The cons of South Africa's membership in a China-led BRICS: An appraisal

The BRICS has its similarities and dissimilarities. These have been used by both proponents and detractors of BRICS, especially, in respect to South Africa's integration into the bloc. The proponents of the group's existence and configuration have used the similarities of the group to back up its rationale while the detractors have used the group's dissimilarities to criticize the grouping configuration saying that the group is too diverse to ever constitute a major bloc in international relations. This paper weighs in on the side of the detractors by arguing that what separates BRICS heavily outweigh what unites them. This short section seeks, therefore, to outline the constraints of the BRICS formation and ultimately shows how these constitute problems for South Africa.