Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has urged senior BRICS security officials to ensure global security responses protect the world’s most vulnerable communities.
Ntshavheni said climate justice, food security, health equity, inclusive growth and information integrity must be treated as central pillars of national and global security.
She was addressing the 16th Meeting of BRICS National Security Advisors and High Representatives on National Security in India on Tuesday, where she linked this goal to building a prosperous and peaceful Africa.
“The globe is experiencing worsening climate change with more frequent droughts, floods and extreme storms that destroy crops, damage infrastructure, displace communities and cause loss of lives.
“These events do not only affect statistics; they affect real lives, they worsen inequality, and they create conditions that breed security threats. Under these conditions, the BRICS has a responsibility to coordinate effective climate resilience,” the Minister said.
On the just transition, a framework that ensures the shift toward an environmentally sustainable, low-carbon economy, Ntshavheni said a poorly managed shift that deepens poverty or inequality would undermine national security, while a well-planned and properly financed transition can expand opportunity and strengthen democracy.
“South Africa approaches non‑traditional security threats as interlinked and mutually reinforcing. Our just transition agenda reflects the same logic.
“We are committed to lowering emissions, protecting biodiversity and modernising our economy, while managing the risks to workers and communities who depend on high‑carbon sectors,” she said.
She said climate security is closely tied to food security and global stability.
“We take this opportunity to remind BRICS member states that an unstable Africa due to climate change and other disruptions will worsen global instability,” Ntshavheni said.
She urged BRICS to support the beneficiation of critical minerals close to their source, saying Africa must move beyond exporting rock and dust to producing finished products for green and digital technologies.
“We see BRICS as an instrument to drive reform of global governance, to amplify the voice of the Global South, and to deliver practical cooperation that improves the lives of our people.
“We believe that BRICS can add value through the mobilisation of affordable finance for climate‑related infrastructure and adaptation, building regional value chains in critical minerals and green technologies, enhancing pandemic surveillance and response, and promoting climate‑smart agriculture and balanced trade in food and inputs,” she said.
Ntshavheni said these initiatives must support African priorities, strengthen the African Continental Free Trade Area and advance Agenda 2063’s vision of an integrated, prosperous and peaceful continent with silenced guns.
“For South Africa, the real danger is in a disorderly transition in which power is used selectively, international law is applied inconsistently, and shared threats are met with fragmented responses.
“In such a context, the countries and regions with the least historical responsibility for global crises often carry the heaviest burden, and that includes many in the African continent,” Ntshavheni said.
She said security also depends on whether people are free from crime, instability, hunger, disease and the abuse of information through emerging technologies.
“Security is about whether institutions such as the BRICS can be trusted to coordinate a system that drives economic inclusion for citizens of its member states, but also countries of the global South, in particular the developing and underdeveloped countries, as the BRICS reinforce a functional global multilateral system,” the Minister said. -SAnews.gov.za
