BuaNews (Tshwane)
Shaun Benton
29 February 2008
Cape Town — President Thabo Mbeki welcomed several agreements signed between France and South Africa on Thursday - at the start of a state visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy - as marking a "deepening of what are already excellent relations".
The agreements were signed by France's Secretary of State for Cooperation, Jean-Marie Bockel, and several South African Cabinet ministers and covered science and technology, skills - in the context of JIPSA (the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition) - and transport-related matters.
Another agreement was for a joint application to a United Nations body by the two countries, to extend their continental shelves off the South African islands of Marion and Prince Edward and the French archipelago of Crozet.
Should the latter agreement to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in accordance with Article 76 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the two countries would in effect become neighbours, sharing a common maritime border.
Another agreement was around energy, with President Mbeki announcing that France would be sending to South Africa several engineers - the current short supply of whom in South Africa is exacerbating current problems around the provision of electricity.
These engineers would be arriving "in the next few days", said President Mbeki, underscoring the results of the dialogue between the two partners, while at the same time an agreement was struck on the building of a Euro 1.4 billion power station in South Africa.
This assistance, said President Sarkozy was "totally irrespective of any bids French companies will be sending in the next few days" around the building of another nuclear power station in South Africa, which is part of the government's longer-term energy plan to double electricity production in the next two decades.
Representatives of French energy companies Areva, Alstom, EDF and Bouygues are understood to be accompanying the French president on his visit, and expected to be participating in a South Africa - France Business Forum being held at Cape Town's Waterfront on Friday.
South Africa is France's number one trading partner in Africa, and there are about 160 French companies operating in South Africa, including large multinationals like Total, Alcatel, Renault and Danone.
Bilateral trade between the two countries totalled about R26 billion in 2006/07, according to a briefing on the visit given to the press earlier by South African Department of Foreign Affairs senior official Gert Grobler.
France is also South Africa's eighth-largest trading partner, although the balance of trade currently falls in France's favour, as a major economic power, while South Africa is working to increase its exports to France and opportunities there.
According to Ambassador Grobler, whose brief at the Department of Foreign Affairs covers Europe and the Americas, the significant increase in French tourists over the past few years has seen almost 50 000 French citizens visiting South Africa each year.
Matters before the United Nations Security Council, which South Africa is to preside over for one month this year, as it concludes its non-permanent two-year membership, were also raised.
President Sarkozy said that France would be looking for a "third wave" of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear ambitions and said he would be looking for South Africa's support in this regard.
President Mbeki said that the matter would be discussed in the light of the resolution of the UNSC on Iran, but added that South Africa has "a common determination to ensure the issue is addressed in an effective manner and in a manner that reassures the rest of the world that we respect the right of peaceful use of nuclear energy" and not the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
President Mbeki added that while South Africa respected the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, it was "at one with the rest of the world that Iran should not have nuclear weapons."
Broader economic matters - including the current stand-off between Europe and South Africa on the Economic Partnership Agreement - were also discussed by Presidents Mbeki and Sarkozy.
The two presidents also discussed the issue of globalisation, with President Sarkozy saying that "Africa needs to stand on its own two feet" as it integrates with a economically globalising world.
President Mbeki picked up on the issue strongly, saying "let us, as Africans, say what the impact of globalisation is on us".
Given the process of globalisation that is taking place, and the phenomenon of the market in this process, President Mbeki said it was very important that Africans not simply shrug off the process as some sort of inevitable, unchangeable reality.
Africans "shouldn't stand paralysed" in this process but should rather intervene.
"We need to intervene in the globalisation process in order to make sure it addresses human needs," he said, adding that Africans must find their own solutions themselves and not wait for other continental players to come up with advice.
A globalisation process that produces outcomes that are focused on changing the lives of people for the better is a crucial approach, he said.
This is "a very important observation that has got to be fundamentally a part of the future of the African continent ... what interventions can be made; how do we use the globalisation process to address the challenges that we face on the continent of poverty".
The French president said that, while he had no wish for France's colonial legacy in Africa to be simply "swept under the carpet", and no intention of trying to simply forget the past, he had now come to Africa to offer "equality, equity and respect between would like to offer
President Sarkozy also noted that South Africa should no longer be relegated to the "tail-end" of G8 meetings, but that, as a member of the G5 group of advanced developing countries - along with Mexico, India, Brazil and China - become part of what should be an enlarged, equal grouping of the G13.
South Africa has "a full role to play" in such a forum, he said, and, by the same measure, he added in a speech later, a role in the possible extension of the UNSC permanent members as well a stronger role in international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, as a country forging ahead in the "avant-garde" of the continent.
"I think it is unthinkable to solve world issues without Africa," President Sarkozy told reporters.
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