The Brics summit in Johannesburg this week is a giant talk shop. Go back to the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement in the late 1950s and you’ll find much of today’s grand talk about a New World Order lying, word for word, under decades of dust. So why should things be different now? It is hard to find anything concrete, or even interesting, in any of the rhetoric in the lead-up to the summit. There’ll be no new currency to trip up the dollar. And how will the BRICS decide on new membership? What are the rules? Do human rights play a part? If the do how are the Chinese and Russians members? And what about trade? Ramaphosa said on Sunday night we had exported R450bn worth of goods to China, the US, Germany, Japan and India. What he didn’t say is that the Brics members in that list trade like they were our new colonisers — they take a minerals and send us back the finished goods. Still, lets hope they all have a great party.

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