Khandani Msibi laments ANC posture on BRICS-West tensions

South African businessman, Khandani Msibi has lamented the governing African National Congress (ANC) for not taking the BRICS alliance seriously, and adopting a position of neutrality amid political pressure exerted by the West.

Msibi made the remarks on twitter following the Gauteng High Court’s decision to enforce the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) directive for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be arrested on charges of war crimes for the alleged abduction of Ukrainian children.

“The ANC sees Brics like its conferences, where they have meaningless engagements that are forgotten as soon as it’s over. Brics is a platform to contest global US hegemony, it’s no game,” the businessman said.

South Africa’s National Director for Public Prosecutions (NDPP) on 17 July 2023 received a formal request from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development to issue a warrant to arrest Putin.

“Issuing the warrant of arrest for Putin proved that we don’t belong to this group of nations. We need to decide which side we are and move on, there are consequences for choosing either.

“Choosing the west has immediate benefits (but we need balls to reject their energy dictation to us) and long-term risks as Brics is growing fast. Choosing Brics has immediate negative consequences as our economy is western and there is potential for future risk as Brics dominance grows,” Msibi explained.

However, the worst thing that South Africa could do, according to Msibi, is to continue “trying to play both sides long,” and warned that “we could end up pissing off both groups and never trusted on either side.”

Meanwhile, the Presidency on Wednesday confirmed that President Putin will not be attending the 15th Summit of BRICS nations in Johannesburg on August 22-24. Putin will be represented by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Moscow has stated on several occasions that the decisions of the ICC are legally void as Russia is not a party to the ICC Rome Statute and bears no obligations under it.

The Russian Federation has also argued that “the ICC has proven itself flawed by its willingness to carry out pseudo-justice at the behest of the West, and its operation has nothing to do with justice.”

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