Not more than three months ago, President Donald Trump admitted he didn’t know what BRICS was, referring to it dismissively as a “club of a few trying to play naughty”, while his Secretary of State was unaware of which countries constitute ASEAN. This ignorance is a direct result of the deliberate media blackout surrounding any development that seeks to construct a more cohesive worldview, one that registers and respects the voices and opinions of the Global South.
A recent example of such overlooked significance is the Third Russian-African Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “Realpolitik in a Divided World: Rethinking Russia-South Africa Ties in a Global and African Context”. Held in Pretoria, South Africa, the event brought together more than 60 prominent experts and policymakers from across Africa and Russia, including participants from Egypt, Zimbabwe, Côte d’Ivoire, Tanzania, South Africa and Russia.
This year’s conference reinforced the Valdai Club’s tradition of fostering Russian-African dialogue. It followed last year’s forum held in Tanzania and the 2023 event in St Petersburg, which coincided with the Russia-Africa Summit.
The conference emphasised the shared intention of Russia and South Africa to strengthen mutually beneficial bilateral cooperation, underscoring the growing importance of expert diplomacy in addressing complex global challenges. The conference featured four expert discussion sessions: G20 and BRICS — Strategic Roles in an Evolving Global Order; Humanitarian Cooperation and the Role of Historical Memory; Bilateral Relations Between Russia and South Africa — Current State and Prospects; and Trump and the World Order.
The four sessions collectively explored the evolving dynamics of global governance, highlighting the strategic roles of Russia and South Africa within BRICS and G20, especially amid the rising assertiveness of the Global South. Emphasis was placed on inclusive development, economic sovereignty and South Africa’s 2025 G20 presidency as a chance to promote equity and sustainability, calling for independent investment mechanisms, climate initiatives and high-tech cooperation tailored to the Global South’s needs.
The legacy of former Soviet support for African liberation was discussed as a cultural and humanitarian foundation for modern Russia-Africa relations, advocating locally driven cooperation and African agency.
As the conference theme and discussion points suggest, collective consciousness, memory and shared history are the cornerstones of any long-term planning in culturally diverse and historically entangled nation-states of the Global South. The Western mantra of liberal democracy and the Western-led rules-based order has never fully harmonised with the diverse political, cultural and philosophical tapestry of non-NATO/Global South countries.
The statement that “Europe is a garden — and the rest of the world is a jungle” was made by Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, in October 2022 during his speech at the European Diplomatic Academy in Bruges. His full quote is: “Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity, and social cohesion that humankind has been able to build — the three things together. The rest of the world — is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.”
I have always found myself agreeing with his statement, though not in the way he intended. To me, the jungle is what is organic, mysterious, diverse, and rich in knowledge. A garden, on the other hand, is a superficial manifestation of the destruction of bio-semiotics: a forced arrangement of flora and fauna, a sheer negation of natural order. Without dwelling too deeply on this metaphor, I always keep an eye on the events happening across the so-called jungle, and I am glad to note that this year’s Russia-Africa conference was, once again, right on point in terms of the topics and ideas it addressed.
