BRICS

• On 11 May 2023 the US ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, claimed that South Africa had secretly exported arms to Russia in December 2022.
• The announcement rapidly fed into a popular narrative that South Africa was increasingly siding with Russia in relation to Moscow’s aggressive war in Ukraine.
• Brigety’s statements made both South African and international news headlines, including the Wall Street Journal, CNN and the Financial Times.
• Furthermore, as demonstrated in the UN Register of Conventional Arms database, Russia has rarely imported South African arms.

Imports and exports

• Indeed the Arms Control Committee’s 2019 arms import report lists the permit approval for the import of five million rounds of Russian ammunition to South Africa.
• Over the years, even the US and the UK have imported arms from Russia according to the UN Register of Conventional Arms.
• Reports at the time indicate that containers were offloaded in the harbour and then transported to secure locations under tight security.

US accusations of South African arms to Russia

• Brigety claimed that the US government had intelligence reports indicating that prior to the Lady R departing from Simon’s Town, South African ammunition and possibly arms were loaded onto the vessel and then transported to Russia.
• South Africa has one of the most comprehensive arms export laws in Africa, the cornerstones of which are transparency and human rights considerations.
• Traditionally Russia could be considered a South African ally due to the BRICS arrangement.
• However, reports of Russian perpetrated human rights abuses in Ukraine would most likely override other considerations in terms of South Africa’s arms export considerations.
• All arms export applications by arms exporters are carefully considered by a scrutiny committee and, thereafter, by the National Conventional Arms Control Committee.
• The annual arms export reports show that South Africa generally adheres to the Section 15 criteria.
• If the Arms Control Committee had considered an application to export arms and or ammunition to Russia, then consensus among cabinet ministers would have been necessary.

The devil is in the intelligence reports

• But such an endeavour would have required the payment of considerable bribes to officials on the docks and the manufacture of fraudulent export documentation.
• The crux of the arms-to-Russia allegations relates to the content of the US intelligence reports.

• For China, the US is the source of global insecurity.
• The growing tensions pose a political and economic challenge for South Africa.
• I argue that South Africa should not choose between its BRICS or EU and US partnerships.
• The west remains economically significant for South Africa, but the BRICS bloc is important for South Africa’s economic adaptability.

The BRICS bloc

• At its 2011 summit, the bloc called for an end to the long reign of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency (de-dollarisation).
• The emergence of BRICS not only strengthens south-south relations, it weakens the inequality that characterises north-south relations.
• Read more:
  South Africa and Russia: President Cyril Ramaphosa's foreign policy explained

  The BRICS bloc serves as a counterweight to some of the excesses of US unilateralism that’s been a feature of global governance since the end of the Soviet Union in 1989.

• The emergence of the BRICS bloc has overshadowed the G7+ meetings while centralising the G20 as an international platform for political and economic coordination.

South Africa and the west

• South Africa is the largest US and EU trading partner in Africa, with the US totalling R289 billion (about US$16 billion in 2021) and the EU totalling a trade of R699 billion (about US$ 38 billion in 2021.
• South Africa also benefits from the preferential access to US markets for some of its exports in terms of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA.

BRICS’ growing economic importance

• Trade and investment links between South Africa and China have improved too.
• Investments from South Africa into BRICS countries have surged since it became a bloc member.
• And China is an important trading partner for South Africa standing at R479 billion (about US$26 billion), above the US.

Navitaging anxieties

• Of course, the problem of South Africa’s strained relations with the west is not South Africa’s.
• Read more:
  How values, interests and power must shape South Africa's foreign policy

  For its own interests, South Africa must carefully navigate western anxieties about BRICS, and demonstrate that there is a common future for both the west and others in a multipolar world.

• BEIJING, March 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Russian-language edition of the second season of China Media Group's video series "Classics Quoted by Xi Jinping" will be broadcast by mainstream TV stations in Russia on the occasion of the Chinese president's three-day state visit, which started on Monday.
• The series, which features Xi's quotes from ancient Chinese stories and classics in his speeches and articles, will be broadcast on Russia-24, a news channel owned by the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, and aired simultaneously on its new media platform.
• Russia's Big Asia TV channel, TV BRICS and other channels will also broadcast the video series.
• It also extracts and interprets the broad and profound traditional Chinese culture that contains the connotation of the new era and the values of globalization.

• Bioplastic packaging uses less energy, is lighter in weight, and emits less CO2 than traditional plastic packaging.
• Thus, the growing use of bio-based PET products drives the growth of the bio based paraxylene industry.
• Based on the end user, the global bio based paraxylene market is segmented into food & beverages, packaging, and others.
• The bio paraxylene market is expected to expand during the forecast period due to expansion in the packaging sector.