Cape Town - South Africa's invitation to join the exclusive Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) grouping has been welcomed by many but some analysts caution that the country needs to tread carefully if it is to avoid being taken advantage of by its much larger fellow BRIC members.
Last month, South Africa was invited by the BRIC (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China) to join the grouping and for President Jacob Zuma to attend its next summit to be held in Beijing in April.
South Africa, which is ranked as the 27th largest economy according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is dwarfed by China, the second biggest economy in the world after the US; Brazil the eighth biggest economy; India, which is ranked 11th and Russia the 12th largest economy. .
Mzukisi Qobo, who heads the emerging powers programmes at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), warns that it is important for the South African government to devise an effective foreign affairs strategy if the country is to benefit from being a BRIC member.
He believes that there has been no sign - even in the Department of International Relations and Co-operation's White Paper on Foreign Policy submitted to Cabinet last year - that the South African government has held a serious process to map out how it will contribute to and benefit from being on the informal BRIC forum.
But the department stands firm that it has has developed a strategy on how it will relate to other members of BRIC.
International Relations Deputy Director-General for Public Diplomacy, Clayson Monyela, says the department has also looked at how it will use its BRIC membership to forge a new foreign policy strategy.
The department has also studied a number of key areas that BRIC countries are involved in, including their respective development banks, their role in bilateral meetings and G20 meetings, involvement of civil society and research institutions.
A Standard Bank research paper, released in November last year, predicted that the BRIC's share of Africa's total trade would increase from one-fifth to one-third in the next five years, with China making up more than half of all trade with the continent.
Some who say China's inroads into Africa may represent a new plundering of Africa might remain sceptical of South Africa's invitation to join the BRIC grouping, arguing it may signal a new run on the country from BRIC member countries.
But, Standard Bank chief economist, Goolam Ballim, believes that the move does not represent a new threat of neocolonialism in Africa. Ballim does, however, caution that South Africa needs to "keep its eyes wide open" when it attends the BRIC summit in April.
He says the risk if South Africa did not bargain hard, was that other, more sizeable BRIC members could take advantage of the country and the continent as a whole - all the more so as Africa lacks cohesive partnerships.
African countries have to steer away from the perception that BRICS would "lean more sympathetically" to them when it came to trade and economic issues.
South Africans have to realise that membership in the BRIC forum will not result in an automatic inflow of billions of rands in foreign direct investment, Ballim warns.
He says foreign investors are particularly astute and have a qualified mandate that precludes them from being tripped by the "veneer of BRIC".
Despite concern that South Africa could lose out to other BRIC members when it came to trade and investments on the continent, an earlier Standard Bank research paper released in July last year, titled "South Africa: leading or lagging the BRICS' thrust in Africa?" argued that despite increased trade by BRIC countries to Africa - particularly China - South Africa was still in a better position.
The report pointed out that South Africa still had historical and logistical advantages over Southern Africa when compared to other BRIC members and that the proposed merger of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), Southern African Development Community (SADC) and East African Community (EAC) trading blocs, would support the country's move to increase regional trade.
Building on the benefits of regional integration would remain key to South Africa exacting great benefit from being part of the BRIC club, says emerging markets expert Martyn Davies.
Davies, the chief executive of Frontier Advisory, argues that the "S" in "BRICS" should really represent SADC, which had a market of over 250 million people - bigger than that of Russia and Brazil.
He says one way to speed up regional integration is to integrate capital markets by, for example, opening the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) up to include companies in the entire SADC region.
He says companies based outside of South Africa stood to benefit from such a move, particularly as 95 percent of portfolio investment inflows on the continent were to the JSE.
Davies dismisses those skeptics that may interpret South Africa's invitation to join the BRIC forum as a bid by its existing members to re-colonialise Africa, adding that more than anything, China's demand for resources had helped at least triple growth on the continent.
Similarly, Professor Steven Friedman, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, says he was not convinced that China's invitation to South Africa to join the BRIC forum was based solely on an attempt by members to take advantage of Africa.
He points out that China and India have demonstrated that they are very capable of forging business links on the continent without the help of South Africa. Added to this was the very "ambivalent attitude" that the rest of the continent held towards South Africa, he explains.
"South Africa would gain more from being in BRIC than BRIC members would gain from us," says Friedman.
Despite this, he says the other BRIC members still saw a significant benefit in South Africa being a part of the exclusive club.
He points out that while the continent has about five percent of the economy, it produced 26 percent of its output.
"They want us in, as they see us as an economy with immense potential, given support," says Friedman.
Analysts point out that Africa's most populous state, Nigeria, has the potential to pass South Africa's economy soon.
A report, "The World in 2050", released earlier this month, predicted Nigeria's growth would average 7.9 percent between 2009 and 2050 - compared to South Africa's 5 percent.
Nigerian Ayodele Akanbi, a senior economist at Pan-African Capital, says one could not compare Nigeria with South Africa.
He believes Nigeria's economy should be ahead of South Africa's if it were able to "get itself together" but has been hamstrung by poor political leadership and corruption.
Akanbi also believes South Africa's invitation to join the BRIC forum was not a precursor to a new colonialisation of Africa.
