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Southern Africa: Guebuza And Mbeki in Economic Talks
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
11 April 2008
Posted to the web 11 April 2008
Maputo
South African President Thabo Mbeki on Friday held talks in Maputo with his Mozambican counterpart Armando Guebuza, concentrating on economic relations between the two countries.
This was the latest in a series of six monthly meetings that began under Guebuza's predecessor, Joaquim Chissano.
The two presidents did not speak to the press, delegating that task to the spokesmen for the two delegations, South African Industry and Trade Minister, Mandisi Mpahlwa, and Mozambican Tourism Minister Fernando Sumbana. They told reporters that the meeting had not discussed Zimbabwe, since there is a summit of all SADC (Southern African Development Community) member states on the Zimbabwean crisis to be held in Lusaka on Saturday.
Mpahlwa added, however, that it was possible that Guebuza and Mbeki spoke about the Zimbabwean elections when they were alone, before they joined their ministers for the formal talks.
The two ministers said that plans were "very advanced" for a "one stop border post" between Mozambique at South Africa at Ressano Garcia. Tenders for the new buildings will be launched in May, and the new post should be ready by March 2010 - in time to accommodate the inflow of tourists that Mozambique hopes will be one of the spin-offs from South Africa hosting the football World Cup.
Currently people and goods passing from one country to the other must go through two border controls, one in South Africa and one in Mozambique, thus slowing down trade, and discouraging tourism, given the long queues that build up at peak periods of the year. The new border post will straddle the frontier, and travelers will have their documents processed by Mozambican and South African officials in the same building.
The meeting also expressed strong support from the two governments for a project to produce steel in the southern Mozambican city of Matola, using iron ore (magnetite) stockpiled at the South African mining town of Phalaborwa as the raw material. This magnetite is a by-product of copper mining.
This revives a project from the 1990s, known as MISP (Maputo Iron and Steel Project), in which the would-be investor was the American company Enron. When Enron was shown to be a criminal conspiracy rather than a company, the project seemed to die - but Mpahlwa insisted that the South African Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) wants to revive it, as does his own Department. He also claimed there was "a lot of interest from a number of private sector players".
In the late 1990s, there were two major objections to the project. First, it was proposed that the magnetite would be reduced to a slurry, and sent to Maputo in a slurry pipeline. But this pipeline would cross the Kruger National Park, and the park authorities were strongly opposed.
Even more seriously, steel plants need a great deal of water, and it is not clear where this would come from. The Mozambican government made it clear, right from the start, that the nearest significant source of fresh water, the Umbeluzi river, could not be used, since it is earmarked for Maputo's drinking water supply. Other rivers, such as the Incomati, are much further away, and a pipeline would be required to take the water to the factory.
Neither of these problems has yet been solved. Mpahlwa admitted that the route of the slurry pipeline, and discussions with communities and other bodies that could be affected "requires further work". Likewise, "further work" was required to determine sources of water.
As for energy, Mpahlwa said the two delegations "agreed to step up work to achieve the potential and opportunities" that Mozambique presents. Mozambican hydropower "will help South Africa achieve its energy challenges".
The South African electricity company Eskom is known to want to increase its purchase of power from the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi, and is likely to be the main customer for other hydro-electric projects, such as the construction of a new dam at Mpanda Nkuwa, some 60 kilometres downstream from Cahora Bassa.
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Asked about the scandal of the trafficking of teenage girls from Mozambique for sexual exploitation in South Africa, Sumbana said that the Mozambican and South African police forces are working together to combat human trafficking, and to identify the crime networks responsible.
Mpahlwa added that, while it was the public works ministries in the two countries that were responsible for the physical construction of the one-stop border post, matters of "safety, security and control" had been considered in the design, and this had involved the police, customs and intelligence services of the two countries.
The meetings also discussed issues of tourism, the environment, transport and agriculture. "Progress was reported in all areas", said Sumbana.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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