Did BRIC never exist outside the feverish imagination of the neocons?

Well, they actually had a summit last summer.

BRIC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The BRIC countries met for their first official summit on 16 June 2009, in Yekaterinburg, Russia,^[19] with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dmitry Medvedev, Manmohan Singh, and Hu Jintao, the respective leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, all attending.

But one summit does not build an organization. (And how long before that have we not heard about the BRIC-bogeyman?)

Brazil, South Africa, India and China has cooperated at least since 2001.

Doha Development Round - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The most significant differences are between developed nations led by the European Union (EU), the United States (USA), and Japan and the major developing countries led and represented mainly by India, Brazil, China, and South Africa.

They do not appear to always cooperate, but between them they probably has massive power in the G-77, and it is in their interests to keep it this way, by not being split by the JEUUS (Japan, EU and US, (I can also create abbreviations)).

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

For the climate arena, the views of Russia are immaterial, insofar as they will be easily bought off.

Besides, people started talking about BRICS some time ago?

Don't know what the deal with SA is because there are several countries more populous and powerful (Indonesia, to take one, or Mexico) and SA isn't very representative of sub-saharan Africa. But maybe they managed to organise the African community in some useful way to let them do the speaking?