African Growth and Opportunity Act

• For China, the US is the source of global insecurity.
• The growing tensions pose a political and economic challenge for South Africa.
• I argue that South Africa should not choose between its BRICS or EU and US partnerships.
• The west remains economically significant for South Africa, but the BRICS bloc is important for South Africa’s economic adaptability.

The BRICS bloc

• At its 2011 summit, the bloc called for an end to the long reign of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency (de-dollarisation).
• The emergence of BRICS not only strengthens south-south relations, it weakens the inequality that characterises north-south relations.
• Read more:
  South Africa and Russia: President Cyril Ramaphosa's foreign policy explained

  The BRICS bloc serves as a counterweight to some of the excesses of US unilateralism that’s been a feature of global governance since the end of the Soviet Union in 1989.

• The emergence of the BRICS bloc has overshadowed the G7+ meetings while centralising the G20 as an international platform for political and economic coordination.

South Africa and the west

• South Africa is the largest US and EU trading partner in Africa, with the US totalling R289 billion (about US$16 billion in 2021) and the EU totalling a trade of R699 billion (about US$ 38 billion in 2021.
• South Africa also benefits from the preferential access to US markets for some of its exports in terms of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA.

BRICS’ growing economic importance

• Trade and investment links between South Africa and China have improved too.
• Investments from South Africa into BRICS countries have surged since it became a bloc member.
• And China is an important trading partner for South Africa standing at R479 billion (about US$26 billion), above the US.

Navitaging anxieties

• Of course, the problem of South Africa’s strained relations with the west is not South Africa’s.
• Read more:
  How values, interests and power must shape South Africa's foreign policy

  For its own interests, South Africa must carefully navigate western anxieties about BRICS, and demonstrate that there is a common future for both the west and others in a multipolar world.

• Penxing Gabon SARL owns and operates a sawmill and laminate wood flooring manufacturing facilities in Gabon, Africa capable of producing 100,000 cubic meters of sawn timber and 2.5 million square meters of wood flooring per year.
• A recent appraisal of Penxing Gabon SARL valued the company at $30 million.
• When operating at full capacity, the Company estimates that the Penxing manufacturing facilities could produce $150 million worth of laminating flooring and other wood products which would generate $30 million in profit.
• "It gives me great pleasure to announce the gifting of my $30 million company to Caravelle.

• A leader can use soft power by exerting economic, cultural or reputational influence.
• His hard power aside, soft power is something Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame possesses in spades.
• One of Africa’s long serving leaders, Kagame wields soft power to deal with international criticism of his authoritarianism and human rights abuses.

The source of Kagame’s soft power

• Kagame’s phenomenal power – both soft and hard – has its origin in the horrific genocide of 1994 when about 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were massacred within 100 days in Rwanda.
• Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front overthrew the regime responsible for the genocide in three months.
• Ever since, he has enjoyed in the west the sort of deference accorded to Israeli governments, also viewed as the heir of survivors of genocide.
• When the US government punished Rwanda by removing it from the African Growth and Opportunity Act he stood his ground.

How Kagame uses his soft power

• Kagame has used this soft power to deploy hard power to accumulate more soft power.
• Though officially labelled as peacekeepers, the Rwandan troops also guarded the oil and gas installations belonging to French company Total Energies against an extremist Islamist insurgency.
• Soon, a civil engineering subsidiary of Crystal Ventures won contracts for clearing and structural work on the Mozambique gas fields.

Kagame vs critics

• It also carries out assassinations, reportedly, of opponents who have never taken up arms against the regime.
• The Rusesabagina abduction marked the first serious dent in western admiration for Kagame.
• Kagame will have to learn what the limits and consequences of soft power are.

• Five years after his last official visit to the United States, the President of the Republic of Congo, supported by his closest advisers as well as eight ministers, will remain in the American capital until December 16.
• This visit also aims to advance the Congo on several strategic issues.
• His Excellency Denis Sassou-Nguesso, President of the Republic and Head of State declared: This agreement demonstrates not only the viability of our economy, but also Congo's capacity for diplomatic projection.
• We thank the American State for its invitation and wish all of our peers an excellent Summit.