Given the relative sizes of the BRICS economies, it seems clear that South Africa is destined to merely toe the line without any meaningful influence in key decisions - hence the embarrassing stance on Russia's war on Ukraine.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have been in the news lately, but for all the wrong reasons.

Apart from Russia's war-mongering in Ukraine and China's renewed hostility towards Taiwan, Brazil's newly elected leader, Lula da Silva, has been spearheading plans to establish an alternative international trade and reserve currency to the US dollar.

These attempts surfaced at the first summit of the Bric countries in 2009 in Russia (one year before South Africa's inclusion). They have become vogue again as China and Russia start to consolidate efforts to create a so-called new world order.

Fourteen years on and nothing much has changed in the realm of the dominant international financial status of the US dollar and the euro.

It seems clear that the heightened geopolitical tensions arising from Russia's military invasion of Ukraine and China's ambitions to expand its communist model of authoritarian government has renewed the appetite of BRICS and like-minded countries to challenge the US dollar and the euro.

This task seems futile when considering the long history behind the role played by Western currencies in trade and official foreign exchange reserves.

A member of the Russian parliament was recently quoted by Bloomberg as stating that...