Next week’s gathering is not about fighting global injustice but about entrenching ruling elites

In 1943 a wheelchair-bound US president embarked on a four-day seaplane journey to meet his UK counterpart. That summit could not end imperialism, but it triggered a devastating wound. The Casablanca Declaration stated that the Allies would not negotiate with any government that was “imposed upon any people by force against the free expression of the will of the people concerned”.     

Reconciling such words with deeds did not and could not happen quickly or easily. Creating a new world order began with Franklin Roosevelt also persuading Winston Churchill of the need to only accept “unconditional surrender” from Germany and Japan. This substantially prolonged the world’s most deadly war. 

Was Roosevelt’s bold decision justified? No leader at that time would have dared to imagine how much freedom, prosperity and peacefulness would be achieved. World War 2 could have ended like the first. Borders and imperial possessions might have been agreed upon, and the fighting might have paused for a couple of decades.

Certainly, today’s Ukrainians would empathise with Roosevelt’s aggressive stance. Older Ukrainians can only justify their immense sacrifices as being the cost of bequeathing freedom and peaceful prosperity to young and unborn Ukrainians. They could have simply acquiesced to a puppet government beholden to Moscow once again. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine signalled the dawning of a new cold war. The current turning point in global history contrasts our acceptance of life prospects being devastated for most young South Africans with the horrendous sacrifices endured by Ukrainians for their children’s benefit.

Only failed states have youth unemployment crises comparable to ours, yet workable remedies are absent from our national dialogue which debates sub-subsistence grants instead. Few, if any, modern governments have ever so casually discarded the prospects of a majority of their country’s next generation.

Our 1990s transition, which was celebrated as racial justice triumphing over the last vestiges of a colonised Africa, birthed a political dispensation increasingly dismissive of accountability. Most of today’s young SA adults will never know freedom from deprivation.  

Had Ukraine quickly succumbed to the Russian invaders, the Brics meeting in Sandton would have been very different. Authoritarian governments would be in the ascendancy. 

Rather, Western support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia were prompt and consequential. Authoritarian governments such as China’s and Russia’s want to benefit from the global prosperity Western ways have spurred. However, they are vehemently opposed to all forms of accountability. 

Broad, though lumpy, diffusion of prosperity, within and among nations, has followed from acceptance of today’s rules-based global order. Importantly though, this relies on national leaders seeking to advance their nations’ interests. As this is at best a secondary concern for autocrats focused on retaining power, the existing global order is inherently incompatible with autocratic governments.

Unlike the Moroccan summit 80 years ago, the Brics summit in SA is not about advancing peace or diffusing prosperity. The collection of mostly authoritarian leaders wants to diversify away from reliance on the dollar and the international banking system. If they were focused on advancing the interests of ordinary citizens such issues would be of little concern. It is clear that they are seeking to reduce accountability, and that their economies will suffer unnecessarily.

Diversifying away from the dollar and international banking system will not benefit SA. But if ANC elites must choose between sustaining legitimate elections or being evicted from the Union Buildings in 2029 they don’t want Western governments to be able to pressure them to respect constitutional requirements.

Settling cross-border transactions in dollars using the international banking system is mostly about efficiency. Similarly efficient alternatives will eventually emerge. Given how grossly unhealthy our economy is, undermining external mechanisms that function well is a performative act on a global stage similar to machine gun-carrying “blue light” security thugs kicking defenceless motorists.

Neither fellow Brics members nor applicant countries are in a position to help SA create jobs. Conversely, by running such enormous trade deficits in manufactured goods, the US creates tens of millions of jobs in other countries. As major democracies decrease their reliance on Chinese manufacturers, unemployment will continue to rise there while declining in countries that take up the slack.

When those two world leaders met in Casablanca almost 80 years ago, the number of people not living in extreme poverty had never exceeded 800-million. Today it is more than 7-billion, and barely 400-million of those live in the US or UK. 

More than half of SA’s young adults will go through life poor. The Brics gathering in Johannesburg next week is not about benefiting such people, or human rights. It exudes indifference to an imperial invasion while seeking to entrench ruling elites at the expense of ordinary citizens.