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12-01-2026
JOHANNESBURG: China, Russia and Iran began a week of joint naval exercises in South Africa’s waters on Saturday in what the host country described as a BRICS Plus operation to “ensure the safety of shipping and maritime economic activities”.
BRICS Plus is an expansion of a geopolitical bloc originally comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and seen by members as a counterweight to US and Western economic dominance to include six other countries.
Though South Africa routinely carries out naval exercises with China and Russia, it comes at a time of heightened tensions between US President Donald Trump’s administration and several BRICS Plus countries, including China, Iran, South Africa and Brazil.
The expanded BRICS group also includes Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates.
Chinese military officials leading the opening ceremony said Brazil, Egypt and Ethiopia participated as observers.
“Exercise WILL FOR PEACE 2026 brings together navies from BRICS Plus countries for … joint maritime safety operations (and) interoperability drills,” South Africa’s military said in a statement.
Lieutenant Colonel Mpho Mathebula, acting spokesperson for joint operations, told media all members had been invited.
Trump has accused the BRICS nations of pursuing “anti-American” polities, and last January threatened all members with a 10% trade tariff on top of duties he was already imposing on countries across the world.
The pro-Western Democratic Alliance, the second largest party in South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s coalition, said the exercises “contradict our stated neutrality” and that BRICS had “rendered South Africa a pawn in the power games being waged by rogue states on the international stage”.
Mathebula rejected that criticism.
“This is not a political arrangement … there is no hostility (towards the US),” Mathebula told media, pointing out that South Africa has also periodically carried out exercises with the US Navy.
“It’s a naval exercise. The intention is for us to improve our capabilities and share information,” she said.
China’s top diplomat accused the US of acting like a “world judge” by seizing Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro to put him on trial in New York, with Beijing later confronting Washington at the United Nations over the move’s legality.
China follows a policy of non-intervention and routinely criticizes military activity conducted without the UN Security Council’s approval.
The US military’s removal of the leader of one of China’s “all-weather” strategic partners from his capital in the dead of night will be a litmus test of Beijing’s assertion that it can play a role in resolving global hotspot issues without following Washington down the military route.
“We have never believed that any country can act as the world’s police, nor do we accept that any nation can claim to be the world’s judge,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Pakistani counterpart during a meeting in Beijing on Sunday, referring to “sudden developments in Venezuela” without directly mentioning the United States.
“The sovereignty and security of all countries should be fully protected under international law,” Wang added, in his first remarks since images of the 63-year-old Maduro blindfolded and handcuffed on Saturday stunned the world.
Maduro pleaded not guilty to narcotics charges in a New York court on Monday. (Int’l News Desk)
