by PADRAIG CARMODY
IMAGE/BRICS Information
The BRICS powers aren’t anti-colonial counterweights. They’re looking for new markets and resources for their corporations, just like Western countries.
Over the last few years, much has been written about the “new scramble for Africa” — the attempt by countries and companies to increase their access to markets and natural resources on the continent.
In one telling, China has been the principal actor donning neocolonial garb to advance its interests. Growing economic and political interest in Africa certainly has been driven by the impact of Chinese demand on natural resource prices and the country’s need for new overseas markets to absorb the products of its expanding economy. China is now the world’s largest consumer of many commodities, such as copper and also, reportedly, illegally harvested timber (although much of this ends up in products destined for Western markets).
Despite popular perceptions that emphasize external neocolonialism, the contemporary jostling has also involved African companies — particularly those from South Africa, which has developed close ties to China — sometimes in joint ventures or implicit partnerships with other BRICS-based companies.
So what do China and South Africa’s behavior in Africa tell us about the latest drive to reap the continent’s riches? And, perhaps even more importantly, what would an enlarged international role for the BRICS mean for global justice?
Cooperation and Competition
While Britain and France nearly came to blows in Fashoda (a town in present-day South Sudan), Africa was for the most part “cooperatively” divided among the European powers in the nineteenth century. So too today. The current iteration of territorial control and influence by external and internal powers is marked by cooperation, in addition to competition.
Companies jockey for control over natural resources and markets, as well as governments, in order to ensure economic access — but not necessarily in a zero-sum way. For example, some British and Chinese oil companies have engaged in joint ventures in Africa.
The BRICS are playing an important role in this new scramble, with their influence continuing to grow despite the uncertain economic prospects of some member countries. This is particularly true for the South Africa–China relationship. The South African and Chinese governments and companies on the continent are increasingly aligned, allowing power to be projected across Africa’s borders in novel ways that may be more durable than their colonial precursors.
Since South Africa joined the BRIC grouping in 2010 at China’s invitation, there’s been considerable discussion about the rationale for its admittance. Jim O’Neill, the Goldman Sachs analyst who coined the term BRIC, has questioned why South Africa was asked over much larger economies. Yet other commentators, including author Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, have argued that geopolitics trumped global economics: while its economy is dwarfed by others around the world, South Africa is important regionally because its economy is sizable in continental terms. This geopolitical consideration is, of course, important, but it’s the strong economic ties between China and South Africa that are key to understanding how both they and their corporations are tapping Africa’s valuable markets and natural resources.
During the last decade of apartheid, sanctions and domestic capital controls largely prevented big South African conglomerates from investing in the rest of Africa, even as they dominated their home country’s economy. These restrictions were overturned after Nelson Mandela came to power in 1994, and more rapid economic growth in the intervening years has created additional excess investment capital — the market capitalization of the Johannesburg stock exchange is roughly 150 percent of GDP, whereas Brazil’s, for example, is approximately 50. In recent years, the combination of higher surpluses and previously bottled-up capital has allowed South African conglomerates to aggressively expand into Africa and overseas.
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