the conclusion of the meeting with Italian Republic President Carlo Ciampi,
Rome, Italy
21 March 2006
Mr President,
My wife Zanele and I wish to thank you and Mrs Ciampi most sincerely for the
generous hospitality you have given us in this truly magnificent Quirinale
Palace.
Having just emerged from an involved local government election campaign
ourselves, we are grateful to you and your compatriots for taking time off your
busy schedules to be with us during your equally involved election
campaign.
We are particularly honoured, Mr President, that ours is the last incoming
State Visit you receive in your current term as President of the Italian
Republic.
The visit commences on South Africa's Human Rights Day, a particularly
historic day in our country. As you are aware, Mr President, 21 March 1960 was
a watershed moment in the history of South Africa, which was when 69 people
were killed in a cold blooded way by the apartheid police for protesting
against the dehumanising pass laws. From their peculiar vantage point, the
apartheid government thought that their brutality at Sharpeville would crush
the people's spirit of resistance. Instead, and as part of that process of
change, March 21 served to mobilise the people and pricked the conscience of
the world. As a result, today marks the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the
new Constitution of our country.
President Ciampi's memorable Visit to South Africa in 2002, gave further
impetus in the relationship between our two countries. Amongst the most
critical areas of our relations include the areas of health, arts and culture,
and science and technology.
We have taken this opportunity to express our gratitude to President Ciampi
for his personal interest and encouragement of bilateral cooperation especially
through direct assistance to our Health and Education sectors.
Our meeting today has given us the opportunity to take our relations a step
further with renewed focus on the promotion of our economic ties. Accordingly,
we will be engaging Confindustria to explore practical steps on the further
development of trade and investment opportunities between our countries.
We will take advantage of that meeting to highlight major economic growth
interventions in which our government is currently engaged. These include
initiatives around South Africa's hosting of the Soccer World Cup in 2010 and
the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa, which will see a
public investment drive in the local economy over the next five years. We
believe that these have the potential to open up many areas of interest to the
Italian business community.
Our meeting with the President also gave us an opportunity to speak about
the challenges and developments on the African continent.
Those include, amongst others, the need to support institutions of the
African Union, the New Partnership for Africa's Development and the promotion
of good political and economic governance. In this regard, I wish to again
thank you, Mr President, for the consistent support you have provided,
particularly since we started engaging on these issues, on the eve and during
the G8 Summit in Genoa. We are confident that the Government and people of
Italy will forever be ready to lend a hand whenever their fellow human beings
on the African continent require support on issues of development, peace and
democracy.
We would like to reiterate our commitment, like Italy, to multilateralism
and to the United Nations to ensure the resolution of international problems
through peaceful means.
Mr President, as you come to the end of your term, I would like to repeat as
I said at the meeting that we indeed very pleased that we could come to Italy
before you ended your mandate and wish you, Mr President, success in your
future endeavours. Our people, Mr President, hold you and Mrs Ciampi in high
regard; we are very fond of you. I would like to say that whenever you want to
come, as many times as you want to come, you are welcome back to South
Africa.
I thank you.
For more information, please contact:
Mukoni Ratshitanga
Cell: 082 300 3447
Issued by: Department of Foreign Affairs
Source: SAPA
21 March 2006
