BRICS and Resistance in Africa: Contention, Assimilation and Co-optation
BRICS and Resistance in Africa: Contention, Assimilation and Co-optation
Editors: Justin van der Merwe, Patrick Bond, Nicole Dodd
Series: Politics and Development in Contemporary Africa
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication Year: 2019
BRICS and Resistance in Africa: Contention, Assimilation and Co-optation, edited by Justin van der Merwe, Patrick Bond, and Nicole Dodd (Zed Books, 2019), offers a critical and often provocative examination of the expanding presence of BRICS countries across the African continent. While the BRICS grouping has frequently been framed as a welcome alternative to Western dominance, this volume highlights an emerging counter-narrative: that BRICS engagement increasingly resembles older patterns of external influence, marked by uneven power relations, elite alliances, and contested development agendas.
The book is organized into two major sections. The first outlines Africa’s vulnerable position within global capitalism and maps out the conceptual space for resistance “from above, the middle, and below.” Chapters investigate rising debt dependencies, unequal trade relations, and the subordinate role often assigned to African economies within BRICS-led initiatives. The second section turns to empirical case studies across Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and South Africa, revealing widespread concerns over Chinese and Indian investments, environmental damage, political interference, and the complicity of local elites. These accounts highlight how public protests, community mobilization, and civil society pushback represent emerging forms of resistance against BRICS-driven projects.
Although the volume faces critiques for its heavy reliance on South African contributors and its broad use of terms such as “imperialism” and “corruption,” it nonetheless offers an important counter-perspective to mainstream narratives about BRICS as benevolent partners. Its greatest value lies in exposing contradictions between BRICS’ rhetoric of solidarity and the lived realities of African societies facing exploitation, marginalization, or co-optation.
Contents
1. African assimilation, co-optation, and resistance in the BRICS era - Justin van der Merwe, Nicole Dodd and Patrick Bond
Part 1. BRICS: Joining the dots across Africa and the periphery 23
2. Notes from the hinterland: Theorising BRICS and their geographies of resistance - Justin van der Merwe
3. Assimilation, co-optation, and resistance within BRICS-from-the-middle - Patrick Bond
4. BRICS' trade with Africa: Long live the new king, just like the old king - Nicole Dodd
5. China in Africa: South-South Solidarity or Imperialism in the 21st Century? - Ishmael Lesufi and Lisa Thompson
Part 2. BRICS and their southern and eastern African geographies of resistance: Dispossession, collusion, and local responses
6. BRICS and the new scramble for Zimbabwe in the aftermath of the military coup -Farai Maguwu and Shakespear Hamauswa
7. Sino-Zambian relations: Responses from below - Godfrey Hampwaye and Phineas Bbaala
8. The Gupta leaks and intra-BRICS collusion - Nicole Dodd and Justin van der Merwe
9. The Belt and Road Initiative and Eastern Africa - István Tarrósy
10. Africa at the precipice: Lessons from Brazil - Mbekezeli Mkhize and Vukile Sibiya
11. Indian Land Acquisitions in Ethiopia: A wolf in sheep's clothing? - Lwando Mthamo and Mbekezeli Mkhize
12. Rosatom and nuclear power in South Africa: Assistance and resistance - Eldar Salakhetdinov and Vasily Sidorov
13. GEAR past, BRICS future: South Africa protests - Mbekezeli Mkhize
14. Conclusion -Justin van der Merwe, Nicole Dodd, and Patrick Bond
