An economical truth

There is obviously a great deal that South Africa can learn from her new economic BFFs (Best Friends Forever) - Brazil, Russia, India and China - when it comes to transforming a developing country into an economic and political powerhouse.

I am not persuaded by the seemingly fashionable argument that forging closer ties with Brics - especially China - instead of what some now call "the sicks", the US and the EU, would inevitably put our country and continent under the yoke of new colonialism.

There are serious dangers associated with China's involvement on the continent, which in some cases might be predatory.

But much of the hysterical talk of new colonialism borders on Sinophobia.

There is nothing wrong with South Africa and the rest of the continent entering into mutually beneficial partnerships with the Bric countries and other emerging economic powerhouses - as long as we enter those relationships with our eyes peeled.

If this week's Brics Summit - currently being held in Durban - results in real steps that will change the current trend, in which Africa is seen only as a source of raw material and an export market for cheap Chinese manufactured goods, South Africa would have scored a major victory.

But as much as Brics carries the hope of new exciting opportunities for an Africa that is yet to reach its full economic potential, its member countries' ascendency to the status of rising powers has not been without its problems.

Chief among these is corruption.

In almost all of the Brics member countries, corruption has become so endemic that some now fear that it has become a threat to the long-term stability of the states.

China's economic development, for instance, has been coupled by the rise of "red hat" capitalists - individuals who became filthy rich through connections to the ruling Communist Party leaders and senior government officials.

Brazil's impressive growth - which has seen the South American country reduce the wealth gap between rich and poor - is blighted by endless corruption cases involving powerful political leaders and influential business personalities.

The same can be said of India.

The mysterious death this past weekend of 67-year-old Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky once again shone the spotlight on Russia and how some of her citizens became super-rich in a very short space of time, using cowboy methods, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Berezovsky, who once famously described politics as "the best investment", profited immensely from his close association with democratic Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin.

He was also instrumental in installing Vladimir Putin as Yeltsin's successor. But the two soon fell out, forcing Berezovsky to flee to exile in England, where he eventually died.

In South Africa and elsewhere on the continent there are worrying signs that we are rapidly following in the same direction - even if our corruption has not reached the proportions of the Russian oligarchs.

We should not be aiming to emulate them.

Instead we should use the experiences of these countries to learn how to escape such pitfalls.

As much as Brics provides us with an opportunity to enter into a much fairer trade regime than the one developing countries often suffered under during the old economic order, not every development in these rising global powers is good for us.

Let us use the close ties to learn how to avoid the harmful side of our new friends' development.