The Tragedy of the BRICS

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

As if to prove the point that South Africa, the latest addition to the BRIC gang of four, had better worry about its domestic affairs, a horrific fire in a downtown Johannesburg building housing the homeless has killed at least 74 people. This fire is emblematic of the failed state that South Africa is rapidly becoming. Out of control thieves are even melting down streetlamps for scrap. Downtown Johannesburg, once a vibrant business district, is now nearly empty and overrun by the impoverished. However, crime is not only the province of the poor; past leaders lauded for their liberation politics have been also charged with corruption.

The sight of South African president and African National Congress leader Cyril Ramaphosa holding hands high in the air with the rulers of China, India, Russia and Brazil was nothing short of repulsive. If this is what the Global South is about, you may be sure they don’t have the moral high ground.

Holding hands high for what? Russia’s barbaric unjustified war in Ukraine? Or was it their war crimes including the abduction of children and the rape of girls they were celebrating? Have any of the other leaders read Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s psychotic diatribes against Ukraine, Europe and America? His hands should be handcuffed, not raised in victory.

The most obvious trend in Russia is the clear desire of its population to disappear. Russia is on schedule to have less than 120 million people by 2050, decreasing dramatically from the current 143 million. Alcoholism, corruption, crime and heinous incarceration are the daily experiences of most citizens. The theft of state property seems like a birthright to anyone close enough to get some of it. The overwhelming indifference to human life seems to be the legacy Genghis Kahn left Putin from his conquered Kievan Rus.

Is China, the most militarily threatening state in the world (aside from Russia), the role model the other BRIC nations want to follow? Over a billion people are surveilled day and night for any behavior or thought expressions the party deems “threatening.” Inequality in China has taken a page from Latin America, where the top 1% controls one third of all wealth and the bottom 25% owns less than 2%. China’s invasion of and religious/cultural suppression of the Tibetans seems swept under the rug of those worried about “imperialism” and economic dominance from the West. Sadly, not a voice was raised by the supposedly sensitive to human rights BRICS about the concentration camps the Uyghurs are being tortured in either. Seems that if you’re a BRIC, you only look at the atrocities of the developed nations, not in the mirror of your fellow undeveloped ones. Cut off from the outside world by the rigorous censorship of every outside media, the Chinese exist in an echo chamber of nationalistic jingoism that would make Mao blush.

People in nationalist Hindu houses shouldn’t throw stones might be an appropriate modification of the old glass house saying. The nationalist Indian BJP party of which leader Modi is head of is on record for the slaughter of Muslims in numerous ethnic pogroms with his party’s encouragement. Lynchings, stabbings and arson are the tools of religious suppression Modi is unrepentant about.  He continues to fan the flames of religious strife, with proposed laws limiting human rights. While India can celebrate its impressive moon landings, half of India’s 1.2 billion people don’t have an indoor toilet. Even the medieval caste system lingers on, with unfortunate regular reports of sexual abuse inflicted on lower caste women by employers, landlords or just callous youths. The Indians took to heart the indignities the English inflicted upon them, and continued the patterns of discrimination based on economic and ethnic factors.

Brazil, with its intact Samba carnival sprit, may be the best of the lot. Actually, it is the only one of the original BRICS that does not actively seek to suppress ethnic or religious groups while trying to climb out of the developing world. The Brazilian sadness is that it cannot rid itself of the 6% of desperate poor that are living in over 6000 favelas. That translates into over 12 million people living in lawless shantytowns, riddled with gang violence and cut off from the services and protections the more prosperous enjoy. While newly installed president Lula da Silva has strong leftist credentials, it remains a mystery why he would need to burnish those with authoritarian thugs who use the fig leaf of Marxism to repress their people.

The idea that this group is going to try to have their own currency is a monetary head scratcher. Fraud, corruption, the economic strangulation of African, Asian and even Italy by the preposterous Chinese Belt and Road initiative ought to sound as a warning bell. Economic imperialism did not die with the British or American Empire. The utter lack of transparency that the African nations employed to engage the Chinese development model makes the shenanigans of the American CIA and its corporate tag-alongs, like GM and Coke, look positively amateurish. The BRICS leaders should schedule a road trip to Sri Lanka and take a look at the deal for the Hambantota Port project. There, they can see the future of Chinese debt for sovereignty fiscal plan. If your goal is to line your pockets and leave your country bankrupt and beholden to China, the trip would be illustrative.

I guess every nation is entitled to its own morass of ineptitude, intolerance and outright deceptions. However, that does not mean that thinking people need to swallow the moralistic patina that the BRICS are currently trying to sell to themselves and the rest of us. Two wrongs don’t make a right is a first-grade moralism we’re taught in the West. The Global South might want to take that thought to heart.

Additional Reading:

https://www.cfr.org/councilofcouncils/global-memos/brics-summit-2023-seeking-alternate-world-order