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Jyoti Malhotra
NEW DELHI, NOV 17: South African President Nelson Mandela is coming to India around December 18, to say goodbye to old friends who have supported him and his people's long struggle against apartheid for the last many decades.
Mandela's visit takes place in the final phase of his presidency. Elections in South Africa are due around March-April next year, when his anointed successor and deputy president Thabo Mbeki will take over the mantle.
The relationship with South Africa, rubbed in the raw in recent months, will get another boost on the eve of Mandela's visit with the bilateral Joint Commission being scheduled in Pretoria from December 3-5. Minister of State for External Affairs Vasundhara Raje will lead the team to South Africa.
Raje's visit is expected to inject new vigour into the relationship, as both sides seem keen to get over the controversies that have tended to drag the once-sacrosanct ties in the mud.
During the Non-Aligned Summit in Durban in September, Mandela was perceived by New Delhito have made an avoidable reference on Kashmir, which Pretoria later explained was entirely unintended. The unseemly squabble in the media between India's former high commissioner L C Jain, appointed by I K Gujral, and the BJP government didn't help matters.
Mandela's visit is expected to put to rest all this negativism and get back the relationship on a healthy footing. Having led the ANC through most of its difficult years to multiracial independence in 1994, Mandela's public stature in India has been one of a hero. Neither side wants the recent past to erase the old warmth.
Prime Minister Vajpayee will, of course, receive him. It also won't matter that the Congress, which put India at the forefront of the worldwide struggle against racial discrimination in South Africa -- which provoked economic sanctions against the White regime, which finally led to its collapse -- is now in the Opposition.
The Joint Commission will cover the gamut of ties, including trade, industry, mines, tourism, science &technology, education, culture, etc. The mines sector has been flagged as one of the best areas to do business in, with the South African diamond company De Beers having won the rights for mineral exploration in Orissa.
Both sides are are believed to be doing ``very good business'' on the defence side, despite their differences on India going nuclear. Even on the nuclear issue, New Delhi and Pretoria have come together at multilateral fora like the UN to talk about nuclear disarmament. South Africa's discomfiture about India's nuclear weapons stems from the fact that it destroyed its own nuclear arsenal in 1991 -- a step taken by the White government of F W de Klerk then in power -- and its consequent defence of the position that the world must be rid of all nuclear weapons, including those produced here.
A number of visits from South Africa in recent months have significantly helped to erase New Delhi's suspicions that South Africa's heart doesn't really belong to the developing world. Essop Pahad, theinfluential deputy minister to Thabo Mbeki and Mac Maharaj, the minister for transport have been here -- Jay Naidoo, the minister for communications is expected soon -- and both have reaffirmed the belief that the recent hiccups will not unduly strain hundred-year-old ties.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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