South Africa is the broken Bric in Brics

As the most impoverished and dysfunctional member of Brics, SA is certainly trying to act as though it is the most powerful and successful.

However, notwithstanding the soundbites, joining Brics was never intended to benefit South Africa but rather to be to the advantage of the government elite – and at the expense of the nation and its people.

Our government can, however, make a huge contribution to Brics. We can advise and guide them on how to create a successful failure. We can show them how to collapse an economy without foreign interference.

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We can teach them how to become greylisted. We can even teach them how to act neutral without actually being neutral. By choosing to support one side in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict, our government has managed to prove its lack of neutrality.

It has, nevertheless, managed to reduce its friendships with many other countries. It is dangerously close to positioning itself as complicit in the war and on the side of one country against another. So much for its claimed neutrality.

This is despite the recent laughable peace flight to Russia via Poland to negotiate a ceasefire. The arrogance of our government to believe it didn’t need to comply with international aviation rules and laws must surely be racist.

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We are, after all, the entitled ones. How can anyone take South Africa seriously when our own house is in a state of chaos and disorder? We have become a basket case of corruption, crime and savagery. Who are we to tell others how to behave?

It is said one shouldn’t throw stones if one lives in a glass house. That saying characterises our government. Our foreign policy is intended likewise to benefit the few and disadvantage the many. Even though the all-important African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) trade agreement is now at risk, the government acts as though this will be good for South Africa.

Instead, we cling to our dysfunctional economic policies and claim we prefer to do business with those whose contribution to our economy is far less than that of the Agoa agreement. Our government’s response appears to rather sacrifice the Agoa agreement and give a middle finger to our largest trading partner.

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So much for the false claims of wanting development and prosperity in our country. Yet when discerning voices in the US call for Agoa to be cancelled, we dispatch our ministers of trade, industry and competition, and finance, to the US to plead for South Africa to remain a member of Agoa.

Our government does the same when it needs to beg for money to replace that which it stole or mismanaged. It turns to the West to donate to our poor country – and then verbally attack them once they have given us money.

The self-entitlement the government swaggers around with has long come to an end as most countries in Africa and beyond view the current situation in South Africa as a tragic and foolish joke; a sterling example of failure dressed as success and overseen by old, corrupt, and ideologically antiquated clowns.

One would think that in a country where crime dominates daily lives, infrastructure steadily collapses, protests and riots shut down the economy and government coffers are being robbed daily, government would have more pressing matters at hand, instead of trying to act as the most powerful party in Brics.

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Whereas we are, in all probability, the most dysfunctional member of Brics, we want to call the shots. Does any right-thinking person imagine that the other Brics nations jump when we make our hoarse voices heard?

The South African government hates the West with an intensity and passion seldom seen nowadays. Is it because they have actually built something and we, in turn, have nothing to show but failure on all levels? We are the broken Bric in Brics. The mampara brick that builders discard.