Keynote address by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, MP, Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, BRICS Youth Summit, Durban, South Africa, 18 July 2023

18 July 2023

Thank you, Programme Director, Mr Waseem Carrim, NYDA CEO,

Acting Premier of the KwaZulu Natal Province, Ms Nomagugu Simelane,

Colleagues from South Africa’s National Executive present,

NYDA Executive Chairperson, Ms Asanda Luwaca and the NYDA Board,

Ambassador Anil Suklal, the BRICS Sherpa,

Representatives from all BRICS Member States,

Members of the Diplomatic Corps,

All distinguished guests

I would like to welcome you to the Southern tip of Africa and the Eastern Seaboard of our beautiful nation, the Republic of South Africa.

I am honoured to join you in this important BRICS YOUTH SUMMIT. I wish to extend a very warm South African welcome to all of our guests from BRICS nations and beyond.

This summit provides us with an all important platform to exchange insights, share experiences, and consolidate our positioning in the lead-up to the forthcoming meeting of BRICS Ministers responsible for Youth Affairs and the upcoming BRICS Summit.

We hold this meeting in accordance with South Africa’s BRICS Chairship theme:

“BRICS and African: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development, and Multilateralism.”

Mandela Day:

This summit starts on a very significant day, not just for South Africa, but all global citizens who celebrate and honor the life and legacy of our struggle stalwart and father of our democratic nation, uTata Nelson Mandela. We are also meeting a month and 2 days after from South Africa’s Youth Day, June 16.

Celebrating the 1996 Youth Day in Polokwane, President Mandela had this to say about the significance of the role that young people have played in shaping the trajectory of this nation:

“We owe it to the youth who perished in struggle on June 16 and in the many years that followed, to ensure that we achieve what we have set for ourselves: to build a better life for all South Africans. On that fateful day 20 years ago, you jolted the nation from its slumber, and rejected the slave education that the apartheid regime had implemented, with the hope of making Blacks accept their slavery. You changed the course of history, and accelerated the downfall of the apartheid system”.

I wish to repeat here today that every single one of you in this summit is sitting on the verge of a geopolitical revolution that is BRICS, and all of you are once again in the process of jolting the global community from its slumber. What we make of BRICS and what becomes of this alliance has the potential to change the course of history and accelerate the downfall of an unjust imperialist world order. BRICS is a breakaway from the past.

Your Summit, Our Expectations:

I hold each one of you in very high regard, and you have serious expectations on what could potentially come out of this crucial summit:

Firstly, in an increasingly polarised global environment, I expect your summit to be anti-imperialist. It is in the DNA of every single BRICS nation, historically and today, to be anti-imperialist at every turn.

I expect you to pay particular attention to skills, knowledge and cultural exchanges amongst BRICS youth in order to deepen and future proof this alliance. Urgent attention needs to be directed to joint skills development initiatives, with a particular focus on STEM. In the advent of the internet and digital transformation, skills and cultural exchange programmes are easier and cheaper. I expect to see your plans to learn each other’s languages as a fundamental tool of further integration and deepening of ties within BRICS.

I expect your summit to drive an in-depth and substantive understanding of your economic strengths as BRICS. of the BRICS nations has a competitive advantage. In Russia, you have a very strong energy and defence industry. In India you have an incredible ICT sector. In Brazil, you a very strong Agricultural sector. China remains an unmatched manufacturing and infrastructural hub. South Africa’s strength has a strong Mining and Tourism sector. Your summit should be able to connect entrepreneurs from Brasilia with those in Mumbai, those in Beijing with those in Johannesburg and Moscow. Beyond your commitment to BRICS, practical steps oh how you move forward with this is what we need.

All BRICS nations are blessed when it comes to oceans economy. From the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean and beyond, I expect your summit to reflect on the opportunities this presents for the future economic, energy, transformation and food security. When skilled across the oceans value chain, BRICS Youth should be in a position to future proof our geo-strategic interests, now and in future.

With regard to agriculture, I expect your summit to reflect on how, amongst ourselves, we should be able to produce what we consume and consume what we produce.

Your Immediate Responsibilities as BRICS Youth:

In order for BRICS to reach its full potential and achieve its revolutionary purpose, we need to locate it within its proper context. Consequently, I wish to take the time I have with you to outline what I believe are the most urgent responsibilities of youth within the BRICS alliance:

First, as BRICS Youth Leaders, you have the responsibility to gain a firm grip and understand the history of BRICS nations themselves. Closely study the history of India and China, understand the journey traveled by Brazil and the Russian Federation, and locate South Africa among these nations before the formation of BRICS.

As BRICS Youth Leaders, you have the responsibility to be historical enough to separate facts about BRICS from the dominant Eurocentric narratives of the world. These narratives are mere western representations of our nations aimed at reproducing old pattens of domination and control of the world at all cost. You need invest in an accurate version of your past in order to take the wheel and steer this BRICS train of freedom and multipolarity towards its logical and intended destination.

History is indeed a clock that we all must internalise to tell the geopolitical time of the day. The history of BRICS nations represents a compass for us to find ourselves on the map of human geography. Our past tells us where we are and who we are. But most importantly, our past tells us where we still must go and what we still must be.

Who are your traditional allies? What brought us together? What is it about this alliance that unsettles dominant global forces? You have to be able to respond cogently in no uncertain terms.

The history of BRICS is fundamentally a history of resistance against colonial conquest and imperial abuse. From Beijing to Delhi, from Brasilia to Saint Petersburg, a culture of resistance and the quest for self-determination is what brings us together. BRICS is not an accidental alliance.

The Pioneering Civilizations of BRICS Nations

As we host representatives of young people from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, bear in mind the enormous responsibility for our collective search for an alternative, equitable, and more humane society.

The world finds itself at a crossroads, and as the Global South and BRICS nations in particular, we are on the verge of an unprecedented geopolitical revolution. A revolution whose impact, if seized and conducted responsibly, will reverberate through generations and for centuries to come. Beyond the role of defining this revolution, oppressed people of the world are looking at us for alternative directions toward a more humane and collectively prosperous global community.

Importantly, you are standing on the shoulders of thousands of years of Pioneering Civilisations among individual BRICS Nations.

For example, the Chinese civilisation which is older than 5 000 years and has traversed a journey that presents ample lessons for the Global South. Over the past century, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has led China’s rise from the depths of colonial invasion to the 2nd largest economy in the world. In an era of widespread social and economic insecurity and widening disparities between and within nations, China has been exemplary in nurturing a system of meritocratic governance across its political stratum, the success of which can be seen in the country’s record levels of industrialisation, job creation, peaceful co-existence and the lifting millions of people out of poverty.

As a result, China has achieved and exceeded the poverty reduction targets set out by the United Nations Agenda 2030, a decade ahead of time. Remarkably, China has recorded this achievement while adhering to a national poverty benchmark that is higher than that applied by the World Bank. In his latest book titled “Has China Won?” Singaporean Scholar Dr Kishore Mahbubani notes that “under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the bottom 50% of China’s population have had their best thirty years in 3 000 years”.

Similarly, the Indian Civilisation , which also spans thousands of years, and the country’s rise and development from the ashes of colonialism should be looked at closely. Three decades ago, few imagined that India would rule the IT industry, and that of the top ten IT companies in the world, nearly half would be of Indian origin. Fewer of us imagined that Indian companies would be providing jobs globally, including in the west. The history, investment, and decisive leadership that went into making India a tech giant today is worth an in-depth analysis.

Brazil has a rich history pre-dating it’s occupation by the Europeans. Some of the earliest human remains that were found in the area of Pedro Leopoldo provide evidence of human habitation going back at least 11,000 years. The sophisticated pottery and evidence of mound building found by archeologists on the island provided the first evidence that a complex well-populated society with sophisticated settlements had existed on these islands.

Brazil has come a long way to overcome its colonial past to occupy its space in the galaxy of nations. Over the last 70 years in particular, the country’s economy has developed to become one of the top 10 largest economies in the world as one of the world giants of mining and beneficiation of mining resources through strategic industrialization, agriculture, and manufacturing, and a rapidly growing service sector. Brazil is the world’s primary source of coffee, oranges, and cassava (manioc) and a major producer of sugar, soy, and beef.

We also have much to learn from the rich history of Russian civilization which dates back more than a millennium. It was the largest and leading republic of the Soviet Union. Despite its current challenges, Russia is one of the world’s most industrialized countries in various sectors like machine-building, they manufacture steam boilers and turbines, electric generators, grain combines, automobiles, and electric locomotives. Russia is able to meet its demand for shipbuilding, electric-power-generating and transmitting equipment, consumer durables, machine tools, instruments, and automation components. Russia’s factories also produce armaments, including tanks, jet fighters, and rockets, which creates employment for its citizens.

Here in South Africa and most parts of the continent, we have to also reflect and share experiences on and learn from the history of wars of resistance that far predate the struggle against apartheid capitalism. As the continent, we are on a journey towards developing the continent to its full potential through the implementation of Agenda 2063, the Africa we want.

The purpose of the history of BRICS civilisations is to prepare you into responsible and effective handlers of power. Our present day reality point to the fact that past injustices, even when they appear to be distant in time , will continue to endure in people’s lives in both material and affective ways unless, and until, they are consciously and carefully addressed. In other words, it is only when you are armed with an undiluted sense of the history of the journey traveled by BRICS nations   that you will be able to cease the current moment and repair past injustices.

Mariam Makeba was more forthright about this point when she said:

“The conqueror writes history, they came, they conquered and they write. You don't expect the people who came to invade us to tell the truth about us. They will always write negative things about us. And they have to do that because they have to justify their invasion in all the countries.”

Secondly, as BRICS youth leaders, you have the responsibility to rally all of the Global South and all of Africa behind the win-win and mutually reinforcing vision of BRICS. The year 2023 marks three and a half decades (34 years) since the fall of the Berlin wall, and what many mistakenly thought was the end of the Cold War, we now know it was not. This was a conflict from which the Hegemonic West emerged with the strength to impose developmental models that, in the main, succeeded in reproducing fundamental disparities between and within nations. In all of this, the Global South and Africa, in particular, have been at the receiving end.

This year also marks the 60th anniversary of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), an important reminder of what this continent has endured and continues to endure. The era of BRICS should thus be seen as a necessary continuation of this fight to write our own developmental script and the fight to determine our destiny without any form of neocolonial supervision.

The dominant Bretton Woods system and its subsequent neoliberal order have been based on rules that were not only imposed on us but have also been strictly applied only to the extent that they benefit Western corporations regardless of the immediate and/or future detriment of developing countries. Moreover, the West’s expressed belief in the developmental models they imposed on us has been a case of do, as I say and not as I do. Each of the Bretton Woods Institutions (WTO,WB,IMF) has served the enduring and hegemonic principles of unipolarity, principally in pursuit of Western dominance and control of wealth-producing resources from the developing world.

In their design, the development policies that have subsequently been imposed on the developing world have mostly resembled what Ha-Joon Chang called Predatory Samaritans’ “baited hook” that is, a carefully constructed debt trap that co-opts our developmental aspirations and, under the cloak of inclusion, and exploit our individual and collective repayment struggles

The evidence is clear, we have had centuries of a raw and mostly inhumane deal, a deal that BRICS should bring to an abrupt end. As people who will inherit BRICS nations, I wish to stress that multipolarity is not an option, it is a break with an unjust past and a precondition for us to live as sovereign people.

Thirdly, consistent with our theme, you have the responsibility to make the concept of BRICS relatable to people from all walks of life, particularly those who remain at the margins of society. The BRICS concept must not be an elite one. Is there a relationship between BRICS and the price of bread in the streets of Soweto?

You must be able to explain and give meaning to multipolarity and multilateralism, beyond common jargon. In this way, you will be able to demonstrate, in simple terms, the potential socioeconomic and cultural benefits of this alliance to every man and woman in the streets. BRICS is as good as people who believe in it; beyond that, it is a concept. BRICS and its Multipolar outlook is fundamentally about repairing an unjust past and preparing for a future of collective well-being and prosperity among equals.

Multipolarity is a departure from the dominant reality of a unipolar world order, in which there is only one dominant power. In a multipolar world, power is dispersed, and no one country has the ability to dictate the international agenda.

The rationale behind multipolarity is that it promotes stability and reduces the likelihood of conflicts. When there is no single dominant power, each great power must negotiate and cooperate with others to achieve its national interests. The presence of multiple centers of power also means that no single power has the ability to impose its will on others, which can help prevent conflicts and promote peaceful resolution of disputes.

In a unipolar world, marked by the supremacy of a singular superpower, we are having to resist a tendency to reduce the developing world into satellite states of the superpower. We are resisting the rise of hegemonic tendencies, whereby the dominant nations draw on their colonial legacies to impose their values, political systems and economic policies on the Global South , thereby undermining our sovereignty, and often using their hard power to crush resistance. Through multipolar approaches to international relations , we are able to reassert the checks and balances in global governance, against unilateral impunity.

The fourth point I wish to make is that, for us, as South Africa, our passion for BRICS must run alongside our drive for the integration of both Africa and Africans, those at home, and in the diaspora. Through African integration, we should seek to take back the slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism that took away from us: an African frame of mind.

The mere point of unity among Africans places us in the arena of world power and great potential for the future we want. It is from this arena of world power, in an evolving and increasingly contested geopolitical reality, that African self-determination and self-reliance can be attained without sacrificing our way of life. Our forefathers knew then what we must know now that only those who unite and command the wealth-producing resources of the land can be considered truly sovereign.

It is therefore not surprising that African integration was a central theme of the conference that founded the OAU.

Addressing the sitting that founded the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on the 25th May 1963, President Kwame Nkrumah made a statement that should be repeated this afternoon:

“Africa must unite or perish …The struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence … We are fast learning that political independence is not enough to rid us of the consequences of colonial rule. Without necessarily sacrificing our sovereignties, we can forge a political union based on defence, foreign affairs and diplomacy and a common citizenship, a monetary zone and a central bank. We must unite in order to achieve full liberation.

The Fifth reminder I wish to leave you with is that master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. As BRICS Youth Leaders, you are responsible for writing a new developmental script. Which script must include a blueprint for integration and interconnection of people and systems across the BRICS nations and its partners

Integration should mean integrated Finance, ICT for communication, trading, and accessibility of public health services by bridging the distance between national systems. Our integrated ICT strategies should connect our youth digitally, enable cultural exchanges and leverage the power and ability of the creative industry to generate millions of jobs across BRICS.

You also have the intellectual responsibility to break society from their seemingly acceptance of rentier capitalism as an accepted orthodoxy. BRICS Youth leaders should lead the charge against this and other forms of exploitation where we literally have to pay to survive - you need to imagine a society where everyone has basic socio-economic security.

The Sixth point I wish to stress is that you have the responsibility to end the manufacturing of consent through media monopolies currently engaged in mainstream misinformation and disinformation campaigns. I expect you to take this matter very seriously. Ongoing misinformation about and against BRICS itself should motivate you all to imagine new and alternative media platforms and narratives that do not reduce us into subjects or even objects. We need alternative forms of conscious journalism out of this summit.

Finally, I expect your summit to reimagine an Alternative Banking and Financing Architecture for the global south. Productive societies require productive sectors of the economy, industrialised around manufactured finished goods and away from the shipping of raw materials. We currently have a structural problem of a banking industry that is not only greatly concentrated and monopolised, but also in many ways does not serve our interests.

Those who prefer us shipping raw materials will not fund our manufacturing plants, they will not fund a rail system that connects the content for the movement of people, goods and services. We need an alternative public banking and finance system beyond the dominant one, and we need it urgently. The New Development Bank is thus a step in the right direction but we need to domesticate alternative banking as a matter of urgency.

For example, in South Africa we are forced to kneel before 5 banks. This represents some of the most concentrated banking systems in the world. The greater concentration of banking to the big 5 has clearly undermined accountability, hindered development, stifled competition and passed on the cost burden to citizens. Without control over finance and banking, only those projects that converge with the interest of private interests will be funded while the interests of the communities we serve take a backseat.

An alternative world based on principles of social solidarity and multipolarity is within our reach, the dominant order has reached its sell by date, let's change gears and ensure a decisive break with our untenable past.

I thank you.

Issued by Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, 18 July 2023