It doesn’t mean it’s all wrong, but important to recognise the limitations of the source.
The police are dumb as rocks and totally lazy: look at the Boksburg tanker blast in December to see how they don’t GAF about doing their jobs.the public was standing around a burning gas tanker taking pictures for social media for hours before it exploded and killed dozens. The police only pitched after the explosion.
There is no serious border control, and any mention of it is shut down as “xenophobic” by the media and business that want to flout labour regulations by hiring undocumented migrants from the rest of Africa, despite the obscene unemployment rate.
The electricity situation has been discussed at length here previously, but it’s strangling the economy.
Sure you can make money if you are skilled, but you can make better money using those skills in any number of other countries.
The only thing that’s keeping many middle-class South Africans from emigrating is the cheap domestic help. They are happy to exploit the obscene inequality since it gives them cheap labour. They live in terror of washing their own clothes and cleaning their own toilets.
A large % of white South Africans dislike the idea of the masses rising. The expectation that the transition should be comfortable is naive at best.
In any case, apart from many Afrikaners, whites are increasingly irrelevant to the discussion about South Africa’s future-they’re dwindling as a percentage of the population because of aging, emigration, higher black birth rates and inward migration from other African counties.
The country is, objectively, deteriorating.
I didn't say you were.
>whites are increasingly irrelevant to the discussion about South Africa’s future-they’re dwindling as a percentage
Not true, the owners of the vast majority of SA land are still a tiny white minority. As long as this is the case, they are relevant.
>The country is, objectively, deteriorating.
The world's worst wealth inequality [0] will do that to a country until resolved. As I mentioned above, the transition will not be comfortable and anyone expecting it to be is wildly misinformed.
[0] "South Africa is the most economically unequal country in the world, according to the World Bank. The difference between wealthy and poor in South Africa has been increasing steadily since the end of apartheid in 1994, and this inequality is closely linked to racial divisions in society."
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_South_A...
Of course reducing everyone to grinding poverty is one way of reducing inequality, but it’s hard to see what the utility of that would be.
Blacks will, and do, bear the brunt of the deterioration anyway.
India didn't start out with massive amounts of inequality and is still working at building while dealing with a poverty crisis. It isnt close to the finish line.
China, the most successful at transitioning, had inequality comparable to South Africa at one point. That is precisely what Mao targeted when he came to power. Their effort, which involved redistribution of >90% of the land from tiny minority (<10%) ownership, stamping out corruption, and solving domestic production issues; could hardly be described as comfortable.
Foreign powers worked overtime to sabotage the Chinese effort like they have and will continue to do in South Africa as it gets started on this path away from economic apartheid.
The good news is, modern South Africa being a part of BRICS may be useful in reducing inequality more rapidly by employing wisdom gained by other members... but there will still be discomfort.
The history surrounding this kind of scenario is very clear and not as rosey as your description. Luckily SA is not resource poor and its allies are some of the most capable nation builders on the planet.
>Mao’s reforms led to millions of deaths. China grew after the 70s.
Most of the deaths were due to trade embargoes set by western powers (mainly US & UK) that restricted emergency food and other imports leading up to and during an emerging famine.
Even though its an unpopular observation in the west, China's following 60 years of growth wouldve been stunted without Mao's decolonization efforts.
>thanks for clarifying
You are welcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC
Original term (referring to no formal organization) was BRIC, coined in 2001. BRICs common as a plural form, as in "the BRICs" (which I recall seeing), but not BRICS. The four countries started holding summits in 2009, and in 2010 declared South Africa part of the group, at which point a specific sense of the term (referring to invitees to these summits and members of related efforts or organizations) became BRICS.
I ask because like perhaps many, I've read a number of novels by Zakes Mda and it has sparked an interest. They're wonderful books, very emotional and beautifully written, but it's like looking at South Africa through a kaleidoscope, not all that much really comes into focus intellectually. Unfortunately my school education on the country was also basically nil.
[1] https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/archive/archive-pdfs/b... is his original paper I believe
Not if you study their history.
Lately they're also putting an effort into getting along well because any significant disagreement might bleed into the Ukraine war in some manner.
Interest in NATO was also waning, but of course Putin's recent aggression has revitalized this in a big way.
Huh? Its an actual organization with actual rules and actual institutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS
Brazil's ex president Rousseff has been elected the president of the bank of that non-existing organization.
https://brazilian.report/liveblog/2023/03/24/dilma-rousseff-...
How does one get elected to be the president of the bank of something that is 'not real'...
> BRICS members don't even vote in each other's favor in the UN. Russia has received zero meaningful assistance from them during the war in Ukraine.
False. And even if true, that wouldnt change the existence of the actual organization, its rules, and the arrangements in between countries.
What happens in the UN is mostly PR. Brazil voted to condemn the war in Ukraine because the left-wing segment that Lula and his crowd belongs to condemns all wars, and yet it voted in favor of the Nord Stream investigation.
> India and China are enemies, they keep having border skirmishes. South Africa is a failed state and it has negligible influence on the world stage. Brazil is one of the reasons why the term "middle-income trap" was devised......It's entirely possible that in the future a real anti-western bloc will emerge. But it isn't BRICS
This feels like a lot of reality-denial. Or copium at best...
Of course, the organization exists, it wasn't my point.
> False.
What is false?
The UN votes? Recent example: UN resolution A/ES-11/L.7 ("Principles of the Charter of the United Nations underlying a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine"). The only countries that voted against are Belarus, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia and Syria. Brazil supported the resolution, while China, India and South Africa abstained.
Lack of assistance? I haven't seen Russia using, say, Chinese missiles or tanks in Ukraine. They import weapons from Iran. It's odd, considering that China is a major arms exporter.
>This feels like a lot of reality-denial. Or copium at best...
What part is "reality denial"? Are you saying that India and China aren't having border skirmishes? South Africa is a healthy state? Brazil isn't a middle-income country?
or even the aforementioned ammunition?
No tanks or missiles yet, but it also took the US and EU about a year to finally send tanks. China is very likely weighing the pros and cons of assisting Russia in this war.
That's because Russian misses and tanks are better (as are their aircraft) than anything China can produce. Russia has no issue so far producing these domestically (evidenced by their usage contrary to predictions this time last year that they'd be out soon).
https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme...
However, they are getting stuff like consumer drones, vests and clothing from China. And drones from Iran. Russia is behind on certain types of drones (but are very successful with domestic ones for taking out stationary targets like artillery):
It isn't as unified as some would like to present, and it isn't something that the existing world powers should just ignore as irrelevant. It's complicated. It's a complicated time in world history, as transitions are.
Working, functional partnership do not dissolve easily. The Eu, despite all its problems is a good example. Even the US-controlled system was one - it had a lot of disadvantages, but it worked to some degree, and it kept going on.
BRICS and the analogues that are converging with it are multilateral, egalitarian partnerships that worked well for all their participants, totally independent of the US. Some favored US allies kept increasing their BRICS participation even while they got a lot of benefits from the US. So its unlikely that they would just leave.
To simplify, BRICS and its analogues seem to be what the WTO would be without the 'special rules based order' that the US was subjecting everyone to, and the blackmailing influence of the Anglosaxon dominated financial system. (as can be seen from what happened recently with 'sanctions' and the resulting confiscations of money).
That was the last straw actually, all the countries that are rushing to BRICS as of this moment, started those initiatives immediately after 'asset seizures', or, rather, theft, that was effected on their enemies by the US, the UK and the supposedly neutral Switzerland. The 'neutrality' was discovered to be a farce and the 'rules based order' discovered to be able to change its rules whenever, however it suit its rule-makers.
The result is everyone applying to BRICS membership or observer status...
> Working, functional partnership do not dissolve easily.
I would suggest you may want to consider the fairly vast gulf between what I said and what you seem to think I said.
As all organizations eventually converge into their primary purpose becoming their own perpetuation, I'm sure the BRICS will be around far longer than I will. The UN, a much larger organization already far past its prime and effectively bereft of purpose, lurches on at a scale essentially incomprehensible to the human mind, yet it does not die, because such things rarely do, and effectively never on a sensible time scale.
Without an enemy unifying it, BRICS will eventually just be the UN 2.0.
But it will take time, decades probably, to get there.
The really entertaining question to ponder is, when will the US, or at least something that is composed of some chunk of the 50 states (the territories may well do so much sooner), apply to join the BRICS?
Well, it's on downgrade, but at least it's quite a bit smaller than SVB?
What links them together other than corruption? It looks like a money grab.
...
The ability in some Angloamerican and 'Western' segments to publicly talk with this kind of double standard is amazing. You have billonaires. They have corrupt oligarchs. All is well in the world and all that...
...
The ability of China shills to whatabout any discussion of their bailout bank for the Belt&Road Initiative masquerading as a tool for "shared prosperity" is truly amazing. They deny genocide occurring in their boarders today, and we acknowledge genocide 200 years ago. All is well in the world and all that...
> This feels like a lot of reality-denial. Or copium at best...
You should defend your point otherwise it just sounds like your feelings were hurt as well.
India is part of the Commonwealth. So is Pakistan. The idea that the Commonwealth moves in lockstep is plain silly.
The connection between the subcontinent and Russia is longstanding. Socialism was foundational to the post-independence government organization of both India and Bangladesh. My mom grew up reading Russian literature that has been translated into Bangla. I’m sure there are some, but I don’t know any Bangladeshi supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia. People are much more upset that America is meddling in what is seen as Russia’s sphere of influence.
As to China, it is all over India and Bangladesh, loaning money for infrastructure projects, etc. China is building the new subway in Dhaka: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1256874.shtml. I had hoped for more alignment of India and Bangladesh with the Anglosphere after the fall of the Soviet Union, but things have absolutely gone in the opposite direction. Russia, China, and India are an almost complete alternative to the west. There is very little that can’t be handled using home grown solutions in one of those three countries, and that list is getting shorter daily.
There is no expectation that every country in the world cease buying Russian fuels, that's why the price cap was put in place. And India is abiding the price cap. The hysteria about developing countries buying Russian oil/gas is mostly from the media, but so long as Russia is barely hitting breakeven prices then there is little reason for Western governments to care where India or others get their energy from.
Europe is cutting their dependence because it was/is actively being used as a weapon against them.
> Since Indian refiners are already getting Russian crude at $60 a barrel or below, there will hardly be a negative impact of the price cap on India
India and China’s official position is still that they’re not abusing by the price cap. Obviously they’re not going to pay more than what they were paying just to violate the cap. Trying to spin this as a win for the EU is odd.
https://m.thewire.in/article/business/numbers-suggest-bangla...
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/adani-power-s...
Not participating in western sanctions isn't "providing assistance", it's the default state. That being said, it's interesting that BRICS countries aren't selling weapons to Russia and it has to get them from Iran and North Korea.
Western countries expect everyone to abide by sanctions. When other countries don’t go along, it’s not the “default state” it’s a political statement. For example, India did ultimately stop buying Iranian oil: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/did-india-need-to-sto...
Russia is far ahead of even China when it comes to military technology and others in terms of industrial weapon production capacity.
Russian rockets are currently lifting US astronauts into space and Chinese aircraft into the air.
Maybe it's time for the US and it's NATO allies to start restricting visas for nationals from misbehaving allies.
I guess the population won't mind since they can still immigrate/follow opportunities in Russia instead of NATO countries.
Pakistan and Sri Lanka, yes china loans to them. India definitely not. Bangladesh I am not sure.
> China launched the AIIB in 2013 in order to bolster and facilitate the BRI across Asia. Beijing possesses 30 percent of voting shares in the bank, resulting in effective veto power over any funding decisions that require a supermajority. Yet not only is India, which considers China to be its biggest geopolitical threat, a founding member of the bank, but it also constitutes its largest borrower, relying on AIIB loans for COVID-19 aid and to fund multiple domestic infrastructure projects.
There is an enormous anti-Washington bloc. So what, it isn't perfectly encapsulated in a single organization yet. That's natural due to its rapid growth.
You're right but not in the way you think. Russia is desperate to prove they aren't isolated internationally.
You can buy fresh Mexican advocates from any grocery chain anywhere in Russia (the logistics behind that are not trivial). As can you Japanese whiskey, Korean appliances, Chinese cars and a whole other host of products that Soviet citizens could have never dreamed of.
seems they failed to prove they aren't isolated
BRICS make up 40% of the world's population.
grouping the R in with the BICS doesn't seem appropriate anymore
Remember when Biden triumphantly announced that the ruble was reduced to "rubble"? That was the objective, and it failed catastrophically.
2022: -2.9% decline
2023: hoping for slight growth, possibility of slight decline
----
IMF observed/predicts (January 2023) [2]:
2022: -2.2% decline
2023: slight growth
----
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/russian-economy-contr...
Stage 1: Denial.
Binary thinkers forget there are 3 states, with us, against us, and independent.
BRICS countries aren't anti anyone, they are just asserting their independence in a world where Western countries have historically been hostile to that position.
Non aligned movement has existed for a long time, but in the context here India is not completely non aligned. They have been the target of aggression by China which has resulted in the deaths of Indian soldiers. And the US has supported them against this aggression[1].
[1]: https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2023-03-20...
Russia's list of allies:
1. Belarus (maybe, on a good day)
China's list of allies:
Countries that want war right now: USA, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Azerbaijan, few others.
Countries that don't want war: >90% of human population.
Who knew?
The position of the countries that want "peace" is bizarre in the media: "you should just stop fighting the invader and then it's no longer war. You don't want war do you?"
It’s not “bizarre” just calculated. Most of the world doesn’t give a shit about Ukraine and would be perfectly happy for Russia to annex it so long as the economic disruption from the sanctions and oil price increases stop. They can’t outright say it because western countries are big trade partners but that’s what they mean reading between the lines.
[1]: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/xi-jinping-says...
Since geopolitical power follows economic power, this is a leading indicator of the waning of American hegemony.
Border skirmishes with sticks and fists actually - commanders on both sides firmly respect the "no firearms" rule. The only deaths were in the 2020 flare up. Since then, the recent encounters have been quite literally "body checking" the border with muscle.
Yet the current skirmishes and any future skirmishes have not and will not affect ongoing trade and investment.
India still has $119 billion trade with China. China is India's top trading partner in 2023. There is also significant Chinese investment in India - Oppo, Vivo, Fosun, etc.
Meanwhile Russia continued to be the single largest supplier of crude oil for India, which is converted into petrol and diesel at refineries, for a fifth straight month by supplying more than one-third of all oil India imported.
India is ambivalent/negative to Ukraine and generally abstains from all US proposals that are anti-Russian and votes against Ukrainian proposals. Ukraine had voted against India many, many times at UNSC, so this is effectively "payback".
Which is why Imran Khan’s pro Russia position was so stupid
Unfortunately, he made a fuss and the US subtly engineered his departure. He is now effectively a non-entity.
The United States is frequently at odds with its G7 partners when it comes to UN votes, especially those involving the Middle East. Does that mean the G7 is fake?
There is, first and foremost, the elephant in the room which everyone ignores because everyone's thinking Russia these days. That elephant is China, which acts as the extremely valuable missing link to G7 economies. China and the G7 group are wholy interdependent, whether they're willing to admit it or not. One without the other, at least at this moment in time, would be Chapter 1 of a dystopian novel about societal collapse. We've had a whiff of that during the supply chain crisis in the pandemic -- and that was just some clogged logistics.
Anyone taking this as proof that BRICS is now its own thing that can stand on its own is just as wrong as anyone thinking that G7 is its own thing that can stand on its own. They're not. And any factor that's straining the relation between the two blocs (via China) is not likely to be viewed with wholly favourable eyes by either parties, even though some of them can't acknowledge that publicly due to ideological reasons, or are happy to let it be for as long as it causes more trouble on the other side.
Second, lots of the economic activity that happens inside BRICS is decidedly not happening in the "cooperation" side of the cooperation-competition-conflict framework, or within any unreservedly friendly quadrant of any framework. Russia, for instance, is a major supplier for the Indian defense industry not so much because of historical socialist ties, but because it's the only major supplier it can realistically deal with without major restrictions. It has a hot border dispute with China, another hot border dispute with a regional ally (Pakistan) of another major supplier (US and the NATO bloc), and has fought real wars with both in the last sixty years.
Russia and China aren't sharing fatherly influence over India and Bangladesh, or over post-Soviet Asia, they're competing for influence in much of it. Just like China and Brazil are competing for regional influence in some of South America, just like China and South Africa are competing for regional influence in some of Africa.
Third, people are also forgetting an important lesson from recent history: on the eve of World War II, Franco-German commercial relations were extraordinary. Actually, Germany had excellent trade relations with most of Europe. Most of the arguments about BRICS today readily translate to FIGUC (France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, Czechoslovakia) cca. 1936, including caveats like they're backing opposite parties in some regional conflicts/civil war. Economic interests and common enemies are transitory; geopolitical aspirations are far more durable.
This isn't to say that BRICS is "not a real alliance". It is, it's bound by real economic relations, and there is plenty of competition within the G7 bloc as well. However, its potential for global cooperation outside the economic sphere is greatly diminished by the current state of mutual foreign relations, and competition, between its members. BRICS cannot, at least for now, achieve any more than G7 could've achieved back when Germany was trying to widen its military supply sources so as not to depend on France because there was a real chance they might into it over Alsace, the way India is now trying to widen its military supply sources so as not to depend on China or the US because there's a real chance they might get into it over LoCs in Kashmir.
What a bullshit level of US centrism. The BRICS is not an anti-US (and yes, I'm sure you meant US) bloc. It's a pro-middle-income country bloc.
There is no reason to align on issues not related to middle-income countries economics.
As an Indian speaking very frankly India and China are frenemies. There is going to be no major war between these two. Contrary to whatever it looks from a distance, it won't.
India and China are very likely to indulge in intense co-operative competition with Russia as an another mediating partner. In many ways this is already the case.
I also believe over time a similar equation will emerge between India and Pakistan and China playing the same role as Russia in this case.
Ironically, by venting about how BRICS is not a thing, you've helped a tiny bit more into making it a thing for people who read your post. That's just how it works.
India and China are enemies, they keep having border skirmishes. South Africa is a failed state and it has negligible influence on the world stage. Brazil is one of the reasons why the term "middle-income trap" was devised.
BRICS members don't even vote in each other's favor in the UN. Russia has received zero meaningful assistance from them during the war in Ukraine.
It's entirely possible that in the future a real anti-western bloc will emerge. But it isn't BRICS.