13.12.2011
AMBASSADOR MPAHLWA ADDRESSES MGIMO ON BRICS
Ambassador Mpahlwa addressed the BRICS Conference hosted by the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) on 9 November. The Conference was also addressed by the Ambassadors of China and Brazil, the Deputy Head of Mission of India and Russia’s National Coordinator on BRICS. The conference was attended by heads of leading scientific institutes, academics, students and the media.
STATEMENT BY AMBASSADOR MANDISI MPAHLWA OF SOUTH AFRICA TO A CONFERENCE ON BRICS HOSTED BY THE MOSCOW STATE INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (MGIMO), MOSCOW, 9 NOVEMBER 2011
Esteemed Rector of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Vadim Lukov, Rector of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassadors of Brazil and China and Chargé d’Affaires of India, South Africa’s great friend Professor Shubin, Heads of leading scientific institutes, academies, students and the media.
Please accept the sincere appreciation and gratitude of the Embassy of South Africa for the invitation to this important conference and for the opportunity for us to share some thoughts with this illustrious audience.
We are gathered here to grapple with, deliberate on, and contextualise this new phenomenon in global geo-politics – BRICS. It seems to us that in order to achieve this, we have to look deeply at the world we live in and how it has evolved over the last six decades or so. In the limited time one has, one can obviously only make some key observations and pointers in this direction for our academics, students and media to further explore and develop the subject matter.
Today I posit a view that the origins and birth of BRICS are traceable to the very evolution of the contemporary world - but evolution not in the Darwinian sense - rather in the sense of the changing reality of the world. That reality, for a long time, was one that saw the Western world achieve the height of its power and wealth in the era of colonialism and imperialism and the immediate aftermath of that era. The massive wealth accumulation that took place in that era carried the Western World for many decades thereafter. As a consequence, and by virtue of the enormous resources at its disposal, the Western World “created”, if you like, the world and its institutions of governance in its own image, or, at the very least, ensured that such institutions largely served its own interests, hence the imbalances that persist to this day in the multilateral system and multilateral institutions. Equally, economic, financial and market mechanisms and instruments that emerged on a global scale fitted this pattern. To be sure, the Cold War era and the existence of the Soviet-bloc only somewhat counterbalanced rather than changed that reality of a Western World that held the commanding heights of the global economy and held sway in the institutions of global governance.
Over a long time, however, and almost imperceptibly, that reality was changing as developing countries began to truly develop, industrialise, invest in infrastructure, people and technologies, and maximise the benefit for themselves from their own resources.
They began to trade more with the rest of the world and among themselves as they mastered the ability to produce competitively in terms of product quality and price. In time they became suppliers of the needs of the wealthy markets in the Western World and beyond. New global scale enterprises began to emerge from the developing world, which today have a major footprint across the world as investors, producers and competitors. Perhaps differently, and from a totally different experience, in post Soviet Russia - a similar trend is manifest in the emergence of global scale enterprises in a range of fields.
In the course of time, the relative shares of developed and developing countries in global trade and contribution to global growth were changing by dint of this new reality, while the institutions of global governance remained fossilised in the post Second World War reality. A tension thus emerged in these institutions as a result of this disjuncture, which is well reflected in the many debates over a very long period of time around reform of the global governance system and its institutions:
- The UN and its bodies
- The IMF and the World Bank
- The WTO
- The global financial system
- The global commodity markets etc.
The combination of the statutory nature and share-based functioning of these institutions, with, in instances, built-in blocking mechanisms, made it exceedingly difficult to reform them, or it became possible for bigger shareholders to block progress literally.
Through all this, a body of opinion emerged about the need for reform, a body of countries coalesced around the reform agenda. In a sense, therefore, through all this, something new was struggling to be born, and still is struggling to be born.
BRICS, in our view, is perhaps the first concrete manifestation or expression of this new thing that is and has been struggling to be born, of this new reality that is suffocating in a system and institutions that cannot give expression to it.
BRICS is significant as it brings together independent and like-minded countries that are regionally significant in the regions where they are located in political, economic and strategic terms.
BRICS will most probably grow beyond the five countries that constitute its membership but coalesce around the reform agenda on global governance, the global economic and financial system and the translation of the new reality in the world into institutions and a system that are attuned to it. Already, BRICS is exploring the use of its own currencies in trade among its member, and has mooted the broadening of the basket of reserve currencies used globally.
This seems to be the best characterisation one could give to the phenomenon of BRICS: A nascent movement with still a long way to go and perhaps more parties to come on board.
The discourse around BRICS has thus to move away from the brilliant but narrow Jim O’Neil parameters, which are but an aspect of this new reality - but purely focussed on hard and valid economic issues of size and relative shares of particular economies in global terms. BRICS as it is evolving is about far more than the terms of the original formulation BRIC.
The accession of South Africa to what is now BRICS speaks precisely to the issue of a much bigger and bolder agenda around global reform. Let’s talk in these terms when we talk about BRICS and in different terms when we talk about BRIC.
Thank-you very much.
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