The five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) share a history and connectedness that can spearhead the group into the future.
This is according to Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Ebrahim Patel, who was speaking on the first day of the 15th BRICS Summit held at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg.
“It is through trading, through travel and through dialogue that friendships and lasting relationships are formed. And it is remarkable how connected our people, our histories and our economies in BRICS are.
“We are connected by history, but not only by history. Today we look forward to matters relating to the future. Today’s event is held in this industrial heartland of the African continent. An economy with major industrial strengths in traditional sectors but also with technologies in the space and satellite economy, in the digital sector, in new green technologies and advanced manufacturing,” he said.
The Minister said the colonial period and, predating that, trade between the countries and the African continent, has forged ties that have bound the five countries through centuries.
“We have more than 2000 years of trading between Asia and Africa. More than 1000 years ago there was a people who lived in this, the southern part of Africa near banks of the Limpopo. They traded with the outside world with India, Arabia and China – selling ivory and gold, buying pottery from China and glass needs from Persia.
“Our histories converged as large land masses were colonised. Indian slave people were brought from the Malabar Coast to South Africa in the 1600s and 1700s and later in the 1800s, large numbers of Indian indentured labourers were brought to develop South Africa’s sugar industry,” he said.
Minister Patel added that even Russia and Brazil share common moments in history.
“The age of colonialism saw too the start of the industrial scale trans-Atlantic slave trade taking captured Africans across the waters in cramped ships and the modern state of Brazil emerged. And the spirit of Africa is alive in Brazillian culture, the warmth of its people, the music and the samba that had its origins in Angola and Congo.
“Russian history too contains connections. The great Russian writer Alexander Pushkin’s great-grandfather was an African. Abram Petrovich Gannibal, abducted from Cameroon, taken via Constantinople and eventually taken to Russia where he became a nobleman,” Patel said.
He highlighted that during the fight for liberation in South Africa, the BRICS partner countries opened their doors to South Africans fleeing persecution or preparing for the fight against the racist Apartheid government.
“During the struggle against Apartheid, many South Africans stayed in Russia, in China, in India as with many parts of the world, we received material assistance in the struggle for freedom in our land,” Patel said.
SAnews.gov.za