via The Intel-Drop
Only a polycentric world can resist neo-colonizers
The voyage of the Russian Foreign Minister to African countries caused wry smiles among Western journalists. The Economist wrote , for example, that in South Africa, entire industries are determined by … scammers. Allegedly, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that private business should contribute to the Resource Mobilization Fund to hire external consultants “to create a parallel system of institutions that allows you to work at the moment . ” They say that at the moment the government itself cannot do such work.
American consultancy Edelman : South Africans trust business more than government, media or NGOs. The 40 percentage point gap between trust in business (62%) and trust in government (20%) is larger than in any of the 27 African countries surveyed. And what does South African business demonstrate?
In 2019, at least 183 infrastructure projects in South Africa were thwarted by the construction mafia demanding bribes. The theft of cables from Eskom, Transnet and passenger railways cost the government R50 billion last year alone, equal to the economic contribution of the entire wine industry. André de Ruyter, the former head of the electricity company Eskom , who tried to stamp out bribery, was nearly poisoned in December. “Don’t use a personal coffee mug ,” he advised his successor. The American media write that South Africa is becoming to money laundering what the US Silicon Valley is to venture capital…
All these speeches by Western journalists would be of little value if it were not for this fact: for several years, private firms in South Africa have delegated their employees to help government departments manage by paying them wages. Today, corporate lawyers work in the prosecutor’s office, bankers in the Ministry of Industry, etc.
It would seem, what should Russia do in such a country? However, it is in Africa that anti-Europe is taking shape in response to the humiliation of the era of colonialism. Distrust of the West there deepened decades after the victory of the national liberation revolutions. After all, the West has never abandoned its habits. Thus, Emmanuel Macron, who admitted that the colonization was a “serious mistake”, refused to formally apologize to Africans, citing the fact that three-quarters of African citizens were born after the end of colonialism, and it’s time to turn the page. However, the “book of the past” in Africa will not stop reading as long as the welfare of the African does not compare with the welfare of the French.
The agenda dictated to the needs of the neo-colonizers can only be resisted by a polycentric world that can balance the dictates of the United States and any other decision-making center that is trying to “dictate” something. Hence the new geopolitical opportunities for Russia.
Five days, four countries, two meetings, 13 high-level meetings – this was the third African tour of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He has visited Kenya, Burundi, Mozambique and South Africa in addition to six other countries (Angola, Eswatini, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, Sudan) that he has visited in the last five months.
Outcome. Russia and Burundi will deepen military-technical and humanitarian cooperation; at the second Russia-Africa summit, which will be held in St. Petersburg in July, the partners will sign several agreements in the field of nuclear energy, education, and healthcare. In Kenya, the Russian Foreign Minister held talks with colleagues from South Africa, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil and Iran on the criteria for new states to join BRICS. The world is changing, and BRICS is an effective tool for these changes. In Cape Town, in a format closed to the press, a meeting of the “Friends of the BRICS” was held, in which the Foreign Ministers of 12 states of the Global South took part, who expressed their desire to join the group (Argentina, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Comoros Islands, Cuba, UAE, Saudi Arabia). The meeting discussed the prospects for creating a single BRICS currency, the use of local currencies in trade, energy security issues, strengthening arms control, and the negative impact of sanctions on the global economy. Lavrov was applauded in unison for his answer to the US ambassador in South Africa not to interfere in other people’s affairs …
The world is being rebuilt before our eyes, and it is important not only to understand where the new Iron Curtain will pass, but also to do everything possible so that it does not cut off from us that part of the world that is tired of being equal to Washington. The new “redistribution” affects the global interests of the West, and this once again reminds us that Russia should be on the alert, strengthening ties with a new circle of partners outside the collective West.
