LETTER: SA should exit Brics

SA should not be proud of its role growing Brics into Brics+ (“SA played vital role in bringing new members into Brics”, November 11).

Brics is an unnecessary and highly costly international organisation that not only fails to demonstrate a practical purpose to most of its members but may even be a net negative on SA’s trade relations.

While SA’s largest volume of trade is with China, a Brics partner, it is by far not our most profitable trading partner. We shouldn’t be cosying up to anti-Western powers by cementing ourselves in a club of questionable nations that are already engaged in their own internal conflicts (India and China have been engaged in conflicts for decades and China seems to be eyeing Russia as its flagging resolve in Ukraine opens opportunities for Chinese expansion).

Our most profitable trade partners, already and potentially even more so, are Europe and the US. We should be learning from these successful democracies that support human rights. While they are imperfect, they are a far cry better than warmongering Russia, authoritarian China, and the theocratic, terrorism- funding state of Iran. We should be allying ourselves with democratic countries that support free markets. Not dictatorships.

SA has no business being in Brics. It is a nonsensical trade alliance that ticks none of the boxes of what SA needs to develop and prosper. Its entire purpose is to spite the West and to be a platform for its largest members to gain global supremacy. The sooner SA leaves, as Argentina did before even joining, the better.

Nicholas Woode-Smith
Cape Town

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