Sandton - a glitzy banking district on the outskirts of South Africa's increasingly dilapidated city of Johannesburg - is the venue for the latest meeting of the Brics group, an ambitious but amorphous bloc of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), united by a desire to challenge perceived Western dominance in global affairs. Dozens of other nations are queuing up to join.
The current wave of relief felt here in South Africa in relation to Brics can be explained by President Vladimir Putin's recent decision to stay away from the summit.
Had he insisted on coming, South Africa would have finally had to clarify its position on whether it would carry out its international obligation to arrest Russia's leader for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
Spared that awkward challenge, South African officials are now revelling in their role as host - proudly filling journalists' inboxes with a flood of emails about Brics breakfast meetings, trade fairs, township dialogues and the like.
This unusual degree of official enthusiasm serves, to some observers, to underline quite how far and fast this country appears to be steering away from the West, not just towards a more multi-polar world, but firmly into China and, to a lesser extent, Russia's orbit.
