A tirade of bitterness

DEAR SIR — Beneath Dr Duncan Clarke’s flowing abuse about SA’s membership of Brics (Cry the deluded country: the bulked-up briquette’s lament, April 4) lies a solid foundation of Victorian contempt for Rudyard Kipling’s “lesser breeds without the Law”. His scorn covers most of the globe: Brazil, he sneers, exports primary products (forgetting that it is home to one of the world’s leading aircraft manufacturers and that it recently overtook Britain in the list of the 10 biggest economies). Russia, too, is “resource-reliant”. India, where economic growth has in recent years approached that of China, proceeds at “snail’s pace”. China is an “omnivore”, presumably intent on devouring those African resources now being devoured by the US and Europe.

In the spaghetti bowl of international acronyms and unions, he derides Brics but not Nato, Civets but not Ecosoc, the Organisation of African Unity but not the shuddering European Union, and so forth. Turkey, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt, the Maghreb, the Southern African Development Community all fall beneath the blanket of his contempt. He revives the old jibe that “Brazil is the country of the future and always will be”, but he applies it now to SA, which he deftly associates with Zaire (the Democratic Republic of Congo). It is an extraordinary tirade.

The one clue to his bitterness is that SA, with its poor growth rate, needs investment but seeks to “reorient its trade links”.

Others may think it sensible to turn from faltering Europe and stagnating Britain to Brazil and the thriving Orient, but Dr Clarke clearly thinks it is infuriating folly. The mystery is why, as a refugee from Zimbabwe, he has chosen to base his business of advising international corporations in Joburg.