Vuyo Mvoko. Business Day (Johannesburg).
All Africa. December 7, 2001
SA and Cuba want relationship extended to crucial areas such as
technology
WILL SA and Cuba ever reach the stage where investment between the two is as
big and vibrant as the comradely hugs and kisses representatives of the two
governments lavish on one another?
The question will come into focus next week when representatives from the
two nations meet in Pretoria for a binational commission.
In terms of a series of agreements that could be signed next week, more than
150 highly skilled Cubans are coming to SA.
"No, not to take jobs", ambassador Marcos Rodriguez says quickly.
Only temporarily, he says, for mutual benefit and to help rebuild a country.
Details of the full co-operation agreements will be disclosed at the
commission. Education, water affairs, agriculture, housing and health are the
main spheres to benefit from the agreement.
"Cuba is a poor country economically," Rodriguez says. "Our
great resource is our people."
Of Cuba's 11-million people, about 800000 are university graduates. In terms
of the agreement, 75 more Cuban doctors are expected in SA, in addition to the
424 already here and serving the rural poor.
About 200 SA students are studying medicine in Cuba. The first batch of
graduates is expected back in July next year. The two countries are entertaining
the possibility of sending SA doctors to Cuba for specialist training.
In a matter that attracted a fair amount of controversy when it was first
mooted, another agreement will see 60 Cuban lecturers, who will retrain and
upgrade the skills of black teachers.
Five Cuban government advisers are to be deployed to the country to advise
Education Minister Kader Asmal and his department on literacy programmes.
The SA government has also asked for10 Cuban engineers to come and work with
the water affairs department on the rural water development and sanitation
scheme backlog.
But by their own admission, there is still a lot missing in the Cuba-SA
relationship. Both governments want it extended to the crucial areas of
economics, technology and commerce.
The ultimate aim is for the two nations to do something about their very
small trade volumes and find large investment flows.
This is the difficult part of the relationship that dates back to the dark
days of apartheid, when the Cubans risked everything and joined a struggling
African National Congress in its long war against the racist regime .
Although Cuba faced its own problems, primarily the hostility of the
neighbouring US, it never wavered in its support for SA's liberation struggle.
On May 11 1994, Cuba was one of the first nations to establish formal
diplomatic relations with post-apartheid SA. Since then, SA has been among the
not-toomany countries in the world that have refused to succumb to US pressure
to isolate the island.
In Havana in March last year, President Thabo Mbeki and his Cuban
counterpart, Fidel Castro, witnessed the signing of some of the first
co-operation agreements between the two countries in the areas of science and
technology, arts and culture, sport and recreation, and air services and
merchant shipping.
Rodriguez says that although Cuba has "great expectations" of its
relationship with SA, it is not asking for a payback.
At no stage has Cuba ever made any extraordinary demands or asked for
preferential treatment from SA, he says.
The country is looking for mutually beneficial arrangements.
For example, SA mining houses have shown "extreme interest" in the
mining of Cuba's nickel, Rodriguez says, referring to early surveys of groups
such as Billiton and Anglo American.
Cuba is the world's thirdlargest producer of nickel. At the moment it is
able to export only 70000 tons.
Cuba says it could do more were if it not for the US disinvestment campaign.
The US, which happens also to be SA's biggest trading partner, is vehemently
opposed to any dealings with Cuba.
SA mining houses, an analyst believes, cannot justify investing in Cuban
nickel at the moment. So until the two nations come up with a new strategy, it
would seem there will be more hugs than new investment.
SA's trade with Cuba has gone down significantly as a result of US
sanctions. In 1994, SA exports to Cuba stood at R40,9m and have gone down over
the years to R2,7m last year.
Chemicals company Sentrachem, for example, used to export a lot to Cuba. But
after Sentrachem was bought by Dow Chemicals, a US chemicals group in 1997,
exports stopped.
Copyright © 2001 Business Day. Distributed by
AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). | 
