What Pretoria should have done was play it cool, refuse to indulge the media circus surrounding the upcoming summit, and candidly discuss everything with the bloc behind closed doors. That would have kept up appearances for all parties involved and facilitated the possibility of fully transferring the event to an online format without any explanation required. Instead, South Africa discredited its own integrity and BRICS' after its undiplomatic behavior made it impossible to smoothly implement this backup plan, thus resulting in a Western political victory.
Andrew - Great points -