Abstract
After significant diplomatic efforts, South Africa’s inclusion into the BRICS grouping in 2011 can be regarded as one of South Africa’s principal foreign policy achievements over the past years. It also fundamentally altered the nature of the BRICS group, giving it a more global structure. Yet little is known about why South Africa sought BRICS membership, why it was chosen over larger economies (e.g. Indonesia) or faster-growing countries (e.g. Nigeria), and how this altered South Africa’s insertion into the international system. This article details the deliberations about South Africa’s inclusion into the BRICS and its premiere as a BRICS member at the 3rd BRICS Leaders’ Summit in Sanya in 2011, which symbolized an important step towards the institutionalization of the BRICS grouping. It argues that Brazil’s, China’s and India’s previous interaction with South Africa, for example in the context of the BASIC and IBSA groupings, contributed to generating trust between large emerging powers and South Africa. South Africa was therefore a far more natural choice and involved fewer risks of reducing the group’s capacity to develop joint positions in multilateral fora. While both the BRICS grouping and South Africa significantly benefitted from the inclusion, it also made South Africa’s foreign policy challenges more complex, as it increasingly has to balance its emerging power commitments with its role as representative of Africa’s poorer nations and that of regional leader. Key words: South Africa, emerging powers, BRICS, IBSA, BASIC, Sanya.
Highlights
On April 14, 2011, the 3rd BRICS Summit began in China’s southern resort city of Sanya
Little is known about why South Africa sought BRICS membership, why it was chosen over larger economies (e.g. Indonesia) or faster-growing countries (e.g. Nigeria) (Mittleman, 2013: 32), and how this altered South Africa’s insertion into the international system
Aside from the novelty of security issues in the final declaration, the reform of international institutions continued to figure prominently in the final declaration: in a wording identical to those of the first and second summit declarations of 2009 and 2010, China and Russia reiterated the importance they attach to the status of India and Brazil in international affairs, and understand and support their aspiration to play a greater role in the UN – with the only difference being that this time, South Africa’s aspirations were supported as well (Sanya Declaration, 2011, art.8)
Summary
This article details the deliberations about South Africa’s inclusion into the BRICS and its premiere as a BRICS member at the 3rd BRICS Leaders’ Summit in Sanya in 2011, which symbolized an important step towards the institutionalization of the BRICS grouping It argues that Brazil’s, China’s and India’s previous interaction with South Africa, for example in the context of the BASIC and IBSA groupings, contributed to generating trust between large emerging powers and South Africa. South Africa was a far more natural choice and involved fewer risks of reducing the group’s capacity to develop joint positions in multilateral fora While both the BRICS grouping and South Africa significantly benefitted from the inclusion, it made South Africa’s foreign policy challenges more complex, as it increasingly has to balance its emerging power commitments with its role as representative of Africa’s poorer nations and that of regional leader
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