For those of us who participated in the South Commission and in the preparation of its report and recommendations, the announcement of setting up of the Brics bank, at its just-concluded summit in Durban, is a moment not only to celebrate but to reflect.
Further, its raison d’etre is to claim some autonomy from the traditional Bretton Woods Institutions, which is heartening. This was in fact the reasoning behind the South Commission’s recommendation, in chapter four of the report, A Challenge to the South, which was released in 1990.
In A Challenge to the South the idea of a South Bank was also derived from the same analysis and towards the same purpose — a form of liberation as well as a form of sharing of wealth and opportunity within the south family. Therefore, one could argue that it was more inclusive. “Finance has proved to be the critical missing link in the entire range of south activities. Schemes of cooperation whether in trade, production and investment, education or science and technology, need adequate financial resources to be viable. We have selected several areas in which cooperaton in financial matters or financing of cooperation in economic matters is greatly needed in the long run…notably a South Bank, which would initially finance trade and ultimately provide development finance.” (quoted, pg 165)
Lest we forget, the leader of the South Commission, Dr Julius Nyerere could anticipate as far back as in 1987, the dangers that lay in store for the countries in the southern continents if they did not form their own economic clubs and mobilise their own resources to design their own political economy destiny. He would often refer to the EU as the model of self-strengthening , as well as the OECD secretariat in Paris, to argue that we need similar consolidation of our economies apart from regular key intelligence to enable us to keep going as was provided by OECD secretariat to the EU governments.
Nations such as members of the Brics group have woken up to the idea of bonding across our continents, after the economies of the North went into crisis and really ran a tsunami over the southern countries too, who had become more engaged with them, than with each other. The meltdown of 2008 and the later financial crisis in the “advanced” countries has woken up the Brics.
It does not surprise me to read that South Africa had mobilised all the nations of South Africa and all the commissions within the continent to attend the Brics conference. For all its internal troubles, fractured states, the African continent aspires, and seems to have succeeded in that aspiration, to unite itself as a continent and not as a summation of individual nations.
Whether we recall the famous appeal by a former President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, in his poetic speech “I am an African”, or the structural power of the African Union, Africa wants to put forward her continental identity.
As we have known over the several decades from being colonised states, to being so-called liberated countries, media reports us to each other in the most negative terms. South Africa in Indian media is seen as “dangerous to walk in the streets, crime everywhere, rape every three seconds crumbling with severe unemployment”.
The Rainbow Nation is only a dream. All of it is true , as it would be true to read South African newspapers on India — corrupt, violent rapes, entrenched casteism, you name it.
When I visited South Africa earlier this month after a break of 10 years and spent more than 10 days in three cities and read the newspapers, I realised how much the news we receive, is misleading. The finance minister is a confident leader and holds much strength, Parliament and its committees are functioning vigorously, inter-African meetings are galore. The one I attended was convened by the inter-parliamentary union of Africa in a hall in Johannesburg, meant for their meetings, which I believe takes place four times a year.
The newspapers were so similar to India’s newspapers, full of political and economic news, unlike many other country papers, which basically are glossies. The announcements include programmes and new laws by the various premiers of provinces, similar to what the chief ministers of our states do.
The constant debate of the National Development Plan, columns with debating controversies. Where they beat us Indians, the most news hungry people in the world in my opinion, was that every lamp-post had a poster, a double fullscape size rectangle stuck on flat matting, tied to the pole, with very bold large capital letters giving the latest, almost previous hour, political news as you drive, whether in Johannesburg or Pretoria.
In preparation for Brics, there were campaigns and mobile exhibitions and arrangements to hold discussions not only all over South Africa, but also all over the continent on the meaning of Brics and how to bring forward South Africa as a strong leader, supported by the continent.
A decade or so ago when my husband the late L.C. Jain presented his credentials to the then President Nelson Mandela, he entitled his acceptance speech as “Africa – the Continent of Hope”. As can be expected the President loved the idea of faith expressed in the speech, and wanted a copy of the argument on which Jain had built his speech.
We read every day how the continent of Africa is the most endowed that the rest of the world wants, namely energy, natural resources, oil from there, and how China, apart from other international powers, is working to exploit these resources for its own progress. It is interesting, if not troubling, that this matches our understanding or description of what colonisation was all about. This continent of hope is also extremely vulnerable at this time, as she suffers from a lack of financial strength as well as stable governments while the world wants to harvest her resources. But Julius Nyerere, otherwise called Mwalimu, or Teacher, was acutely aware of the vulnerability of the African continent and was appealing to all, especially China and India, to be the leaders of real emancipation, namely economic emancipation — an extension of what M.K. Gandhi called economic freedom for the more vulnerable countries.
Thus, while Brics is the first brick in memory of Mwalimu Nyerere, its vision needs to match the purpose he had in mind — to build an equitable and non-exploitative economic south.
The writer is a member of the erstwhile South Commission 1987-1990