Group cheer

BRICS: Southern Africa’s unprecedented eco-political ‘Kodak moment’

By Rejoice Ngwenya

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Posted on September 6, 2023 10:23

President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, President of China Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pose during the 2023 BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, 23 August, 2023. (Gianluigi Guercia/Pool)
President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, President of China Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pose during the 2023 BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, 23 August, 2023. (Gianluigi Guercia/Pool)

For the region, the BRICS summit in Johannesburg could prove as tectonic as Zimbabwe’s hosting of the 8th Non-Aligned Conference in 1986 and South Africa’s own FIFA Soccer World Cup in 2010.

Ordinarily, such events should make or break national economies. Some analysts would even label them as ‘national Kodak moments’, while the grumpier ones complain that such events are an unnecessary drain on the national fiscus. Whichever way one looks at it, whatever prism one uses – economic, geo-political, social, diplomatic – the results tend to be the same: iconic!

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