London - In a master stroke of deflection diplomacy, Dr Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations and Co-operation (Dirco), took much of the awkwardness out of the BRICS Ministers of Foreign Affairs indaba last Friday in Cape Town over the controversy whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will be arrested under an ICC warrant for alleged war crimes against Ukraine if he attends the 15th BRICS Heads of Government summit in August in South Africa.
Never mind that Pretoria is seemingly “neutralising” the arrest threat by extending a blanket “standard” diplomatic immunity for the summit and its attendees from any legal provisions of the jurisdiction of the host country for the duration of the conference – perhaps a desperate yet stunning act of Rome Statute casuistry.
Yet the matter will fester due to the inherent contradiction in the South African government’s stance and its interpretation of Article 98 of the Statute of Rome, the treaty governing the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to which South Africa is a signatory.
In the statement by Dirco on May 29 covering immunities and privileges for both last week’s BRICS Foreign Ministers meeting in Cape Town and the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg in August, the department boldly declared that “these immunities do not override any warrant that may have been issued by any international tribunal against any attendee of the conference.”
Never mind the report that Pretoria has been toying with the idea of relocating the Summit to China simply to rid itself of this unforeseen diplomatic dilemma without jeopardising its standing with the other four BRICS nations – Russia, China, India and Brazil, and potentially falling foul of its obligations under the provisions of the Statute of Rome. Dr Pandor has vigorously denied the report.
By inviting Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian to attend the BRICS Foreign Ministers indaba as special guests, Dr Pandor deftly shifted the emphasis to the expansion of the BRICS Bloc, of which Tehran and Riyadh are the frontrunner membership aspirants, with the UAE, Venezuela and Argentina also keen to follow suit.
“BRICS expansion” and “Putin and the ICC warrant” dared not speak their names either in Dr Pandor’s address to her fellow foreign ministers or in their joint statement.
It was the predictable lust of local and international media speculation and headline chasing in the questions at press conferences that did the trick.
Dr Pandor in a candid caveat, revealed that “Ubuntu, a humanist African philosophy, underlines South Africa’s diplomacy as well as the BRICS principles of mutually beneficial South-South co-operation.”
The essence of Ubuntu to her is reflected by the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do it well, it spreads out, it is for the whole of humanity.”
Pandor’s linking of South African foreign policy aspirations and the operating ethos of BRICS may be a “reality” too far.
The respected Archbishop Tutu famously defined Ubuntu thus: “I am because we are. It is an approach to life that speaks to the very essence of being human. My humanity is inextricably bound up in yours.”
Activists, including several ANC supporters, claim that the concept has been hijacked and commercialised, bereft of its meaning of dignity, common humanity, responsibility of individuals to each other – the very antidote to today’s unfettered individualism, wanton self-interest and self-enrichment.
The Pandor Doctrine assumes a functional and presumably moral synergy between the principles of BRICS with Ubuntu.
But is the doctrine in reality inimical to the ethics of Ubuntu? Are the values of Ubuntu, for instance, compatible with those of dictatorial authoritarianism, Marxist-Maoism, and if Iran and Saudi Arabia join, as is most likely, with theocracies and absolute monarchies?
Is it compatible with the values of the chauvinistic hardline Hindutva philosophy as opposed to the genuine humanism of Hinduism at the expense of several of India’s large minorities, espoused by the BJP government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi?
If this is what Dr Pandor believes then the beloved archbishop must be turning in his grave, together with a roll call of departed ANC stalwarts over the past century.
There are warning signs at home, too. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula was spot on when he told the BBC’s HARDtalk programme: “South Africa is undergoing challenges like many other countries, but I think to put it into the category of a failed state is an exaggeration.
“We have been able to cushion our people from the worst, (following) 300 years of deprivation and a mismanaged country and economy. (But) this load-shedding has just made a mess of our country.
It will affect the fortunes of the ANC to receive just an outright majority ... if it is not dealt with decisively.
If certain things are not resolved, we will become a failed state, but we are not journeying towards that direction.”
In the Joint Statement, ministers reiterated their “commitment to upholding international law, including the UN Charter, to ensure the promotion and protection of democracy, the human rights and fundamental freedoms for all”. This moral ambivalence is hardly consistent with Russia’s brutal bombing of Ukraine; or China’s repression of its Uighur population in Xinjiang; and India’s chauvinism against its Dalit, Muslim and Christian minorities.
The BRICS discourse is underpinned by a number of fundamental flaws. Economic blocs across history have come and gone.
The League of Nations outlived its pro-European usefulness, only to be replaced by the UN, critically flawed at birth as a bastion to the victors in World War II plus a rising China, with scant regard to the aspirations of the developing world, future potential economic powerhouses such as India and Brazil, and even the vanquished Germany and Japan.
The nefarious veto of the Security Council was a mere catch-all ploy to keep each other and their supporters in check, and their ideologies abreast.
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which Madiba once chaired, has retreated into near obscurity. The 19th NAM Summit is scheduled to be hosted by Uganda in January 2024.
Even the South-South Co-operation initiative and its dialectic have endlessly evolved since it was first conceived in 1949.
This latest attempt by BRICS to Reinvent, Recalibrate and Rewrite its principles is undermined by the very fact that it is inevitably dominated by China, Russia and India –three nuclear powers who have neither been, or no longer are, part of the Global South.
One can understand why Brazil was invited as the lungs of Global Nature.
South Africa’s inclusion at the expense of Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria, and its second largest one, Egypt, is flattering.
It is obvious and perhaps understandable, that judging by the rhetoric of South African, Indian and Brazilian leaders that BRICS is a reaction and counterweight to the hegemonic dominance by the West of the global economy.
The international economic and financial gatekeeper organisations, terms of world trade, entrenched inequality and flows of FDI – are still largely their ex-colonial and imperialist powers – in other words, the Global North.
The West is rightly castigated for its gratuitous and brutal hegemony, but colonialism and imperialism is not the preserve of the West.
Parker is an economist and writer based in London
Cape Times