Cameroon’s little-known connection with Russia’s Pushkin revealed at BRICS Summit

By Hans Ngala

Cameroon has a lesser-known link with revered Russian writer, Alexander Pushkin according to a speech presented on August 24 during the closing session of the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.
In an opening speech of the final session that brought together the five member countries of BRICS to Sandton, a pristine suburb of Johannesburg; South Africa’s trade minister Ebrahim Patel, after demonstrating Africa’s historical links with China, India and Brazil said:
“And Russian history too contains connections. The great Russian writer Alexander Pushkin’s great-grandfather was an African. Ibrahim Petrovich Gannibal (sometimes written as Hannibal) abducted from Cameroon, taken via Constantinople and eventually taken to Russia where he became a nobleman…”.
Cynthia Green while writing about Hannibal, states that he “was very young when he was kidnapped from Africa and sent to Constantinople as a slave. From there, a Serbian Count named Sava Vladislavić brought him to the Court of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg”.
Hannibal rose to the rank of a nobleman in Europe at a time when the continent saw Black Africans as nothing other than things to be used. He stayed proud of his Cameroonian roots as Cynthia Green further explains that he himself wrote a letter in 1742 – long before the Germans even colonized Cameroon and in that letter “insisted that his noble status was linked to his father being an African chief. “I am of African origin, of an illustrious local nobility. I was born in the city of Logone, on lands belonging to my father, who reigned, furthermore, over two other cities.”
Why should Cameroonians know this?
For one thing, most Cameroonians would immediately think of the words ‘Nelson Mandela’ and ‘xenophobia’ when they hear the words ‘South Africa’ and for a South African minister to make his speech and reveal the close ties between Russia and Cameroon was a powerful statement. It showed that South Africa doesn’t just want to enjoy her BRICS membership alone but is willing to include much of the continent and this leadership role was demonstrated in South Africa’s backing of two fellow African countries – Egypt and Ethiopia to be newest additions into BRICS from the continent.
Like Minister Patel said, “we are connected by history”, a history which he said spans over 2,000 years with the ancient African Kingdom of Mapungubwe having already been trading with the Ming Dynasty of China as well as other African cities such as Mogadishu and Mombasa establishing trade ties with Asia, over a thousand years ago he said.

Why was Mr. Patel’s history lesson important?
If anything, most Western obersvers have tried to discredit the BRICS grouping of nations, arguing that it is nothing than a disjointed assembly of countries that cannot uniformly agree on all their goals and simply want to topple Western hegemony of global economic and political affairs.
However, the Wall Street Journal has not failed to admit that the bloc “makes up more than 40% of the world’s population and almost 1/3 of the world’s GDP” and citing data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), also admits that “the bloc has already overtaken the G7 nations’ share of the global economy on the basis of purchasing power parity…”. Purchasing power parity is when the purchasing power of different currencies is equalized.
It is therefore not too hard to see why Patel’s speech was important and why it was also necessary to hear those remarks.
While the West may criticize the BRICS, countries from the Global South feel that they now have a voice, an alternative to the dominance of the United States and its allies in the G7, EU and NATO which all dominate global economic and political affairs. This would explain why 20 countries formally applied to join the group and why Patel made his speech which revealed a number of things:
1- South Africa sees itself as the voice of the rest of Africa in global politics and economy
2- South Africa has always been allied with most of the BRICS nations, notably with Russia and India with many South Africans being able to trace their ancestry to India and Mahatma Ghandi visiting the country in the mid-twentieth century
3- The BRICS nations with the exception of China and Russia were all colonized by Western nations
However, the blocs’ interest is not so much to topple Western hegemony as it is to strengthen the individual currencies of member countries and so Cameroon may not be a member yet but it is in Africa’s interest that each African country should be thriving economically.
Recent events in Niger and Chad have revealed how economic depravation – with resources being tapped for the benefit of France alone – can lead to political unrest, hence the need for more economically viable countries. With Western aid always coming with strings attached, it is likely that BRICS membership will only continue to grow as Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will be joining the bloc formally in January 2024. There will be bigger issues for the group to worry about beyond what a new acronym should be.