Lula won Brazil again. Why South Africans should check their chicken

Before you read about the election, check your freezer. There is a good chance some of the chicken in it came from Brazil.

Brazil supplies 92% of the mechanically deboned chicken meat South Africa imports, the paste used to make polony, viennas and other cheap processed meat. That trade keeps running no matter who wins an election in Brasilia. But who runs Brazil decides how that trade is taxed, defended and bargained over, and this week Brazil got a new old president.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 80, won Brazil's presidential runoff on 25 October 2026. Brazil's top electoral court gave him 51.79% of valid votes against 48.21% for Flavio Bolsonaro, son of jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro. It is Lula's fourth term, not in a row, and he takes office on 5 January 2027. More people voted for him than for any presidential candidate in Brazil's history, just over 64 million.

Flavio Bolsonaro refused to accept the loss. "It is impossible to recognize the election results in the context of how these things happened," he said, adding that his legal team would seek to have the vote annulled. He gave no evidence for that. Brazil's electoral court has not found any problem with the count.

Lula's comeback is unusual by Brazil's own history. He lost the first round to Flavio Bolsonaro, 47% to 45%, before overtaking him in the runoff, something no candidate had done since Brazil brought back direct elections in 1989. He already served two terms, 2003 to 2010, was jailed on corruption charges that were later overturned, then won again in 2022. This makes four terms total, not back to back.

How often does South Africa actually trade with Brazil over chicken?

More often, and more fragile, than most shoppers realise. South Africa suspended all poultry imports from Brazil on 23 May 2025 after bird flu turned up on a breeding farm in Rio Grande do Sul. Brazil declared itself free of the outbreak on 18 June, and South Africa lifted most of the ban on 4 July, a stoppage of about six weeks. Local poultry groups said local farms could cover the gap, but price pressure still built up.

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That is the pattern worth remembering. The chicken trade runs on health rules and anti-dumping cases far more than on who sits in the Brasilia palace. An election changes who negotiates the next round, not whether the trade happens at all.

Why does a Brazilian election matter to South Africa at all?

Because Brazil and South Africa trade real money, and both sit inside BRICS, the bloc of major developing economies that also includes Russia, India and China. Lula helped build BRICS into what it is today and hosted its 2025 summit in Rio de Janeiro.

For South Africans, BRICS membership is where opinions split hard. Some see it as South Africa's seat at a table the West no longer controls, a hedge against being pushed around. Others see it as picking the wrong friends, tying the country to Russia and China while trade with the West, especially the US, gets harder. Both views read the same trade numbers below and reach opposite conclusions. Nothing in this election settles that argument. It just adds a fresh data point.

What does South Africa actually buy from Brazil?

Mostly fuel and meat. South Africa imported $1.53 billion worth of goods from Brazil in 2025, according to United Nations trade data. Meat and edible offal, almost all of it chicken, was the second biggest item at $231.32 million. Mineral fuels and oils led at $259.80 million, a smaller slice of the same fuel price pressure that pushed Brent crude to a six-month high this month. Machinery came third.

Going the other way, South Africa exported only $291.74 million to Brazil in 2025. Machinery, mineral fuels, aluminium and raw ores made up most of that.

Source: United Nations Comtrade data via Trading Economics, full year 2025. Rand conversion at the week-of-26-October-2026 exchange rate.

How much of that chicken actually lands on a South African table?

Here is a number nobody else has worked out yet. Spread that R3.86 billion of Brazilian meat across the country's 20.1 million households, counted by Stats SA in 2025, and it comes to roughly R192 per household for the year, the import value alone, before any shop marks it up and sells it on.

South Africa was Brazil's fourth biggest chicken customer in the world last year, buying 336,022 tonnes, 6.5% of everything Brazil shipped out. Most arrives as mechanically deboned meat, which comes in duty-free. Whole chicken and boned cuts face steep anti-dumping duties instead, 82% on whole birds and 62% on boned chicken, put there because local poultry farmers said cheap Brazilian imports were costing jobs. Brazilian exporters say their chicken fills a gap local farms cannot, since South Africa cannot produce enough of the deboned paste alone.

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Those duties exist no matter who sits in Brazil's presidential chair. A new government does not reopen that fight overnight, but Lula's team negotiates and defends Brazilian exporters abroad, so any future move on the duties runs through him, in the same way Canada's tariff relief with the US only happened once both sides agreed to act. South Africa's own farmers have another pressure point to watch too. The strongest El Nino since 1950 is already squeezing regional food supply chains, which makes imported Brazilian chicken an even bigger safety net if local feed costs climb further.

Did the rand move after Lula won?

A little, and mostly because of Brazil, not South Africa. On 26 October, a Bloomberg index tracking emerging market currencies as a group ticked up just 0.1%. The rand sits inside that basket.

The sharper reaction hit Brazilian assets specifically. A Tokyo-listed fund tracking Brazilian stocks fell nearly 15%. Before the vote, Citigroup surveyed 73 investors and found most expected Brazil's own currency, the real, to weaken by at least 5% under Lula, over fears he will spend rather than cut the budget. That is a Brazil story more than a South Africa one. The rand did not get dragged down with it.

Why does Brazil's BRICS turn matter for South Africa next year?

Because the calendar keeps moving and South Africa needs friends on it. Brazil chaired BRICS in 2025 and hosted the Rio summit. India took over the chair for 2026 and hosted the summit in New Delhi in September. China takes the chair for 2027.

That timeline matters more right now, because South Africa's relationship with the G20's other big power, the United States, has gone cold. South Africa held the G20 presidency through 2025, and the US boycotted its summit, then sent only a junior diplomat to the November handover. The US holds the G20 chair through 2026 and left South Africa off the guest list for its Miami summit.

With one old ally keeping its distance, South Africa has more reason to lean on the BRICS ties it still has, including Brazil and the smaller IBSA grouping the two share with India. Lula staying in office for four more years keeps that relationship familiar rather than starting again with someone new.

Photo: Zyxoas / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

So does Lula's win actually change your shopping basket?

Not this week. The duties stay. The ships keep arriving. The R192-a-household number was already baked in before anyone counted a single vote.

What changes is who negotiates the next move. South Africans who think BRICS is the smart bet just watched the bloc's most prominent founder win another term. South Africans who think it is the wrong bet just watched Brazil's own currency wobble over the same man. Both of those things are true at once, and the chicken in the freezer does not care who is right.