All eyes are peeled on the upcoming BRICS Summit in South Africa this week, which is expected to be the group’s largest gathering yet after 67 heads of state and 20 dignitaries from international organizations were invited. According to Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor on 7 August per pages 7-8 of her transcript from that day that was shared at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation’s website here, this also allegedly included Morocco, which officially expressed interest in joining BRICS.
Maghreb Arabe Press (MAP), Morocco’s official news agency, sharply denied this in a report on Saturday citing an authorized source at the Foreign Ministry. It can be read here, but key excerpts will be shared in this piece for the reader’s convenience and then analyzed since the insight shared therein is relevant for explaining why many folks skeptical of the Mainstream Media have such high expectations about this summit. As will be seen, South Africa’s allegedly unilateral actions are to blame for hyping it all up.
The clarification began by revealing that “this was not a BRICS or African Union initiative, but an invitation from South Africa, in its national capacity.” For that reason, Morocco declined to participate due to those two’s strained ties over Moroccan/Western Saharan. The source then “stressed that South African diplomacy is known for its light, improvised and unpredictable management when it comes to organizing this kind of event.”
That last point is credible considering how “South Africa Bungled The Optics Of Its BRICS Compromise With Russia”, which readers can learn more about in the hyperlinked analysis. Its relevance to this piece is that it critiques the way in which South Africa handled the sensitive subject of President Putin’s participation in this year’s summit due to his ICC arrest warrant. Instead of dealing with this issue behind closed doors, South African politicians created a months-long media circus, which made them look bad.
Moving along, MAP’s Foreign Ministry source went even further by revealing that “many countries and entities appear to have been invited arbitrarily by the host country, without any real basis or prior consultation with the other member countries of the BRICS Group. It had thus become clear that South Africa was going to hijack this event from its nature and purpose, to serve a hidden agenda.” That aforesaid agenda appears to have simply been to promote itself as a leading Global South player.
Nevertheless, by allegedly acting on behalf of BRICS without its permission, South Africa misled countless multipolar supporters into thinking that the group as a whole had signed off on this year’s host inviting nearly 100 top-level guests. If there’s any truth to what MAP reported – and their criticisms of South Africa’s “light, improvised and unpredictable management” of this event thus far align with reality as proven by the scandal over President Putin’s participation – then it’s a bombshell.
The high expectations that many folks have about this summit were because they assumed that the unprecedentedly large number of top-level guests were agreed to in advance by all the group’s members, which naturally suggested that some major announcements were about to be made there. It now turns out that this might have just been a unilateral decision by South Africa for self-serving soft power reasons, thus making fools out of all those who thought there was something more to it.
Before diehard BRICS supporters start speculating that MAP’s Foreign Ministry source is lying about the group at the behest of Morocco’s traditional American and French partners, they should know that this person also reaffirmed their Kingdom’s excellent relations with BRICS’ other members: “Morocco does indeed maintain substantial and promising bilateral relations with the other four members of the Group, and is even linked to three of them by Strategic Partnership Agreements.”
Some readers might be surprised to know that Morocco has impressively solid ties with the Sino–Russo Entente. In fact, the Kingdom joined China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in January 2022, which made it the first North African country to do so according to Global Times’ article here. Just last month, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova praised bilateral ties as “very good and brilliant” during the second Russia-Africa Summit, which was attended by Morocco’s Prime and Foreign Ministers.
These facts discredit whatever smears diehard BRICS supporters might spew in their emotional response to the revelations that were shared by the Moroccan Foreign Ministry’s source. That person also made an obvious point at the end of MAP’s article that most readers might not have realized until it was brought to their attention just now, namely that “There is as yet no framework or precise procedures governing the expansion of this grouping”, hence why Morocco can’t apply to join even if it wanted to.
The abovementioned observation means that all those countries that said they’d already applied to join probably only publicized these announcements for soft power purposes to signal to their people and the international community that they support multipolarity. After all, it’s indeed true that “no framework or precise procedures” for expanding BRICS have yet to be agreed on, so technically it’s not even possible to formally apply for membership until likely after this week’s summit codifies the criteria.
Acknowledging this indisputable fact unravels the rest of the hype leading up to this event since it’s now clear that reality doesn’t align with what many diehard BRICS supporters thought. All the news that they were so eagerly sharing these past months about this or that country officially applying to join BRICS wasn’t what it seemed. Far from confirming that this group is growing, it only meant that more countries were expressing interest in it, which is a positive step but still not what many imagined.
South Africa’s scandalous handling of President Putin’s participation at the summit lent credence to the Moroccan Foreign Ministry source’s criticism of that country’s “light, improvised and unpredictable management when it comes to organizing this kind of event.” Consequently, the precedent is established for believing what they said about South Africa acting on behalf of BRICS without its permission by inviting nearly 100 top-level guests to this week’s summit presumably just to bolster its soft power.
Putting it all together, South Africa’s unilateral decision to invite so many esteemed guests to this event extended false credence to the “wishful thinking” of many diehard BRICS supporters who interpreted this as signaling that major announcements were about to be made there. Other countries’ earlier announcements about officially applying to join BRICS also contributed to those folks’ false perceptions since no criteria has yet to be agreed to by its existing members for incorporating new ones.
That’s not to suggest that their group won’t soon expand, whether formally and/or informally via Russian geo-economic guru Yaroslav Lissovolik’s BRICS+ vision, but just that well-intended supporters and grifters alike prematurely reported statements of intent as accomplished facts. The lesson to be learned is that those who are skeptical of the Mainstream Media should also learn to be skeptical of its alternatives too since reports like those about BRICS that seem too good to be true almost always are.
