After many years of lack of broad-based civil society coalitions, there now exist new spaces and places in South Africa for progressive civil society to reclaim a unity of strategic purpose and action.

In order to prevent the BRICS from ending up as a talking shop they will have to work hard at forestalling the potential for them to become fierce competitors.

It is necessary to pose what role do the BRICS as semi-peripheries play in the internationalization of production; to what extent are they anti-systemic and anti-imperialist? It is necessary to rekindle a new strategy of non-alignment by the BRICS to not only reject the military hegemony of the North, but to enable a larger degree of maneuver for national development.

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) that was launched in 2001 is revealing for showing the four other BRIC countries how South Africa seeks to serve as ‘a gateway for investment on the continent.’ From Nepad to Brics, South Africa’s toll at the ‘gateway to Africa’ is high, and there is very little to show for it.

The weaknesses and obstacles confronting the BRICS are explored. However, the elites of the BRICS exist comfortably within the prevailing global world capitalist system and remain more of a spectre rather than a real alliance

The ANC embraced neo-liberal capitalism unreservedly in 1994. Similar to the 1884 Berlin conference, the forthcoming BRICS summit in Durban will seek to divide the continent with one common objective: efficient resource extraction through export-oriented infrastructure for continued capitalist exploitation that will enrich a minority and not the masses.

Although at this early stage the BRICS partnership raises more questions than answers, engaged citizens should help shape its agenda. The bloc may well turn out to be one of the single biggest developments of our era

The academics believe BRICS have covered significant ground since the inception of the partnership and that they must build upon the progress made by consolidating the agreements reached and the achievements registered and by making further concrete proposals for realising the unfolding objectives of the bloc

The BRICS are catalysts and drivers of a multipolar world, aiming to demolish the hegemony of the West in global affairs.

There seem to be three narratives about BRICS. The first is promotional and mainly comes from government and allied intellectuals; the second perspective is uncertainty, typical of fence-sitting scholars and NGOs; and the third is highly critical, from forces sometimes termed the ‘independent left.’

Despite much optimism, there are clear indications that BRICS lacks the capacity to function as a powerful and innovative new force in the realm of global politics and governance

The fact that emerging powers are increasingly banding together and promulgating policies that challenge the hegemony of the United States and the institutions that have been produced by the European and Asian core powers indicates that semi-peripherality does not just reproduce the existing global hierarchy.

In view of the under-achievement record of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), global policy makers have set out on a search for a more veritable replacement ahead of its 2015 expiration date

The conflict in the Western Sahara is inadequately represented by terms such as ‘stagnated’, ‘frozen’ and ‘locked’, which contribute to obscure the reality that this conflict represents the continuation of French, US and Spanish colonial practices in Africa.

© A WWhen refugees turn out to vote and when they raise their voices in participatory meetings or in their homes to criticise their government, they show how much they value the possibility for democratic participation.

Unlike the elections of 2007, the recent elections in Kenya avoided massive bloodshed and gave victory to the Jubilee Coalition. An analysis of the significance of the elections is given and it is argued that political power cannot be monopolized by one section of the capitalist class

The UN Security Council Resolution 2093 adopted in Somalia on 6 March 2013 is critically examined for its achievements, opportunities and the challenges that remain for nation building to gain permanence in the country

The great Bolivarian is gone – which means the U.S. will soon escalate its destabilization campaign against his country. ‘Washington hopes that Venezuelan socialism cannot survive without Chávez.’ But the U.S. cannot roll back the movement that Chávez did so much to ignite, ‘the dark awakening in the barrios, favelas, rural villages and native highlands of the continent.’

Hugo Chavez may have helped to inspire social democratic revolutions across South America in preference to the fruitless decades of violent armed struggles

‘Chávez holds a useful mirror against which to assess the extent to which the ANC, the South African Communist Party and other African national liberation movements have long abandoned any hope, belief in, and commitment to socialism given their active political agency to maintain and reproduce capitalism’