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AFRICANEWSWIRE.NET (May, 31 2012) SOUTH AFRICA has made much of its induction last year into the vaunted BRICS club, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India and China, adding an S to the acronym. But it has been a struggle to justify the country’s inclusion. With an economy just a quarter the size of the smallest member (India) and a population little more than a third of its least-populous one (Russia), a main qualification claimed for it is that South Africa is “the gateway to Africa”. The continent’s economy is now the second fastest-growing in the world, its population is more than a billion strong (not much behind China’s or India’s), and its collective GDP of nearly $2 trillion is bigger than either Russia’s or India’s. All the same, is South Africa, still undoubtedly Africa’s most powerful and sophisticated country, doing quite as well as it claims?It did indeed once serve as a landing slot for investors wary of venturing into shakier African countries to the north. But in the past couple of decades the continent as a whole has become a lot more peaceful, democratic and stable. As a result, investment has been pouring in—and often bypassing South...
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