Mr Chairman, let me immediately express from our side of the House our pleasure at the fact that Prof Karabus may well be returning to our shores sooner than expected.
The DA endorses much of what the Minister has said to this House and believes that we should accept it in the spirit in which she came to this House.
The aim of Brics to achieve peace, security, development and co-operation is laudable, and its aim to contribute significantly to the development of humanity and establish a more equitable and fair world order deserves the support of this House.
The Brics group is a product of today's global power shifts. The constituent countries represent more than a quarter of the earth's land mass, are home to 45% of the world's population, constitute around 30% of the world's GDP and have half of all foreign exchange and gold reserves.
The potential therefore for it to be a growing force in global, economic and political affairs cannot be underestimated; likewise its potential to evolve into a major instrument in shaping the architecture of global governance.
Brics, more importantly, has the potential to be a major development tool for South Africa, as well as the African continent. In this context, we welcome the Minister's announcement of an imminent Brics development bank. This is indeed a positive outcome. Multilateral development banks and the credit lines they provide are important conduits of investment, growth and development. As Lyal White of the Gordon Institute of Business noted, they provide the glue behind economic integration and reassurance for companies seeking deeper commercial engagement in developing regions. They also encourage policy co-ordination that includes a developmental dimension with commercial actors involved.
But if Brics is to realise its full potential as a political and economic international actor, it has to find a common identity. It has to find a unifying set of values to underpin and drive its strategic agenda. Given that the Brics countries have very different political systems, economic systems and national goals, this is difficult.
Kuseni Dlamini of the SA Institute of International Affairs makes the point that Brics' soft power as an organisation would be immeasurably enhanced if its set of values had universal appeal and embraced concepts such as democracy, human rights, transparency, accountability, equality, the rule of law, etc.
South Africa, in summit deliberations, needs to encourage Brics to evolve in that direction. After all, these are the values enshrined in our Constitution - the very values that gave us a great deal of moral authority in the past and enhanced our soft power in multilateral organisations.
For Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, the Brics grouping serves as a forum to underscore their and our rising political clout and showcases their and our emergence as global actors. China needs no such recognition. It is a global power with a global reach, a reach soon to be enhanced by the Brics development bank over which it will, no doubt, have full control.
Lending and trading in China's currency, the Renminbi, is likely to boost China's international standing further and expand its currency's international role; this at a time when it is under pressure for manipulating the value of the Renminbi to maintain export competitiveness.
China's undervalued currency and hidden export subsidies have been systematically undermining manufacturing in other Brics countries, especially India and Brazil, as well as our own. We in South Africa are painfully aware of this as more recently witnessed in the textile industry, the glass industry and the agricultural processed products industry.
South Africa needs to use its position in Brics to motivate China to reform its position in this regard. And I sincerely hope that at the Africa Leadership Retreat, African leaders will actually raise this as a critical point in respect of China.
Lamido Sanusi, the Governor of Nigeria's Central Bank, has no illusions about China's role in Africa. In an article in the Financial Times of London last week, he reflected on Africa's anaemic industrial sector, which he said was being battered by cheap Chinese imports. African manufacturing, he noted, had declined from 12,8% to 10,5% of regional GNP.
He had tough words to say, stating that China was a major contributor to the deindustrialisation of Africa and thus African development. China, he said, takes from us primary goods and sells us manufactured goods. This, he said, by the way, was also the essence of colonialism.
President Zuma, two weeks ago, told Western companies to stop warning against the embrace of China. China, he said, is doing business in a particular way and we think we can benefit from that. However, he did add, citing Africa's experience of colonialism, that we must be very, very careful. We endorse this sentiment. Indeed, we need to be very, very careful.
We are hopeful that Brics can serve as a catalyst for global institutional reform. Existing international arrangements have remained virtually static, not responding to the changing distribution of global power. China once again needs to be enticed into a common position. While it is happy to endorse change in respect of the global financial architecture, it remains steadfastly opposed to the enlargement of the UN Security Council's permanent membership. It wishes to be Asia's sole country with a permanent seat, thwarting India's ambitions.
These are tough issues, but if Brics is to achieve its full potential, I believe that South Africa needs to be in the vanguard of putting these issues on the table in a constructive way. It is only then that Brics will fulfil its real potential as a developmental mechanism, defy its naysayers, and become a real force in international, economic and political affairs. I thank you. [Applause.]