By Anthony Marcus, for Eurasia Business News, June 4, 2023

The meeting of the “Friends of BRICS” ended in Cape Town on June 2 with a meeting of the foreign ministers of the member states. The five top diplomats of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) met with ministers and senior officials from ten states of the global South, which usually includes the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The BRICS want to deepen ties and position their group as a counterweight to the West on the international stage.

The day before the BRICS Ministers of Foreign Affairs and International Relations met in the same city, where they exchanged views on major global and regional trends and issues. The Ministers reaffirmed the importance of the G20 to continue playing the role of a multilateral forum in the field of economic cooperation that covers both developed and developing countries where major economies jointly seek solutions to global challenges.

“We have invited to the current meeting of foreign ministers those states that are showing increased interest in joining the BRICS,” explained the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of South Africa, Naledi Pandor. According to her, the expansion of the BRICS is still under discussion, but 13 states have already submitted official applications for membership.

Candidates to join the BRICS

Among the “Friends of BRICS”, whose representatives were at the meeting in Cape Town, where is the seat of the South African Parliament, were Argentina, Bangladesh, Iran, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the Comoros, Cuba, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said that his country was one of the first to show interest in working in the BRICS. An application was also received from Saudi Arabia, said Anil Suklal, South Africa’s BRICS Sherpa.

The Saudi authorities are interested in further developing ties with the BRICS, said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Cape Town. The official said that “The Kingdom remains the largest commercial partner of BRICS in the Middle East. (…) The total volume of trade with the BRICS countries increased from $81 billion in 2017 to $128 billion in 2021 and exceeded $160 billion in 2022.“

Saudi Arabia and the BRICS New Development Bank are now negotiating the accession of Riyadh. 

More than 20 countries at the formal and informal level have expressed interest in joining the BRICS. In addition to the participants of the meeting in Cape Town, these applicants are Algeria, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Belarus, Venezuela, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Senegal, Syria, Sudan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and Uruguay.

On May 29, the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he would like the country to join the BRICS. The President of Venezuela noted that his country “would like to assist in creating a new world that is now emerging.”

However, the procedure for expanding the BRICS has not been approved so far by its member states. The South African Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation said on June 1 that the ministers reviewed the concept of expansion prepared by the Sherpas and decided to send it for revision. “We hope that the relevant work will be completed quickly, and the concept will be ready for the BRICS summit opening in Johannesburg in August,” the South African politician said.

According to our local sources, several expansion formulas are being considered. One of them stipulates that priority should be given to strengthening economic cooperation through the BRICS New Development Bank, and countries admitted to the bank will be able to participate in various activities of the group without formally joining it. Another concept involves granting new countries the status of permanent members.

The acronym BRICS, derived from the initial letters of the names of the group’s members, was created in December 2010, when South Africa joined the organization that was previously known as BRIC. The aim of the group, set up at the initiative of Russia in 2006, is to strengthen overall cooperation between Member States. China held the BRICS presidency in 2022. South Africa holds the presidency for the year 2023.

The process that we are now witnessing everywhere is the delimitation of the world into Western and non-Western parts. The BRICS is not a very integrated organization, but it symbolizes a non-Western world, which is not necessarily against the West, it is just different. In this capacity, BRICS attracts many nations and peoples.

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The meetings held in South Africa this week showed the bloc’s desire to establish itself as a serious economic and political force on the international stage, able to reshape geopolitics. This is signaled by the potential expansion of the association and the project of a single currency that would help the members of the group protect their economic interaction from Western sanctions. Due to the growing economic and political confrontation between China and the United States (China is the most economically powerful member of the BRICS), the potential expansion of the BRICS may be perceived in the West as an attempt to create a counterbalance to the influence of the United States and the European Union. Laster year, during its presidency of the BRICS, China began to actively promote the idea of expanding the bloc to new countries.

At conferences in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955 and Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1961, state leaders presented a “third world” apart from the West and the Soviet bloc. Now the Global South may choose the BRICS to gain momentum against the West’s influence on the international stage.

The Russian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov said on June 1 that “BRICS is moving forward, BRICS is demonstrating its strength and relevance. This is probably the center of gravity of the multipolar world. Many countries are interested in joining the BRICS and developing, probably, schemes that will allow us to join not only practical cooperation, which is important in itself, but also political understandings and agreements that we have in this format.“

Sergei Ryabkov added that “all BRICS countries are sovereign and independent. […] These are the most powerful powers that are fully aware of their own national interests. I am sure that they will not succumb to these speculations of opponents and will continue to work on a constructive creative agenda.”

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However, among the BRICS countries, not only China and Russia have tense relations with the United States. On May 11, the US ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, accused Pretoria of supplying weapons and ammunition to Russia. The diplomat said that during the entry of the Russian vessel Lady R at the base of the national Navy in Simonstown in the southwest of South Africa in December 2022, weapons and ammunition were loaded onto it. The ambassador concluded that South Africa supplies Russia with weapons, and called it extremely serious.

Pretoria rejected these accusations and the next day summoned the US diplomat to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after which he publicly apologized for his words. On June 1, Politico, citing sources, reported that U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is furious over Bridgety’s actions and that his statements about arms supplies are at odds with the information available to Washington. Now the United States is trying to restore damaged relations with South Africa.

Will Vladimir Putin attend BRICS Summit in South Africa ?

Another topic that attracts general attention is the possibility of personal participation of the Russian President Vladimir Putin in the XVth BRICS summit on August 22-24 in South Africa.

The problem is that South Africa recognizes the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued arrest warrants on the Russian President on March 18, and on the children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova in March. Russia has repeatedly criticized the decision of the ICC. A spokesman for the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, said on May 30 that Russia would be represented at the BRICS summit at the proper level, but did not specify whether Vladimir Putin would go there.

Earlier, South Africa announced that Pretoria will guarantee diplomatic immunity to the summit participants. Nevertheless, Pretoria is considering the option of transferring the event to China, since it has not acceded to the Rome Statute and is not obliged to comply with the decisions of the ICC, Reuters reported on June 1. The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called this information a stuffing. “We continue to believe that the summit will take place, as agreed and agreed, in Johannesburg on the twentieth of August. There is no other for today, and I do not think that this topic needs to be promoted,” he stressed.

On May 30, high-ranking officials in South Africa were trying to convince President Cyril Ramaphosa to move the summit to China, The Daily Telegraph reported. According to the newspaper, in this way they want to avoid discussions about the demand of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some top officials of South Africa fear potential Western restrictive measures targeting the country if Pretoria doesn’t implement the arrest warrant of the ICC.

The Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry undermined the significance of the arrest warrant. Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the decision had “no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view. Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it.”

The Russian President Vladimir Putin’s possible participation in the BRICS summit next August causes some trouble on Russian-South African relations. Consultations are taking place on how to organize the Vladimir Putin’s possible visit to Johannesburg. South Africa does not want that this official visit turn into an endless skirmish, scandal, demands from Western Nations.

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