ABSTRACT
In May 2008, Russia hosted the first formal Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) summit in Yekaterinburg, and in December 2010 South Africa was formally invited to join the BRIC grouping of large emerging economies. According to International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, in his capacity as rotating chairperson of the BRIC formation and based on an agreement reached by all other BRIC member states, invited South Africa as a full member into what became the BRICS.1
This move by Beijing was said to be “very important to Chinese expansion ambitions” in Africa.2 Thus another “emerging power” was anointed. At the time, Pretoria made a lot of noise about the rise of important emerging economies in the South and how this fundamentally changed the global political order. Undoubtedly, this fed off longstanding claims by many South Africans that their country is special and unique. This exceptionalism strongly believes that the world is intensely interested in what Pretoria does because South Africa is a country with “significant influence on regional and global affairs.”3
Never mind that South Africa’s GDP is considerably less than that of Belgium or Austria, and-at least under the present ruling regime-it is seen as a country in terminal decline.
