

The demand for consumer goods fell, and manufacturers produced

fewer goods; for example, the number of automobiles assembled in the
United States in January 2009 was 60 per cent below that of January
2008, whereas in Germany, machine-tool orders were 40 per cent lower
than a year earlier (The Economist 2009). Economic growth consequently
fell in these countries. Investment in capital declined, and workers lost
their jobs. The process became cyclical. Because of the integration of
world economies, the effects became internationalised. A slowdown in
one country’s demand for a particular good led to a slowdown in the
amounts of that good imported from another country. Imports fell,
unemployment rose and the crisis deepened. The impact was catastrophic.
For the first time since the 1980s, the global economic growth rate
was negative.The final stage entailed policy attempts aimed at curbing the
process. Because the economic recession was rooted in the rapidly slowing
consumer demand for goods and services (and no prospect of consumer
demand increase was in sight), in 2009 governments adopted expan-
sionary fiscal policy programmes. Governments in the United States, the
UK and elsewhere increased their spending and lowered taxes, in order to
improve the buying power of consumers. This coincided with an aggres-
sive lowering of official interest rates (to below one per cent in the case
of the United States) in the hope that the lower cost of borrowing
would make consumers borrow to finance spending on consumption, and
producers borrow to finance investment in productive capacity and inven-
tory (Roux 2014: 173). Soon, there were signs of recovery, and in 2010
the global economy grew by some four per cent, although—as even the
IMF conceded—the recovery pattern was uneven as the developed states
were outpacing most of their underdeveloped and developing counter-
parts. But the consequences of the crisis have not dissipated. Two of its
most persistent remnants were in different interfaces; the first was in the
developing world, and the other was the euro debt crisis.

… it was only when the crisis turned into a global economic recession that
developing and emerging market economies were affected, mainly through
the trade channel, and in some cases through workers’ falling remittances.
In many developing countries, the economic consequences of these indirect
effects were as severe as the direct effects were on developed countries.
(Frieden and Walter 2017: 1)
6 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

Countries in the Eurozone borrowed particularly heavily, largely to

finance current consumption, ‘as financial institutions in the rest of
Europe were eager to lend’ (Frieden and Walter 2017: 2). Large current
account imbalances developed, as capital and goods flowed out of coun-
tries with current account surpluses into countries with current account
deficits. Borrowing fed economic expansion, which grew into a boom,
then a bubble, largely in housing markets. ‘When the bubble burst,
lending dried up’ and soon those heavily indebted states were unable
to service their debts, ‘unable to make up for the collapse of domestic
demand by exporting, and unable to borrow additional funds in order to
cover their continuing payments deficits’ (Frieden and Walter 2017: 2).
The Eurozone debt crisis materialised into a decade-long nine-year
struggle as it took almost a decade for Europe ‘simply to return to
pre-crisis levels of per capita output’ (Frieden and Walter 2017: 2).
Further, dynamics of inequality showed themselves in this ostensibly
united supranational body.

One set of countries, the creditor states, have been exceptionally successful
in shifting most of that burden onto the debtor states. It is not surprising
that the Eurozone debt crisis has led to huge bailout programs combined
with strong conditionality that have forced the crisis countries to imple-
ment harsh austerity measures (e.g., spending cuts and tax increases) and
pushed those countries into deep recessions; this is a commonplace of debt
crises. (Frieden and Walter 2017: 2)

In its gravity, the crisis is matched (if not, indeed, exceeded) only by
Britain’s 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU. The details of this
have proved particularly difficult to determine. and the consequences of
a British exit from the EU, should it indeed take place, are still to be
felt across the political, economic and labour landscapes for many years
to come. Some of the most consequential economic trends in the twenty-
first century, however, took place outside the traditional centres of global
economic activity. This was the rise of the BRICS countries’ economies,
which is discussed below.
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 7

New and Re-Emerging Actors

in the Global Economy, 2000–2008
Brazil
The average annual growth rate of Brazil was marked by growth in the
period 1995–2003, averaging at 2.2 per cent. Admittedly, this was lack-
lustre by international standards for this period, but substantial growth
took place from 2004 to 2008, with the yearly GDP growth reaching
4.8 per cent. ‘There was a slump in 2009 as a result of the world crisis’,
with its growth declining to -0.6 per cent (Amann and Baer 2012: 413).
However, in 2010 growth jumped to 7.5 per cent. Compared to the
growth experiences of many Asian countries this is not a spectacular
achievement. However, the acceleration in growth has helped unemploy-
ment rates to decline. At the end of 2010, formal unemployment in
Brazil hit a historic low of 5.7 per cent. Production also began on new
offshore oilfields. Brazil has become renowned for its export prowess
in such fields as soya, steel, cotton, oil, biofuels and regional aircraft.
The growth was meaningful to the Brazilian people as ‘the resurgence
of the Brazilian economy has been associated with declines in income
inequality and the incidence of extreme poverty. In other words, Brazil is
touted as an example of the compatibility of growth and equity’ (Weyland
2016: 165). Brazil has also pushed for greater regional cooperation in the
form of institutions. The Common Market of the South (MERCOSUL)
particularly stands out. By enhancing trade and investment within South
American states in the 1990s, ‘this integration scheme furthered Brazil’s
goal of using economic exchanges to gain political influence’ (Weyland
2016: 165). ‘Even after economic crises undid these concrete payoffs,
Brazil kept promoting this trade pact as a major foreign policy initiative
in South America’ (Cason and Power 2009: 133).

Russia
Russia’s post-USSR economic trajectory can be studied in three
discernible phases. The first ran from 1989 to 1998, wherein there was a
rapid and noticeable decline in the country’s GDP per capita. Indeed by
1998, its GDP per capita was at 56 per cent of its 1989 levels (in annual
terms, this meant that there had been a continuous 5.6 per cent reduc-
tion in GDP per capita for the past decade) whereas, comparatively, global
8 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

GDP per capita increased by 10 per cent in that entire ten-year period.
The second phase was between 1998 and 2008. During this time, the
country’s GDP per capita increased dramatically. In 2007, it exceeded its
1989 level for the first time, with GDP per capita seven per cent above
what it had been in 1989. Finally, since 2008, the Russian economy has
undergone a slowdown since the Great Recession such that its GDP per
capita has not seen much improvement. ‘The collapse of world prices
for oil and other commodities in 2008 exposed the downside of Russia’s
dependence on the production and export of oil, gas, and other natural
resources’ (Cooper 2009: 1). Thus, until recently Moscow presided over
one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and the living standards of
the Russian people improved after undergoing the shocks of the austerity
measures which were a result of the post-Soviet reforms.
This strong economic performance had been a major factor in the
popular support that the Russian leadership enjoyed and was also arguably
a factor in the boldness with which that leadership reasserted Russia’s
status as a world power, challenging the United States, Europe, the neigh-
bouring former Soviet states in economic and national security areas
(Cooper 2009: 1).

India
Since its moment of independence in 1947, India appeared set for one of
two destinies: ‘on one side lay greatness; on the other, collapse’ (Cohen
2000). The probability of collapse is no longer a subject of serious anal-
ysis— ‘India is emerging as a major Asian power, joining China and Japan’
(Cohen 2000). Like China, India was growing during the crisis, never
once registering a quarter of negative growth throughout the 2008–
2009 period, its GDP reaching growth levels of more than six per cent
throughout this period, making it, after only China, the second-fastest
grower in the global economy (Joseph 2009: 3). In addition to its soft
power status on account of its being the world’s largest democracy, the
country has at its disposal the world’s second-largest army and also main-
tains ‘a strategic position at the crossroads of the Persian Gulf, Central
Asia, and Southeast Asia’ (Cohen 2000). Its population is set to pass
China’s by 2024 (Chaubey 2017).
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 9

China
The rise of China, prognosticated Ikenberry (2008), ‘will undoubtedly
be one of the great dramas of the twenty-first century’. That this predic-
tion could be made in 2008 is telling, for while much of the world was
steeped in economic malaise and a recession in the following year, China’s
economy was rather buoyant, registering 9.6 per cent in 2008 and 9.2
per cent in 2009. The size of its economy would quadruple since the
launch of market reforms in the late 1970s which were a major boost
to the country’s GDP from an annual average of six per cent between
1953 and 1978 to 9.4 per cent between 1978 and 2012, and from a
US$50 billion economy to a US$6 trillion economy. The country also
saw its domestic savings-to-GDP ratio grow from 48.84 per cent in 1980
to 53.47 per cent (The Guardian 2016). This process of market liber-
alisation led to the establishment of China as a major global exporter.
It eventually allowed for the reopening of the Shanghai Stock Exchange
in 1990 (for the first time in over 40 years) and, ultimately, to China’s
entering the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The country emerged as
‘one of the world’s major manufacturing centres’ while simultaneously
over one billion people in that country came to ‘[consume] roughly a
third of the global supply of iron, steel, and coal’ (Ikenberry 2008).
Further, it accumulated massive foreign reserves, worth more than $1
trillion at the end of 2006, and US$3 billion by 2018 (Babones 2018).
China’s military spending has increased at an inflation-adjusted rate of
over 18 per cent a year, and its diplomacy has extended its reach not only
in Asia but also in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. As early
as 2008, when China was still the third-largest economy in the world,
this led to numerous comparisons with the United States, always with
one of two conclusions: for some, ‘China is emerging as both a military
and an economic rival – heralding a profound shift in the distribution
of global power’ (Ikenberry 2008), whereas for others, echoing Chinese
President Hu Jintao’s notion of peaceful development, the country was
not eager to outgrow and initiate rivalry with the United States, or indeed
any other signposts of the West (Sun 2017: 426). More recently, other
scholars (for example, Wang, 2017) have seen China as representing a
middle way between these two extremes, being seen as carrying out a ‘re-
globalisation’ of the world economic order through its economic activity,
thereby dislodging the prevalent Western order without recourse to mili-
tary action. How much China can do this on its own is questionable,
however. And, as seen, it is not the only player eager for international
reform.
10 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

South Africa
Having inherited an economy characterised by vast inequality from the
disintegrating apartheid government, by 2005, a decade into the new
South Africa, the democratic South African government presided over an
impressive 87 straight months of growth (currently running at about five
per cent a year), low budget deficits and low inflation. The Johannesburg
Stock Exchange (JSE), riding the wave of the commodities boom, has
been making record gains. Consumer demand has been buoyant, with the
signs of conspicuous consumption all around, from the gaudy new gated
housing estates to the increasing numbers of sleek European sports-cars
on the roads. House prices rose by 21 per cent in 2005 (a welcome slow-
down from 32 per cent in 2004), and new-car sales in January this year
were 22 per cent up on a year earlier. For 2006 as a whole, the National
Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa expects them
to be even higher than last year’s 617,500 (The Economist 2006). ‘Based
on the international poverty line of US$1.90 per day, (2011 Purchasing
Power Parity (PPP), exchange rates), 18.8% of South Africans were poor
in 2015, following a decline from 33.8% in 1996’ (World Bank, 2015).
The country, however, was among those adversely affected by the Great
Recession—declining by 6.10% in the first quarter of 2009 and saw eight
years of mild recovery before entering another technical recession in
2018. Importantly, however, the economy has grown by very minimal
figures and underperforming even its own intended growth rates of 6% or
higher (RSA 2013). The country’s central difficulty is its inequality—with
a Gini coefficient of 0.63; and 50% of the income accruing to only 10% of
the population (World Bank, 2015). The World Bank assesses that ‘given
population growth, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth has
been close to nil since 2014, leaving little room to reduce poverty’, and
prescribed that ‘strengthening investment, including foreign direct invest-
ment, will be critical to propel growth and create jobs’. At the same
time, the country remains the most industrialised in the African conti-
nent, and retains numerous prospects on account of the nascent African
Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA), and the ascendance of a more
global investor-friendly President as of 2018.
Together, BRICS represent 26 per cent of the planet’s land mass and
are home to some 46 per cent of the world’s population. Regarding
economic growth, BRICS are ahead of the projection made in 2001
(South Africa not included): 18 per cent of the world’s GDP—above
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 11

Goldman Sachs’s forecast of 14.2 per cent. According to the World Trade
Organization (WTO) statistics, the participation of BRICS in global
exports doubled between 2001 and 2011, from eighte per cent to 16 per
cent. In those eleven years, their total exports grew by more than 500 per
cent, while their total global exports grew by 195 per cent in the same
period. Between 2002 and 2012, intra-BRICS trade increased by 922 per
cent, from US$27 billion to US$276 billion. Between 2010 and 2012,
BRICS international trade rose by 29 per cent, from US$4.7 trillion to
US$6.1 trillion. Within BRICS, China and India have the biggest GDPs.
The rise of these BRICS countries can also be noted in their successful
bids to host major international sports events. China hosted the 2008
Olympics, whereas South Africa, Brazil and finally Russia hosted the FIFA
World Cup in rapid succession in 2010, 2014 and 2018.

The History of the BRICS

The post-Second World War order produced a stratified world order in
which there were dominant and peripheral players (Waterlow 1977: 17).
From the rubble of the most destructive conflict in world history emerged
two new major powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, whose
rivalry with one another was to give the period its name—the Cold War—
and whose desire to outplay one another was to set the future trajectories
of many states.
The order coincided with the oncoming of independence for scores of
countries in Africa and Asia. These newly independent states, coming as
they did into an unequal order which was, moreover, unreceptive to their
voices and interests, developed, over time, patterns of mutual identifica-
tion, and attempted, with mixed successes, to act collectively. In these
processes, they met in frequent intervals, developed plans and produced
critiques of the world which in many ways still ring true in contemporary
international relations. The BRICS can be seen as being the latest—as well
as the most powerful—such incarnation. Two factors make the BRICS
different: the grouping is composed of highly motivated states who are
slighted by an international status quo not adjusting to their emergence.
Secondly, the group also represents a growing alternative centre of power
outside the West and is thus capable of real impact in transforming the
global stage.
12 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

The Global South, from Bandung to NIEO

The idea of a ‘Third World’ came about in the setting of an intensifying
Cold War. ‘While the First World referred to the advanced capitalist coun-
tries, the Second World was the communist alternative, though China’s
position was ambiguous, not least after the breakdown of close relations
with the Soviet Union in 1958’ (Kiely 2015: 152). The term ‘appears
to have been used by some members of the French left to refer to
a third force, independent of both capitalism and official communism’
(Kiely 2015: 152). This notion of a third force, ‘nonaligned between
hostile capitalism and official Communism’, gained adoption by a litany
of anti-colonial and recently independent statesmen. Some of the leaders
included Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia
(independent of Soviet influence since at least 1961).

The post-war context was in some respects a favourable one, with both
superpowers supporting the end of empire and conditionally supporting
independence and the extension of sovereignty to new nation states. The
Atlantic Charter of 1942 and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration
of Human Rights of 1948 both laid down the normative basis for decolo-
nization, and the defeat of the Nazi regime served to undermine, in official
circles at least, some of the most extreme forms of racism, colonialism and
empire. On the other hand, the liberal international order promoted by the
United States was one in which power was still exercised through vetoes
at the UN Security Council, and through weighted voting at (admittedly
weak) international financial and development institutions like the IMF and
World Bank. (Kiely 2015: 153)

In addition to this, international aid, from the United States as well as

the USSR, was often tied to conditionalities as well. ‘In this respect then,
the Third World referred to non-alignment, but its usage was wider than
this. It usually referred to countries that had been colonized and were
relatively poor in the world economy’ (Kiely 2015: 153). Therefore,
from the onset, economics was never far removed from the proceed-
ings of this grouping as the collective were pursuing development, often
seen as a necessary basis if political sovereignty was to be maintained
(Worsley 1967: 9). But norm entrepreneurship was also at the heart of
the project. ‘The “spirit of Bandung” marked the process of liberation of
the colonial world and defined the path for the international insertion of
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 13

those countries that formed the Non-Aligned Movement, with an explicit

condemnation of racism, colonialism and imperialism’ (Bissio 2015).
Against this background, the non-establishment was founded ‘as an
international principle’ by a number of states, principally at the Bandung
Conference held in Sukarno-led Indonesia in 1955 and then in Belgrade,
Serbia in 1961. In addition to Indonesia, the conference was arranged
by Burma, Ceylon, India and Pakistan. Delegates came from Afghanistan,
Cambodia, the Peoples’ Republic of China, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Gold
Coast, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Nepal,
the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, the Demo-
cratic Republic of Vietnam, the State of Vietnam and Yemen. This made
the conference the first major Afro-Asian summit. The core issues in
the conference were cooperation, sovereignty, nationalism and the anti-
colonial movement. Bandung was an important milestone which set up
the countries for the formulation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)
in the Belgrade Conference six years later. Among the Belgrade Confer-
ence attendees were repeat participants from the earlier Bandung meeting.
New participants, however, included newly independent African states;
Ghana, Guinea, Mali as well as Morocco. Brazil and Ecuador were
accorded observer statuses.
Importantly, the focus in Bandung was non-alignment, ‘which was
emphasised even more at the conference in Belgrade, which took place
against the background of the construction of the Berlin Wall and thus
rising geopolitical tensions between First and Second Worlds’ (Kiely
2015: 152). In addition to this ‘geopolitical vision’, an economic variant
of ‘Third Wordlism’ persisted:

The Non-Aligned Movement did not ignore this more explicitly develop-
mental approach, but it was through the United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD), that this economic approach was
emphasised. UNCTAD was founded in 1964, alongside what remains the
largest intergovernmental organisation of developing countries, the Group
of 77 (which retains the name G77 but now has over 130 countries as
members)’. (Kiely 2015: 153)

The G77 ‘is the largest intergovernmental organisation of developing

countries in the United Nations, which provides the means for the coun-
tries of the South to articulate and promote their collective economic
14 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

interests and enhance their joint negotiating capacity on all major inter-
national economic issues within the United Nations system, and promote
South-South cooperation for development’ (Kiely 2015: 153). The G77
took up the UNCTAD agenda, particularly in the 1970s when calls
were made through the UN General Assembly for a New International
Economic Order (NIEO). Championed in 1974, against the backdrop of
successful oil diplomacy by the OPEC countries in 1973, the New Inter-
national Economic Order was brought forward by the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to institute fairer
trade relations between developed and underdeveloped states through the
reduction of trade restrictions such as tariffs and a higher commitment
to developmental assistance by the developed nations. The NIEO largely
failed, as some of its demands such as the right to nationalise multina-
tional corporations operating in their territories, were deemed impractical.
Nevertheless, economic historians acknowledge it as ‘an important sign-
post in the push for international reform by actors who see themselves as
disadvantaged in the north-south dichotomy’ (Ndzendze 2017: 141).
Various factors characteristic of the challenges of the Global South
limited the scope of the NIEO. ‘While the rise of neoliberalism was
undoubtedly a factor in the undermining of Southern solidarity, there
is equally good reason for questioning the extent of such solidarity in
the first place. Nonalignment was always compromised by the fact that
in practice, most Third World states were aligned to either one of the
superpowers, even if this often changed over time’ (Kiely 2015: 153).
Already in the 1960s, scholars could write of ‘a paucity of interaction and
cooperation in the Third World’ (Miller, 1966: 16). Nationalisms and
individualised outlooks, he wrote, were the fundamental weakness of the
Third World. Voting within the UN for example saw little joint execu-
tion. African states only voted with each other 60 per cent of the time,
while Afro-Asian identical voting happened one out of three times (Miller,
1966: 16–17). If the peripheral states were to forge a united front and
then pursue their interests collectively, they could perhaps attain conces-
sions and improve the trade relations. The actions of the OPEC in the
1970s proved that the oil-producing states, though mostly poor, could
use their numbers and the West’s demand for their oil as a tool (Duncan
and Goddard 2003: 17).

In the post-Cold War world, nonalignment became an even more problem-

atic idea. Moreover, there was significant economic differentiation among
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 15

the countries of the South, and this was particularly clear by the late 1970s
and early 1980s. There were the rapidly growing first tier East Asian newly
industrializing countries, the industrializing countries of Latin America
which went into severe recession by 1982, some of the poorest coun-
tries in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia, and the oil
exporters. (Kiely 2015: 153)

On account of this heterogeneity, scholars were of the view that the ‘end
of the third world’ (as previously forecast by Harris in 1986) had arrived.
Yet, the BRICS presents a potential rebuke to this view. In some ways, the
group represents a reinvigoration (though, as will be seen, the sources of
divergence and even confrontation have by no means been entirely put
to rest). One more platform, the IBSA forum, played a crucial surrogate
role in this regard.

From IBSA to BRICS

To be sure, the G77, UNCTAD and indeed even the Non-Aligned Move-
ment are still extant in the post-Cold War setting, ‘but to some degree
these have been displaced by new alliances, and a new context’ (Kiely
2015: 153). The India–Brazil–South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) is
one of these. Emerging from the ideological battleground that was the
Cold War, the 1990s were characterised by new, centre-left governments
in the United States and the UK, along with other countries in the
developing world. While this took shape in the Clinton and Blair govern-
ments, it also held sway for the early years of the twenty-first century—the
Republican candidate for president of the United States, George W. Bush
campaigned on the basis of ‘compassionate conservatism’. The democra-
cies of Brazil and South Africa were also maturing at this point, with the
latter recently emerging from apartheid rule.
It was in this climate that the IBSA forum emerged. Formalised in
2003, it placed emphasis on the countries’ democratic credentials. It
also touted the fact that it was composed of countries who were middle
powers, regional leaders, as well as developing countries. Specifically, they
intended to ‘contribute to the construction of a new international archi-
tecture; bring their voice together on global issues; deepen their ties
in various areas’ as well as opening itself up to ‘concrete projects of
cooperation and partnership with less developed countries’ (IBSA 2013).
16 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

As of 2019, IBSA has met seven times. The first three summits
happened in consecutive years between 2006 and 2008. The grouping
only met again in 2010 (in Brazil simultaneously with the BRICS
summit). While the 2011 summit took place, the next summit, which was
supposed to be held in 2013, was cancelled. The lack of steam behind the
IBSA in some ways marks a shift in concentration from the trilateral IBSA
to the multilateral BRICS—a transition that took place quietly, the latter
swallowing the former. This is in large part due to the commonality of
membership, and the effectiveness of BRICS summitry.

BRICS Summitry (so Far), 2009–2018

Composed of the developing states of Brazil, Russia, India, China and
(belatedly added) South Africa, the BRICS association was formed in
2009 upon being benchmarked in 2001 by the Goldman Sachs economist
Jim O’Neill to be set, caeteris paribus, to match the level of industrialisa-
tion and economic standing of the developed nations. It was therefore, at
the very least, to bring about some level of multilateralism and a shift away
from the historically globally dominant US and the EU countries and
‘their’ international financial institutions, primarily Bretton Woods, as well
as ratings agencies such as Moody’s, Fitch and Standard and Poor’s. In the
successive summits since 2009, the BRICS countries have discussed and
enacted various mutual positions and common policies and have sought to
build institutions indicating a shift away from the West-dominated order,
including a development bank and a ‘BRICS ratings agency’.

1st Summit (2009)

The inaugural summit took place in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on 16 June
2009 and included only Brazil, Russia, India and China. The four coun-
tries could boast some 15 per cent of the global GDP. More than this,
they held about 40 per cent of gold and hard currency reserves. Further,
between 2003 and 2007, these states represented some 60 to 65 per
cent of all new growth in the global GDP. While China was the largest
economy, Brazil also shone as a country which had seen its economy
become more and more integrated into the global economy, especially
with the other three BRIC states, as between 2003 and 2008, Brazil’s
trade with these countries had grown by some 380 per cent, from US$11
billion to US$51.7 billion.
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 17

2nd Summit (2010)

Taking place on 16 April 2010, this was hosted in Brasília, Brazil, and was
noteworthy for the inclusion of South Africa into the BRICS at the behest
of China. Another item on the agenda was the Iran nuclear deal, marking
the BRICS countries’ serious commitment to multilateral solutions to
security matters. The summit statement also saw the declaration that ‘We
underline our support for a multipolar, equitable and democratic world
order, based on international law, equality, mutual respect, cooperation,
coordinated action and collective decision-making of all States’. Never-
theless, these emerging powers were not ready to fundamentally discount
the role to be played by the pre-existing, perhaps Western-dominated,
forums. Point 3 of the statement clearly expressed:

We stress the central role played by the G-20 in combating the crisis
through unprecedented levels of coordinated action. We welcome the
fact that the G-20 was confirmed as the premier forum for international
economic coordination and cooperation of all its member states. Compared
to previous arrangements, the G-20 is broader, more inclusive, diverse,
representative and effective.

Nevertheless, the countries declared that they would ‘strive to achieve an

ambitious conclusion to the ongoing and long overdue reforms of the
Bretton Woods institutions’, and thereby urged that

‘the IMF and the World Bank urgently need to address their legitimacy
deficits. Reforming these institutions’ governance structures requires first
and foremost a substantial shift in voting power in favor of emerging
market economies and developing countries to bring their participation
in decision making in line with their relative weight in the world economy.
We call for the voting power reform of the World Bank to be fulfilled in
the upcoming Spring Meetings, and expect the quota reform of the IMF
to be concluded by the G-20 Summit in November this year. We do also
agree on the need for an open and merit based selection method, irrespec-
tive of nationality, for the heading positions of the IMF and the World
Bank.’

Apart from protesting the longstanding tradition of World Bank and IMF
leadership being taken by the United States and Europe respectively, the
BRIC countries also urged that the general personnel of these institutions
needed ‘to better reflect the diversity of their membership’.
18 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

3rd Summit (2011)

The third summit was hosted by China in 2011 under the theme ‘Broad
Vision, Shared Prosperity’. Among the core agenda items for the BRICS,
who were all on the United Nations Security Council, were the NATO air
strikes targeted at Libya. Internally, the countries were eager for procure-
ment diversity with Brazil and India, especially, urging China to do more
to purchase Indian pharmaceutical products and Brazilian aircraft. Simi-
larly, South Africa voiced its own intentions to diversify its product base.
China’s fellow BRICS members also pressed the country on its currency
practices, but nevertheless the yuan was not itemised for discussion.
Rather, more emphasis for economic reform was made on a global scale,
and particularly in terms of financial institutions.
All BRICS countries called for ‘comprehensive reform of the UN,
including its Security Council’. Beijing reassured its Indian, Brazilian and
South African counterparts that China would back their UNSC aspira-
tions. The meeting further saw the countries make it known that they
intended to make payments to one another in their own currencies
henceforth, as opposed to the US dollar.

4th Summit (2012)

The main item on the agenda for the fourth BRICS summit was the
creation of a new development bank. Hosted in New Delhi, the summit
concluded with the Delhi Declaration, containing the announcement of
a ‘BRICS-led South-South cooperation bank’. A set of feasibility studies
were the prerogative of the finance ministries of the countries which were
to present reports in the subsequent summit. The summit also echoed the
sentiments expressed in the first, namely that the leaders of both the IMF
and the World Bank ought to be selected from other countries outside
European and the United States.

5th Summit (2013)

Hosted in Durban, South Africa, the fifth BRICS summit was still centred
on the formation of the ‘development bank’. More details trickled from
the summit regarding this envisioned institution, as did some disagree-
ments; the main points of divergence were centred on what the bank
would do, and how it would be profitable enough to make a return on
investment for its initial investors.
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 19

6th Summit (2014)

The sixth BRICS summit, hosted for the second time by Brazil in 2014,
resulted in the announcement of the New Development Bank. Member
states came to an agreement to all contribute to the funding of this new
financial institution for an initial US$100 billion. The NDB was designed
to incorporate all five of the member states, both functionally as well as
symbolically. Thus while its official headquarters would be in Shanghai,
its first president would be Indian, its first board chairmen would be
Russian (board of governors) and Brazilian (board of directors), and its
first regional office was to be opened in Johannesburg. In turn, the pres-
idency of the bank is to rotate among the BRICS members for a period
of five years each.

7th Summit (2015)

The seventh BRICS summit, held in Russia, saw the bank come into force,
as well as the US$100 billion BRICS Contingent Reserve Agreement
(CRA). The main goal of the latter was to serve as a form of insurance
against global liquidity pressures. As a result, it was seen as an ‘alterna-
tive IMF’ (Desai and Vreeland 2014). The CRA is unevenly funded by
the five member states, with China contributing 41 per cent, India, Brazil
and Russia 18 per cent each, and South Africa five per cent.

8th Summit (2016)

In the eighth BRICS summit, once again held in India, the member states
announced their intentions to create a ratings agency. The NDB was also
called on to have a priority criteria for investing. In addition, the group
statement denounced terrorism, as well as made a pronouncement on
enhancing research centres, especially in agriculture and in rail.

9th Summit (2017)

In the ninth BRICS summit, held in Xiamen, China, the BRICS leaders
convened under the theme of ‘Stronger Partnership for a Brighter
Future’. The leaders declared, inter alia, that:

We emphasise the importance of an open and resilient financial system

to sustainable growth and development, and agree to better leverage the
benefits of capital flows and manage the risks stemming from excessive
cross-border capital flows and fluctuation. (BRICS 2017)
20 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

Further, there was consensus on security issues. The BRICS coun-

tries welcomed the outcomes from the BRICS High Representatives
for Security Issues which had met on 27 and 28 July in Beijing, ‘and
commend[ed] the meeting for having discussion and deepening our
common understanding on global governance, counter-terrorism, secu-
rity in the use of ICTs, energy security, major international and regional
hotspots as well as national security and development’ (BRICS 2017).
They also welcomed Brazil’s proposal for the establishment of a collective
BRICS Intelligence Forum, while making it known that they ‘deplore[d]
the nuclear test conducted by the DPRK’.

10th Summit (2018)

Convened in South Africa, the tenth BRICS summit saw the leaders
reaffirm

commitment to fully implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable

Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to provide
equitable, inclusive, open, all-round innovation-driven and sustainable
development, in its three dimensions— economic, social and environ-
mental—in a balanced and integrated manner, towards the ultimate goal
of eradicating poverty by 2030 (BRICS 2018).

Climate change also featured on the agenda, with the leaders ‘wel-
coming the progress towards finalising the Work Programme under the
Paris Agreement and express[ing] their willingness to continue working
constructively with other Parties’ in the final preparations for the discus-
sions at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
in the then-upcoming 24th Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC
COP24). The leaders also emphasised ‘the importance of an open world
economy, enabling all countries and peoples to share the benefits of glob-
alisation, which should be inclusive and support sustainable development
and prosperity of all countries’ (BRICS 2018).

Literature Review
Gilpin (1981: 232) argues that American governance of the international
system is in decline, but he notes that the United States ‘continues to be
the dominant and most prestigious state in the system’. This dominance
and prestige have become especially pronounced in the post-Cold War
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 21

era. Arguments have been made that the BRICS represent a potential
threat to the US’s unipolarity and Western hegemony.
Such an outcome, however, is not guaranteed. Ikenberry (2008)
argues that ‘the rise of China does not have to trigger a wrenching hege-
monic transition. The US-Chinese power transition can be very different
from those of the past because China faces an international order that
is fundamentally different from those that past rising states confronted’.
This, Ikenberry argues, is because ‘China does not just face the United
States; it faces a Western-centered system that is open, integrated, and
rule-based, with wide and deep political foundations’. Against the back-
drop of mutually assured destruction on account of nuclear weaponry by
both players, ‘today’s Western order, in short, is hard to overturn and
easy to join’.
Prashad (2013: 12) argues that

‘… the BRICs do not promise any kind of revolutionary transformation

of the world order; they are modest in their ambitions. Nevertheless, they
are the first formation in thirty years to challenge the settled orthodoxy
of the Global North. What the BRICS have enabled is the opening up of
some space, allowing a breath of air to oxygenate the stagnant world of
neoliberal imperialism. The BRICS states have their own commitment to
neoliberal policies, but they are no longer willing to bend before imperial
power. It is in this gap between neoliberal policy and imperial power that
an opportunity presents itself for the bloc of the South.’

Such questions are at the centre of the present debate and, indeed, serve
as the impetus for the present book.

Theoretical Underpinnings
From assessing the literature, we can conceive of the BRICS
phenomenon’s interaction with theory on two main fronts. The first is
in attempting to account for the rise of the BRICS; the other is in formu-
lating an interpretation of the implications of the BRICS phenomenon. In
this way, the relevance of dependency theory is called into question, with
at least some revisions needed, on the one hand, and, on the other, for a
broader reading of the BRICS beyond their impressive economic figures
and to appreciate some of the transformations it is already bringing about.
Wedded into this is the impact their actions are already yielding—not only
22 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

in the global arena, but also their impact in the domestic politics of the
West itself (from the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 US pres-
idential election, to the debates over whether to adopt 5G technology as
developed by Huawei in Britain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand,
to the trade war between the United States and China).

Accounting for the Rise

The global South is underrepresented in international relations scholar-
ship. Further, the main theoretical framework conceived in the global
South ‘reinforced this tendency of questioning developing countries’
capacity for agency’ (Weyland 2016: 144); such is dependency theory,
which depicts the countries of the global South as ‘objects of Northern
pressures – dominated and constrained’.

‘However, dependency theory was criticised heavily because this bleak

picture did not conform to the developmental achievements of increasing
numbers of Asian and Latin American countries. The success of East Asia’s
‘tigers’ and the rise of regional great powers like Brazil and India, not
to mention China, have been especially striking. Developing countries
have done much better than expected by the theorists of dependency and
even by ‘dependent development’… Nations in the global South do have
considerable agency; their states can engage in active ‘dependency manage-
ment’ and advance in the global system, despite First-World predominance.
Brazil, for instance, created a sophisticated computer industry and started
to export airplanes to the United States’. (Weyland 2016: 144)

The dependency school of thought saw ‘Third World’ is being intention-

ally underdeveloped, and that in line with this it was best to enact autarky
and pursue self-sufficiency. Leftist scholars who argued this included Raul
Prebisch and Andre Gunder Frank. These analysts never took into account
the importance of population size, which have been the strengths of the
BRICS. But the experience of the BRICS—especially China and India—
has been such that this orthodoxy is turned on its head. China and India,
and Brazil under President Cardoso, have developed precisely on the basis
of opening up their economies—applying the same principles on which
the EU and the United States pontificated but never fully practised.
Dependency theory can be defined as a way of seeing the global trade
system as unbalanced towards the global North and biased towards the
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 23

global South. That is, ‘it is a way of understanding historically embedded,

political-economic relations of peripheral capitalist countries within the
broader context of the global economy’ and the kind of world these come
to create in terms of commerce (Conway and Heynen 2014: 111). The
principal proponents of this line of thought (Raul Prebisch, Paul Singer,
Celso Furtado, Osvaldo Sunkel) argued that Latin America’s (and the rest
of the global South’s) historical marginalisation and resultant underdevel-
opment were perpetuated by unequal commercial arrangements. Further,
they noted what the basic premises of dependency theory now are; the
heterogeneity of states in the international system (the international divi-
sion of labour) as well as the class distinction within countries. For the
sake of brevity, here we will only delve into the former, for it is more
pertinent to the subject matter.
States, according to this theory, have different standings in the inter-
national system. There are four different types (or perhaps tiers) (Ghosh
2001). The first isthe centre core (CC) states such as the United States,
the UK and France which dominate international trade through interna-
tional institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund. They are the wealthiest. At the periphery of the core (PC) are states
such as the Netherlands, Japan and Canada, and below these are the states
at the centre of the periphery (CP) such as South Africa, Brazil and India.
Lastly there are states which are at the periphery of the periphery (PP),
these are the poorest states and examples may include the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), Cambodia and El Salvador. The theory also
claims that as a result of the structure of the system, the CC states have
their interests served by the PP, CP and PC states; while the PC have their
interests served by the PP and CP, and the CP states likewise exploit the
PP states. Perhaps the clearest exemplar of this is the imbalance of trade
within the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). For many,
NAFTA has been a mechanism through which the United States and
Canada attain access to cheap Mexican labour in their backyards. They
have imposed few labour safety standards; resulting in massive injuries
and the loss of limbs (Ghosh 2001). In its gruesome and graphical way,
this speaks directly to the ‘international division of labour’ claimed by the
dependency theorists.
The international division of labour can be seen in the way in which
some states are essentially dependent on minerals while others are suffi-
ciently diversified. This is attested to by the fact that most PP states such
as the DRC are purely resource extractive and others such as Ghana are
24 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

mainly agricultural, whereas France, the UK and their ilk have fledging
automotive, manufacturing and financial markets. How this came to be
so (or, rather, how this remains to be so) is largely based on the structures
put in place by the CC countries. For example, the structural adjust-
ment policies (SAPs) implemented by Sub-Saharan states have had the
net effect of trapping the region in what has been an ongoing (and seem-
ingly perpetual) cycle of stagnation and dependence. For some, the spread
of the Ebola virus in West Africa in 2014 was as a result of the neolib-
eral orthodoxy imposed on Liberia which championed privatisation of
health services. The outcome, in a situation where there was a lack of
state capacity with regards to health and no will on the part of the private
interests to invest in a ‘clientele’ which could not afford the treatment,
was the transnational proliferation of what could have been a containable
outbreak.
With the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s, the dependency theory
discourse, which painted trade as something of a zero-sum game, fell out
of favour. But even the briefest analysis of the contemporary international
trade system will reveal the extent to which the dependency theory liter-
ature still has a great deal to explicate, perhaps now more than ever.
Still today, scholars write of there being obvious connections between
the divergent trajectories of capitalism’s expansion in the global North
vis-à-vis the global South (Duncan and Goddard 2003; Conway and
Heynen 2014). Also obvious and pertinent is the unequal competition
that remains ‘an extremely powerful, dependency relationship in globali-
sation’s transformative, disciplinary, and destructive influences’ (Conway
and Heynen 2006). In fact, for some, exploitation of many global
South countries by colonial and neocolonial core countries intensified
following their achievement of political independence, further increasing
the aggregate (Jha and Wilkinson 2012: 8).
There are several salient features to the modern, post-1980s neoliberal
international order. The most obvious is perhaps the manner in which
there is a perpetuating and reinforcement of imbalance. As Conway and
Heynen (2014) put it, the international system seems as though it is bent
on encouraging and stimulating growth for ‘winners’ (core and peripheral
core countries), and not the ‘losers’ (poor, weak,or failed states). In other
words, there is a continuously growing gap between the world’s rich states
and their poorer counterparts (Glennie and Hassanaien 2012). In many
ways, then, dependency theory is still relevant. The evolving world system
of core–periphery relationships has entered a new advanced phase of
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 25

‘modernity’ in which there are new dependency relationships, ecological

uncertainty, rapid technological change and a multiplicity of cross-cutting
flows of information, cultural messages and knowledge exchange (Ghosh
2001).
The BRICS countries, initially peripheral states, act as a kind of repost
to dependency theory’s claim that there are structures which perpetuate
an order which favours the West/core. In essence, they point out that the
historically peripheral states can shift their standing in the global economy.
But that some countries seem to be breaking out of the dependency
trap ‘does not mean that a trap never existed’ (Glennie and Hassanaien
2012: 2). In fact, the trap continues to exist in many ways. In ironic
fashion, these emerging states may come to form a new core, or at least
periphery core. South Africa has a 1:10 trading ration with the countries
of the southern African subregion.

Implications
The other side of the theoretical engagement of the BRICS is also in
terms of its implications of the BRICS’ rise. In many ways, Jim O’Neill
(2001), who came up with the grouping for the purposes of an investment
index, never fully appreciated the political significance of the rise of the
then BRIC countries. Paying attention only at the economic dimension
(as ‘emerging markets’), his analysis, either in the paper or in subsequent
interviews (Tett 2010), did not take into account the political equation
of the rise of the BRIC countries. However, this superficial reading of
the formation underappreciated their collective capacity. Despite these
divergences, especially in the India–China nexus (see Chapter 7of this
volume), they are afflicted by the same issue: the collective slights they
have endured at the behest of the West. In other words, they have a
collective motivation to change the global order in some way. Indeed,
we are seeing these countries seek to transform the global economy.
Importantly, this is coinciding with an American and European retreat
and protectionism. Indeed, American and European populism (on the
left and the right) has been on the basis that low-skilled jobs in manufac-
turing and (to some extent) in telecommunications have gone to China
and India, respectively, and that their governments have to do some-
thing to reverse this. In this way, then, we could be seeing a situation in
which these BRICS countries are causing a shift not only in the global
system but—even more so—in the domestic politics of the developed
26 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

states. In previous years, the countries on the periphery complained (and

indeed some still complain, with justification) of Western meddling in
their internal systems; recently an FBI investigation was convened with
the task of looking into Russian influence on the 2016 American presi-
dential election; likewise the EU is of a mind that Russia funded media
activity aimed at promoting a ‘yes’ vote during the Brexit referendum.
Of course, the BRICS countries are not the first underdeveloped coun-
tries to break out of that mould. But what lies at the root of their
protestations against the present order is that theirs are different histories
and outlooks. Whereas post-War Japan, West Germany, Taiwan, South
Korea, Singapore and others have risen through their alignment with
the West (in a Cold War context), these countries have risen in large
part owing to their own internally engineered programmes of growth,
with little to no clemency from the West. They owe very little to the
West and, indeed, see themselves as having numerous legitimate causes
for disgruntlement towards it.
This goes back to the work of Gilpin (1981) who argued that ‘an
international system is stable if no state believes it profitable to attempt
to change the system’, and subsequently argued that a state, or in this
case a coalition of states, would only attempt to change the international
system ‘if the expected benefits exceed the expected costs’. The ques-
tion at the centre of this work is therefore whether these states have
begun exhibiting patterns of behaviour which render them assertive or,
alternately, complementing the West.

Impetus for, and Outline of, the Book

A cursory look at the BRICS shows China’s pre-eminence within the
group as well as the broader global South. Equally noteworthy is the
development of trade relationships between various parts of the South,
with China playing as the principal import partner of all four of the
BRICS countries. This would seem to imply, then, that any rearrange-
ment of the present order would lead to ushering in a ‘Chinese order’.
But, as this volume makes evident throughout, China could never ‘go at it
alone’. As Nye (1990) observed after the end of the Cold War, the United
States (and by extension any would-be superpower) needs to wield a great
deal of legitimacy—both to grow and to sustain its position of leadership.
In other words, the very idea of a new order relies on cooperation.
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 27

We can expect multilateralism because the other BRICS players are

themselves not too far behind and are leaders—or set to be leaders—
in their own regions and specific key sectors. If the question is whether
the BRICS countries are assertive or whether they are complementary to
the West, the answers must be varied as there are many perspectives and
attendant methodologies through which both to ask this question and to
answer it—as this volume has set out to do.
In Chapter 2, Bhaso Ndzendze ponders this from the perspective of
the BRICS countries domestic polities and systems of governance. Asking
whether the politically democratic countries among the BRICS (Brazil,
India and South Africa) have their democratic system as a result of the
West, the chapter concludes that the countries are democratic not because
of the West but in spite of it. In this way, the configuration of their systems
of governance is not only in contrast to much of what Western litera-
ture has to say on the subject, but has also come about as a result of
autochthonous routes, owing very little to the West, which has rather
posed obstacles than enabled their democratisation trajectories. Whereas
in Brazil the United States had sponsored a coup in 1964, and subse-
quently had cordial relations with Brazil’s military regime, in India the
British created social stratifications which would pose the greatest stric-
tures against democratisation; the caste system. The failure of the British
to create trajectories to democratisation are further explicated in Pakistan
and Bangladesh, which have experienced repeated military coups.
Five chapters, looking at each BRICS country, channel the book’s
central question to bilateral relations. In Chapter 3, Bruno De Conti,
Célio Hiratuka and Arthur Welle look at Brazil’s economic relations with
Africa. The chapter discusses the monetary–financial dimension, and then
the productive dimension, with a particular focus on Brazil. Secondarily,
the chapter presents the economic relations between Brazil and Africa in
the recent period, allowing us to analyse the role the BRICS have (or may
have) on that continent. Clearly drawn from this chapter is the conclusion
that the relationship between Brazil and Africa was influenced heavily by
the discovery of offshore oil in Brazil, thereby rendering the country less
reliant on Angola for its energy needs—thus any growth in the relations
between the two will rely strongly on product diversification by both.
De Conti et al. show that emergence of the BRICS is fundamental to
the quest for a new international order, but it has to deal with the risk of
28 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

creating (or reproducing) asymmetries within and outside the bloc; more-
over, this is happening at a time when a new leadership has been elected in
Brazil, rendering the next decade of the BRICS particularly noteworthy.
Leadership change and its impact on BRICS-facing foreign policy
is also a major theme in Chapter 4, wherein Bongane Gasela assesses
India’s objectives in being a part of the BRICS formation. The country,
the chapter argues, is playing a balancing act between the West and
the apparent alternative, China, while it still bolsters its own economic
standing. This has particularly become clear since Narendra Modi took
office as Prime Minister in 2014. Meanwhile, the growing relevance of
India to a post-Brexit Britain, with much of the previous asymmetries now
reversed (India now outranking its former colonial metropole in terms of
economic size), is key to understanding broader Indian foreign policy.
In Chapter 5 Garth Shelton pays attention to China. Given the size
and continued rapid growth of China’s economy, it is unquestionably
the core of the BRICS grouping and is expected to shape the form and
content of BRICS cooperation as it evolves. China’s very significant finan-
cial reserves and industrial capacity underpin the potential success of the
BRICS process; therefore China’s continued interest in and commitment
to BRICS, is crucial. To the extent that BRICS advances China’s national
interests, it will become more effective and relevant in the global system.
The chapter makes the case that China has a number of compelling
reasons for participation in BRICS and has specific national interests
which can be advanced through BRICS.
In Chapter 6, Chris Landsberg and Oscar van Heerden question one of
the earliest BRICS puzzles: South Africa’s entry. The chapter illuminates
the role of South Africa and Africa within BRICS. Among the questions
the chapter responds to is the significance of South Africa’s membership
in the light of its contested leadership in Africa and its modest influence
in comparison with the other BRICS countries. South Africa’s relations
with the rest of the African continent is also analysed. South Africa’s own
misconceptions are also examined in this chapter.
Picking up from the foundation laid in Chapter 4, in Chapter 7 Bhaso
Ndzendze and David Monyae look at the longevity and coalition-building
capacity of the BRICS in light of China’s and India’s strategic rivalry in
border disputes, exacerbated by two apparently conflicting alliances with
Pakistan and Bhutan. Crucial to this chapter are the dilemmas brought
on by British-drawn borders on the Tibet, Kashmiri and Bhutanese fron-
tiers. Realism wins out, the authors argue, as the two players are confined
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 29

from going to war not only by their regional responsibilities and India’s
economic dependence on China, but also by their nuclear arsenals, and
a pragmatism which seems to have won out in both Beijing and New
Delhi, at least for the moment. The sustainability of the BRICS is further
consolidated by the political and economic attachments between the other
countries to China and India, as well as to one another; the BRICS tran-
scends India and China, and any crack in its formation would be a result
of disintegration not only between these two players, but also of their
relations with Brazil, Russia and South Africa, and of these states among
each other.
In Chapter 8, Westen Shilaho looks at the BRICS international
standing through the prism of a continent that often acts as a crucible for
judging any major actor on the international stage. This chapter broadly
analyses the cooperation between BRICS countries and Africa without
minimising the role that Africa’s traditional trading partners from the
West still play on the continent. It specifically zeroes in on the China–
Africa partnership, using Kenya, the East African region and the Horn as
the entry point. China, the most noticeable among BRICS countries in
investments in Africa, naturally takes up much attention in this chapter.
In Chapter 9, Bob Wekesa looks at the central theme of the book
from the perspective of media and mutual understandings (and misun-
derstandings). This chapter tangentially moves away from the bulk of
previous analyses that have zeroed in on the Africa–BRICS relations from
the perspective of the BRICS, directing their policies and deal-making
towards the continent. Instead, the chapter is interested in looking at
perceptions of the BRICS from the continent—an understudied area in
the fledgeling field of BRICS scholarship and a potential contribution to
Afro-based studies. The question that the chapter seeks to shed light on is
whether Africans are optimistic, pessimistic or pragmatic in their percep-
tions of the BRICS and, by extension, what this says about BRICS soft
power capital on the continent. These perceptions, potentially leading to
an assessment of the image of the BRICS in Africa, are tracked by under-
taking a textual media content analysis of two leading business news and
analysis publications. With the common adage that media is the first draft
of history and even the ‘fast’ draft, media content can help us to under-
stand perceptions in lieu of a more extensive survey of African public
opinion on the BRICS. By analysing media reporting, we can make provi-
sional conclusions as to whether the BRICS are perceived in a manner that
30 D. MONYAE AND B. NDZENDZE

boosts their soft power (optimism) or in a manner that diminishes their

soft power (pessimism).
An important aspect of the BRICS formation is interdependence not
only in economic terms, but also (in relation to this) in transfers of infor-
mation and knowledge creation. In Chapter 10 Maxim Khomyakov writes
from the perspective of higher education and knowledge sharing. Impor-
tantly, looking at the BRICS from this aspect highlights that it need not
be merely a political grouping the affairs of which are confined to summits
by heads of state, but it has to also involve the citizens of the member
states—a practical application of the bottom-up approach. This chapter
focuses on the role of Russia within BRICS as well as Russia’s import
in Africa. Drawing on Russia, the chapter also demonstrates the role of
the BRICS universities in concretising the BRICS group through sharing
of knowledge. It is time the global South designed its developmental
models, as opposed to recycling Western models which are inappropriate
to developing countries.
In Chapters 11 and 12, Wynand Lambrechts, Saurabh Sinha and
Tshilidzi Marwala look at the BRICS through the lens of technolog-
ical development. Chapter 11, which serves as historical background for
Chapter 12, details the global transformation of industry towards an inno-
vative, sophisticated and autonomous technology-driven environment in
the form of the fourth industrial revolution with special relevance to
the BRICS and the global South. Chapter 12 focuses on the challenges
and opportunities in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in
integrating Industry 4.0 to transform and grow their local economies.
In anticipation of the emergent Industry 4.0 and its significance, the
chapter presents the changing social, political and economic fortunes of
Africa that can boost economic growth through technology and indus-
trialisation. On the theme of the book, these chapters are prescient;
in developing towards Industry 4.0, the BRICS will for a number of
years and even decades have to enact some form of bandwagoning and
pragmatically transmit the experiences and technological and innovating
edges of the western states. This is already taking place, as Germany is
working closely with Brazil to underscore the importance of partnership
among countries in several aspects of manufacturing. The BRICS also
have comparative advantages; demography in particular is a significant
reason for growth in China, India and the African countries. The chapter
also presents a timely analysis of the technology-related rivalry between
China, the United States and Canada.
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE GENEALOGIES, ELEMENTS … 31

In Chapter 13, David Monyae and Emmanuel Matambo’s perspec-

tive is that of international finance. This chapter discusses the NDB as
a pragmatic indication that BRICS has the capacity to underwrite its own
development projects, specifically infrastructure, and to reduce reliance on
the WB, IMF and other Western donors. The developing world, partic-
ularly Africa, has accused the Bretton Woods institutions of burdening
them with debt that has stifled rather than contributed to the advance-
ment of the global South. Although its bias is towards the BRICS and
Africa, the chapter also maps out the Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank (AIIB), a Chinese initiative, which funds development projects in
the Asia-Pacific. The chapter also reviews the ties between the BRICS
and the global North and seeks to show that despite the quest to break
from Western hegemony, the global South cannot operate in isolation as
it still maintains links with the Western-dominated financial system, and
has trade pacts and engagements with the West in the spirit of globalisa-
tion and free trade. How the BRICS bloc has to maintain these links with
the West while at the same time advancing the cause of the global South
is at the core of this chapter.
Overall, the following chapters portray an uneven picture, with varying
degrees of complementing the West by the BRICS, but at the same time
there are some discernible patterns of international order adjustment. This
is perhaps to be expected; short of open conflict, changing global order
takes time, and is bound even to be denied by some of the emerging
powers themselves. But, perhaps naturally, there are areas and aspects of
the BRICS which have been touched on only in passing. These are impor-
tant areas of future research and will be detailed in the Conclusion to this
volume.

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