Saudi Arabia and Iran are among six countries to join BRICS as new members next year, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced, on the final day of a summit of the group that considers itself a counterweight to Western powers.The group encompassing five major emerging economies – China, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and India – which makes decisions by consensus, agreed on “the guiding principles, standards, criteria and procedures of the BRICS expansion process”, during the three-day annual summit held in Johannesburg this week, Ramaphosa said on Thursday. As part of the first phase, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates will join Saudi Arabia and Iran to become full BRICS members in January 2024. Other phases will follow. “This membership expansion is historic,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping. “The expansion is also a new starting point for BRICS cooperation. It will bring new vigour to the BRICS cooperation mechanism and further strengthen the force for world peace and development.”
A senior adviser to Iran’s president on Thursday welcomed the country’s admission to the grouping. “Permanent membership in the group of global emerging economies is considered a historic development and a strategic success for the foreign policy of the Islamic republic,” Mohammad Jamshidi wrote on X, which was previously known as Twitter. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed hailed what he called “a great moment” for his country. “Ethiopia stands ready to cooperate with all for an inclusive and prosperous global order,” Abiy said on Twitter. The core group of five BRICS countries has been discussing the issue of expansion for more than a year, Ramaphosa said, and the new members were invited this week after an agreement was reached at the summit. The expansion of the group is part of its plan to build dominance and reshape global governance into a “multipolar” world order that puts voices of the Global South at the centre of the world agenda. The inclusion of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran and Egypt marks the first MENA representation in the group, and the inclusion of Argentina was championed by member Brazil. Expansion was pushed heavily by Russia and China, analysts said, as they are facing pushback from Western nations in the form of sanctions. Other BRICS countries were initially more ambivalent, but leaders came out in vocal support of the plan this week. The grouping of emerging economies has been in formal existence for 15 years. Some experts told Al Jazeera that it has not achieved much and the diffuse nature of their political and social interests means BRICS leaders do not always agree on issues. Some say that has prevented them from becoming a more powerful or effective entity.
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The issue of the creation of a BRICS reserve currency has taken on particular significance in recent months after President Putin declared that the creation of such a currency was in the process of discussion. This was followed by a series of statements coming from Russia’s legislative branch on the expediency of creating a new reserve currency — most recently from the Federation Assembly speaker Valentina Matvienko. While the debate on the possibility of creating such a reserve currency is only starting in Russia and more broadly across the global economy, the implications of such a move on the part of the BRICS could have transformational consequences for the global financial system.
Initially, the proposal to create a new reserve currency based on a basket of currencies of BRICS countries was formulated by the Valdai Club back in 2018 — the idea was to create an SDR-type currency basket composed of BRICS countries’ national currencies as well as potentially some of the other currencies of BRICS+ circle economies. The choice of BRICS national currencies was due to the fact that these were the among the most liquid currencies across emerging markets. The name for the new reserve currency — R5 or R5+ — was based on the first letters of the BRICS currencies all of which begin with the letter R (real, ruble, rupee, renminbi, rand). The recent debates concerning the prospects for the creation of a new reserve currency focused more on the risks, fragilities and outright impossibility of the R5 project. Less attention has been accorded to estimating the benefits (including in terms of hard figures) to BRICS economies and EM more generally. There has also been scant attention with respect to the actual modalities of launching the BRICS reserve currency. What is clear at this stage is that the BRICS reserve currency will not be created to replace the national reserve currencies of the BRICS economies — rather it will complement these national currencies and will serve to improve the possibilities for more EM currencies to attain reserve status. Accordingly, the attainment of high trading shares among the BRICS economies is a desirable but not altogether an indispensable condition for launching the new reserve currency. In fact, the new BRICS currency does not have to service all trade transactions among BRICS economies in the very near term. Initially, the new BRICS currency could perform the role of an accounting unit to facilitate transactions in national currencies. In the longer run, the R5 BRICS currency could start to perform the role of settlements/payments as well as the store of value/reserves for the central banks of emerging market economies. Within the composition of the R5 currency basket the share of the Chinese renminbi may be initially set at a relatively high level in order to take advantage of the already advanced reserve status of the Chinese currency. This share may be reduced progressively in stages later on along with the inclusion of new EM national currencies. Outside of the BRICS economies some of the potential candidates that with time could be included into the R5+ currency basket may feature the Singaporean dollar or the UAE’s dirham. One of the potential risks associated with the use of EM currencies in reserves is their high volatility. The basket mechanism of the BRICS reserve currency will allow for reducing some of this volatility via averaging out the exchange rate dynamics of currencies that follow different market trends — if the currencies of Russia, South Africa and Brazil follow the commodity cycle, the opposite is true with respect to commodity importers such as India and China. Importantly, the scope for employing the new reserve currency in the world economy is sizeable given the tremendous potential for de-dollarization. The new BRICS reserve currency can act in concert with the stronger role performed by BRICS national currencies to take on a greater share of the total pie of currency transactions in the world economy. This greater role can be gradually extended from servicing foreign trade transactions to investment flows across the developing world. In line with the original R5 concept developed by Valdai Club in 2018 one of the possible venues for boosting the use of national currencies and the BRICS reserve currency could be the creation of a platform for regional development banks in which BRICS economies are members. Such a platform could develop a portfolio of common/integration projects that may be financed in national currencies. In the end, the launching of a new reserve currency if successful will impart a transformational effect on the international financial system. The Central Banks in the global economy are experiencing a notable shortage of reserve currencies in managing their reserve holdings. In this respect, the emergence of additional reserve currencies from among the EM economies will serve to expand the possibilities for diversifying reserve holdings and reducing the vulnerabilities associated with the dependence on a narrow range of currencies. The R5 project can thus become one of the most important contributions of emerging markets to building a more secure international financial system. On June 21, Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera fired the country’s chief of police, suspended several senior government officials and also took the extraordinary step of stripping his deputy, Saulos Chilima, of all powers after they were accused of receiving kickbacks from UK-based businessman Zuneth Sattar in exchange for government contracts worth more than $150m. While Chilima is the highest-ranking official in Malawi to be removed from power over alleged corruption to date, few were shocked by the accusations. After all, it was only in January that Chakwera had to dissolve the country’s cabinet after three prominent ministers – Lands Minister Kezzie Msukwa, Labour Minister Ken Kandodo and Energy Minister Newton Kambala – faced corruption charges.
Sadly, a corruption pandemic is raging in Malawi – and on the rest of the continent. Indeed, from Malawi to South Africa and Zimbabwe, from Angola to Mozambique and Namibia, in countries across Africa high-ranking civil servants and their relatives, in cahoots with industry and business leaders, seem to have long been shamelessly stealing from the long-suffering masses. South Africa, for instance, has recently been rocked by allegations that former President Jacob Zuma and a plethora of former ministers and CEOs of state-owned companies systematically planned and executed state capture to aid the wealthy Gupta family and line their pockets. On June 22, South Africa’s Chief Justice Raymond Zondo released the final instalment of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture and found that the ruling African National Congress party, under Zuma, “permitted, supported and enabled corruption and state capture”. He also criticised current President Cyril Ramaphosa, who served as vice president under Zuma, for hesitating “to act with more urgency” to resist the emergence and establishment of state capture. Beyond the Gupta scandal, South Africa is battling to recover millions of dollars it lost through dodgy contracts linked to the nationwide campaign to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In Zimbabwe, Kudakwashe Tagwirei, a businessman allied to President Emmerson Mnangagwa, stands accused of amassing $90m through a shady central bank deal. In Mozambique, ex-President Armando Guebuza’s son, Ndambi, former Finance Minister Manuel Chang, and several other senior governing party members stand accused of participating in the disappearance of loans – taken out to finance maritime surveillance, fishing, and shipyard projects – worth $2.2bn. In Namibia, former Fisheries Minister Bernhardt Esau and former Justice Minister Sacky Shanghala stand accused of taking bribes worth millions of dollars from an Icelandic fishing company. In Angola, Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s former President José Eduardo dos Santos, is being accused of making billions of dollars through illicit activities. Dutch authorities scrambled on Saturday to see if 61 passengers from South Africa who tested positive for Covid-19 have the new Omicron strain, as the shutters came down around the world to contain the new variant. Germany became the second European country after Belgium to find a suspected case of the highly infectious new variant, which has sparked fears of a major setback in the global effort to end the coronavirus pandemic. Alarm grew after the World Health Organization said the new type, originally known as B.1.1.529 and subsequently renamed Omicron, was a “variant of concern” and more transmissible than the dominant Delta strain. Australia and Thailand joined the United States, Brazil, Canada and a host of other countries around the world restricting travel from southern Africa where the strain was first discovered. Anxious travellers thronged Johannesburg international airport, desperate to squeeze onto the last flights to countries that had imposed sudden travel bans. Many had cut back holidays and rushed back from South African safaris and vineyards. “It’s ridiculous, we will always be having new variants,” British tourist David Good told AFP, passports in hand. “South Africa found it but it’s probably all over the world already.” “I think we got the last two seats,” said Briton Toby Reid, 24, who had been watching the sunrise on Cape Town’s Table Mountain with his girlfriend when the ban was announced.
The main countries targeted by the shutdown include South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini (Swaziland), Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. But in a sign of the how difficult it is to contain the virus, the Netherlands found that almost one in ten — 61 out of 539 — people who had arrived on Friday from South Africa were positive for Covid-19. The infected people, who flew in on two KLM flights from Johannesburg, were being kept quarantined in a hotel near Schiphol airport, one of Europe’s biggest international air hubs. “The positive test results will be examined as soon as possible to determine whether this concerns the new worrisome variant,” the Dutch Health Authority said in a statement. Europe is already struggling with a coronavirus surge that has forced several countries including the Netherlands to tighten restrictions, and a new variant threatens to worsen the situation. A German regional official said on Saturday that health authorities have identified the first suspected case in the country, in a person who returned from South Africa. “The Omicron variant has with strong likelihood already arrived in Germany,” tweeted Kai Klose, social affairs minister in the western state of Hesse. Belgium on Friday became the first country on the continent to identify a case, a young woman who had returned from Egypt via Turkey on Nov 11. Scientists are now racing to determine the threat posed by the heavily mutated strain, and whether the current coronavirus vaccines should be adjusted. Markets and oil prices around the world plunged on Friday as news of the latest setback in the fight against the pandemic sank in. US President Joe Biden said countries should donate more Covid vaccines and give up intellectual property protections to manufacture more doses worldwide to stem the spread of the virus. “The news about this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations,” he said. The WHO said it could take several weeks to understand the variant and cautioned against imposing travel curbs while scientific evidence was still scant. South Africa’s health ministry called the global rush to impose travel bans “draconian” and the foreign ministry said it was “akin to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and the ability to detect new variants quicker”. But with memories still fresh of the way global air travel helped the spread of Covid after it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, countries clamped down on the new variant. Australia became the latest to act, banning all flights from nine southern African countries. Thailand restricted flights from eight countries, as did the United States, Brazil, Canada and Saudi Arabia. EU officials agreed in an emergency meeting to urge all 27 nations in the bloc to restrict travel from southern Africa, with many members having already done so. The new strain was already having an effect, though. Next week’s World Trade Organization ministerial conference, the global trade body’s biggest gathering in four years, was called off at the last minute on Friday due to concerns about the new variant. Vaccine manufacturers have however held out hope that they can modify current vaccines to target the Omicron variant. Germany’s BioNTech and US drugmaker Pfizer said they expect data “in two weeks at the latest” to show if their jab can be adjusted. Moderna said it will develop a booster specific to the new variant. CAPE TOWN, May 12 -- The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has won South Africa's parliamentary elections with 57.5 percent of the vote, the electoral commission said, announcing the official results. Saturday's win assured a sixth straight term in power for the ANC. But the result was the worst-ever electoral showing for the party, which has ruled South Africa since the end of apartheid 25 years ago. Support for the ANC, which gained 62 percent in the previous election in 2014, has steadily declined since it took a record 69 percent of the vote in 2004. Saturday's electoral showing comes amid growing voter frustration over rampant corruption and high rates of unemployment. President Cyril Ramaphosa, who replaced scandal-plagued Jacob Zuma last year, now faces the challenge of regaining public confidence in a party that remains beset with internal divisions and which oversaw a raft of economic crises in the country. The result, which gives the ANC 230 seats in the 400-member parliament, will renew pressure on Ramaphosa to decisively deal with cabinet ministers accused of corruption. In a victory speech in the northern city of Pretoria, Ramaphosa said the election confirmed "freedom and democracy reign" in South Africa. "Our people have given all of the leaders of our country a firm mandate to build a better South Africa for all." Earlier in the day, Jessie Duarte, ANC deputy secretary-general, struck a more sombre tone, saying the party would move swiftly to counter corruption and increase economic growth. "We need to correct our mistakes," she said, adding that the election showed voters want an "ANC that is united, and in its unity remains true to the values and principles on which it was founded." Cape Town, May 9 -- At 9am on Thursday, South Africa's Electoral Commission results were showing the African National Congress in the lead. The country voted in national and provincial elections on May 8. Results for the three main political parties were as follows: ANC - 1.742.573 votes, or 55,04% Democratic Alliance - 824.328 votes, or 26,04% Economic Freedom Fighters - 260.507 votes, or 8,23% Election statistics: Total Valid Votes 3.165.859 Spoilt Votes 42.659 Total Votes Cast 3.208.518 Voter Turnout 64,79 % Registered Population 26.756.649 Total Voting Districts 22.925 Voting Districts Completed 5.883 (25,66%) CAPETOWN, May 8 -- South Africans are voting in presidential and parliamentary elections in what is being seen as a pivotal election after years of corruption scandals that have plagued the "rainbow nation". Some 26.8 million voters are registered to cast ballots at 22,925 polling stations. Polls opened at 7am (0500 GMT) and close 14 hours later. Early results will emerge on Thursday while the official winner will be declared on Saturday. The party that wins most seats in parliament selects the president, who will be sworn in on May 25. Voter turnout has been predicted at around 70 percent. But an hour after polls opened at Orlando West polling station in Soweto, an important site in the anti-apartheid struggle, the small queue of voters was a far cry from the vast crowds shown in images from the first democratic elections in 1994. An estimated six million under 30s have not registered to vote and there was a small minority of young voters waiting in line at the Orlando West polling station. Wednesday's vote comes 25 years after the end of apartheid. But despite the demise of the system of racial discrimination, the country remains divided by economic inequality. While dozens of parties are competing, the main contenders are the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the Democratic Alliance (DA). The ANC is almost certain to win again. However, its reputation has been damaged in the last 10 years by a stream of scandals under former President Jacob Zuma. Zuma was forced to resign in 2018 and is currently on trial on corruption charges. His replacement, Cyril Ramaphosa, has a cleaner image. But he has lost votes in recent years to the EFF and its leader Julius Malema, who promises to redistribute white-owned land and nationalise the banks. The DA, meanwhile, has also eaten into the ANC's once-dominant share of the vote. In the last municipal elections, the DA won in two key cities - Johannesburg and Cape Town. The ANC - the liberation party that brought about the end of the racist apartheid regime and enfranchised black South Africans - will be challenged on whether it can win back disillusioned urban voters. Under South Africa's electoral system, citizens do not vote directly for the president, but a vote for the ANC is essentially a vote for Ramaphosa. JOHANNESBURG, March 20 -- This below analysis should form the base of a case study of how a misguided interpretation of statistics can result in a skewed and unrealistic picture of what’s really happening on the ground. It makes the job of journalists in today’s world that much more important as they need to critically think about the statistics they report on before hitting the publishing button. (The analysis below first appeared in Politicsweb and is republished here with permission.) – Gareth van Zyl On Tuesday this week Police Minister Bheki Cele released the South African Police Service’s crime statistics for 2017/2018. The information contained in the SAPS’ presentation detonated a small explosion beneath a claim repeatedly made, over the past month, by some of the world’s most prestigious newspapers, authoritative “Fact Checkers”, and most brilliant diplomats. How this came to pass is an interesting case study in how, in our current age, a falsity can still travel halfway around the world, and back again, long after the truth has put its boots on and kicked the damn thing to death. The story begins with a reply to a parliamentary question from Freedom Front leader Pieter Groenewald MP by the Minister of Police on the 3rd of May 2018. In it Bheki Cele provided detailed data from the SAPS on the provincial breakdown of farm murders and farm attacks by year from 2012/13 to 2017/18. This was useful information as it suggested that the burden of this type of crime fell disproportionally on farms and small holdings in the eastern half of the country, and that any analysis of this phenomenon needed to take this into account. The figures were not unproblematic however. The national totals for farm murders in the 2015/16 and 2016/17 periods were significantly lower than official figures earlier released by SAPS. The figure of 47 farm murders for the 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018 period (down from 74 the year before) also seemed implausibly low. One likely explanation for this was simply that the figures had been compiled only a month after the end of the reporting year, and were not complete. As Sally de Beer of the SAPS had told Africa Check the year before “the database is a ‘live’ system, meaning that the statistics derived from it are subject to change if new information on cases emerges. The database is not primarily intended as a source of statistics, but as an operational tool.” The fact-checking site cautioned in its 2017 fact-sheet on this issue that, “As such, statistics for certain years may change.” There was thus good reason not to put any weight on this last, probably provisional, national figure. Then on the 31st May 2018 Agri SA released a report on farm attacks. This contained the following graph: The source given for the data is clearly “SAPS” (see arrow). The person compiling the graph had merged the data provided to Pieter Groenewald at the beginning of the month with other previously released SAPS statistics. Where they conflicted – for 2015/16 and 2016/17 – Agri SA went with the significantly lower figures from May. The Agri SA report commented: “When police statistics, as announced in Parliament for the past six years, are viewed more closely, it appears that farm attacks had increased while murders declined on a year-on-year basis.” The number of “47” is contained in the graph, but not in the text of the report. Despite Agri SA’s clear admonition to “treat farm attack statistics with caution”, News24 ran a massively hyped-up story the same day asserting that “Farm murders have decreased to their lowest level in more than 20 years, a report by agricultural organisation AgriSA has found.” It made the claim that “According to AgriSA’s statistics, farm murders decreased from 66 recorded incidents in 2016/2017 to 47 in 2017/2018. This was less than a third of the record highs recorded in the late 1990s, when 153 murders were recorded in 1997/1998.” In this way the questionable SAPS numbers released earlier that month were now magically transformed into gold standard statistics from Agri SA. As a Ratcatcher article (published within hours of the News24 report first appearing) noted, the SAPS data Agri SA had used for the past three years was not reliable, and the figure of “47” for 2017/18 was simply wrong. A quick and dirty analysis of the SAPS figures for three provinces revealed at least eight clear cut farm murder cases, reported in the press, which could not have been included in these figures. The article noted:
“Given that a brief news search could establish eight cases missed by the SAPS the true under-count must be substantial. The SAPS figures should also be more not less comprehensive than press reporting. The News24’s headline then is based upon a SAPS figure which was implausible to begin with, and which is provably wrong.” AfriForum, which collects its own data on farm murders and farm attacks, also vehemently disputed this figure. The assertion that there were only 47 farm murders in 2017/18 and therefore at their “lowest level in more than 20 years”, should have been quietly buried, and left to rest in peace from then on. Rise of a zombie factoid In late June 2018 however Jason Burke of the Guardian of London decided to disinter this claim, and the number on which it was based. In an article on the 27th June 2018 he stated that “Forty-seven farmers were killed in 2017-18, according to statistics compiled by AgriSA, an association of hundreds of agricultural associations across South Africa … The new lower totals contradict recent reports in Australian and other western media describing white farmers in South Africa facing “a surge in violence’.” The opening sentence of Burke’s piece contained three factual errors. It conflated farm murders with murders of farmers (not always the same thing), cited a figure that had been already shown to be false (47), and claimed that these statistics had been compiled by Agri SA (they were from the SAPS). This zombie-like factoid – that farm murders were at a “twenty year low” – began massively replicating itself after US President Donald Trump tweeted, following a Fox News broadcast by Tucker Carlson on looming land seizures in SA, that he had “asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.” In the subsequent rush to debunk Trump’s comments on farm murders this claim was repeatedly invoked by US and British publications, often linking back to Burke’s Guardian article as the source. For example an article in the New York Times on the 23rd August 2018 by Kimon de Greef and Palko Karasz stated that: “The number of killings of farmers, including farm workers, is at a 20-year low, 47 in the fiscal year 2017-18, according to research published in July by AgriSA, a farmers’ organization in South Africa.” This same claim was then repeated in an editorial in the publication denouncing Trump, which added that the “numbers have been declining steadily since peaking in 1998, when 153 were killed.” In an article for the Financial Times Joseph Cotterill stated that “Agri SA, a farmers’ organisation, said in May that farm murders were at their lowest level in two decades. There were 47 murders between 2017 and 2018 compared with 66 over the previous period, it said.” It was also credulously accepted by the American and British Fact-Checking establishment. The Washington Post Fact Checker wrote that “the government’s farm-murder statistic has been declining steadily from its peak in 2001-2002, when the total was 140. Separate figures from Agri SA show that murders of farmers are at a 20-year low, with 47 recorded in the year from April 2017 to March 2018 period, the Guardian reported.” The BBC’s “Reality Check” claimed that “AgriSA, an association of agricultural organisations, also records murders and attacks on farms. It found that in the year to April 2018, there were 47 murders, with their data showing a decline from a high in 1998, when 153 people were killed.” Politifact repeated the claim that “there were 47 farm murders in the 2017-18 financial year” and they “have been declining over time.” But to its (partial) credit it correctly attributed the source of this information to the SAPS, not AgriSA. The internet myth-busting website Snopes meanwhile reposted the AgriSA graph above and also stated that “the number of farm murders in South Africa hit a 30-year low point in 2017-18, according to a report released by the South African Agricultural Industry (AgriSA) that cited South African police data.” Then, at the end of August, Foreign Policy ran an article headlined “In Tacit Rebuke, U.S. Embassy in South Africa Rejects Trump Tweet: Internal cable cites report that farm murders in South Africa are at their lowest level in 19 years”. Robbie Gramer and Colum Lynch reported on the contents of a leaked cable to Washington DC from US diplomats in South Africa which was headed ““Despite Crime Epidemic, Farm Murders Down.” The authors reported that the cable had “cited a recent report by AgriSA, a nonprofit industry group that represents 70,000 commercial farmers, that estimated that there were 47 farm murders from 2017 to 2018, fewer than at any time in the past 19 years.” None of these journalists, diplomats or Fact Checkers though it worth cautioning that the number of 47 had long been shown (by a body-count) to be too low, or even that it was contested. Although implausible to begin with – and long disproven by the time it started feasting on the brains of British and American intellectuals – this factoid was apparently too convenient not to unleash upon readers as well. It was further invested with bogus authority by simply asserting that the number came from Agri SA, rather than highly provisional police figures. News24’s hyped up interpretation of Agri SA’s somewhat more cautious analysis were also presented as reflecting the latter organisation’s own view. End of an error On Tuesday the South African Police Service, during their press briefing, released updated figures for the number of recorded farm murders (though not attacks) for 2017/18. The SAPS presentation stated that there were, in fact, 62 farm murders last year, not 47. The SAPS added that 42 of the murders occurred on farms, 15 on small holdings and one at a cattle post. 46 victims were white. If one compares the provincial breakdown with the information released on the 3rd May there was an under-count of eighteen murders in eight provinces (three of which had been identified by the Ratcatcher) and an over-count of three in one (the North West.) |
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