South Africa has received an official invitation to join the BRIC economic development block, comprised of emerging giants Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

In short, we’ve just been called over to the bleachers by the cool kids, and offered a cigarette.

Sure, if we take that loose our clean-cut friends will probably be pissed. First they’ll be a little aghast, then they’ll be smug, after which their smugness will turn to shock, and anger. A few days later they’ll come to us, and entreat us with ernest tones – they’re really worried about us. When we tell them that we’re pretty happy, and that they don’t understand our new friends (“They’re not like that – you don’t know them like I do!”), they’ll tell spell out a prophecy of doom, and pretend to write us off, secretly hoping that we’ll come crawling back to them.

But that isn’t entirely true, is it?

Because BRIC isn’t an economic bloc, in truth. It’s an anagram, invented in 2001 by Goldman-Sachs economist, Jim O’Neil to describe a hypothetical economic bloc of rapidly developing nations that he forecast would eclipse the US as the global economic and geopolitical  iron-man.

It took those four countries, who have since adopted that anagram, a total of eight years before they held their first summit, in Russia.

So why has South Africa been invited to BRIC? Our annual GDP falls woefully short of the BRIC gold standard of 10%, and our labour-friendly policies hold no promise of cheap labour en masse – generally regarded as one of the sure-fire kickstarts to an industrialised developing economy (cue China).

Malaysia, Vietnam, Nigeria or Mexico would be much more logical bets for new additions to BRIC. So the question must be begged, what are BRIC playing at by toying with BRICS?

While South Africa is probably betting on improved trade ties and a rosier standing in global economic debate (the Rand exchange has already experienced a sharp jump since the breaking of the news), BRIC’s short term goals are not to extract the same sort of benefit from South Africa. They’re playing political, geopolitical.

Rapidly developing nations need resources, and lots of them.

Africa remains resource-rich, and wholly under-developed, which is why Nigeria was overlooked. West Africa’s major resource base – oil – is mired in a dirty man’s game of prospectors, tappers, multinational corporations and rotten bureaucrats. It’s not worth getting in to, the margins are too low.
A bridge too far with the speculation? Maybe. But the cool kids were never sincere, and they’re not about to change their tack for the fresh meat in braces – us.