Business Day,
September 3, 2001.
Cuban President Fidel Castro pledged to continue with his country's
development aid to South Africa during talks with President Thabo Mbeki in
Durban on Sunday, the presidency said.
Presidential aide Bheki Khumalo told Sapa: "Cuba won't waive, it will
continue with its assistance."
Earlier this year, after a state visit to Havana, Mbeki announced that a
number of Cuban scientists and other professionals, including mathematics and
science teachers, would come to South Africa. They would join more than 400
Cuban doctors who were working in public hospitals mostly in rural areas.
Cuba has also previously offered to waive its intellectual property rights
on drugs and medicines it has developed to help South Africa provide cheaper
medicine to its citizens.
On Sunday, Mbeki briefed Castro about regional developments, including the
conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola, Khumalo said. "They
discussed what can be done to take forward the peace process." Khumalo did
not elaborate.
Castro, who is attending the World Conference Against Racism, is one of the
few world leaders who has travelled to Durban.
He and a Cuban delegation also held a separate meeting with the African
National Congress, which party officials said was a show of solidarity between
the two countries.
Castro, a foe of apartheid South Africa, told a NGO racism forum in Durban
at the weekend that his government knew during the Angolan conflict about
apartheid South Africa's nuclear capability and took steps to protect its troops
there.
In a marathon address at the closing ceremony of the forum, he said Cuban
troops fighting on the Angolan side had adopted special tactics and deployed a
thousand anti-aircraft units in a bid to reduce the effect of a nuclear strike.
"While we were fighting close to the Namibian border where there was
the possibility of great battles to be fought in that area, the forces of the
apartheid regime had seven nuclear warheads, and Europe was aware of that,"
he said.
He said the technology for the devices had been supplied by Israel, which in
turn had had aid from some European countries in developing its own programme.
Although there had been reports that South Africa had the bomb, this was
admitted only long after the end of the Angolan conflict, by then-president FW
de Klerk. He announced in 1993 that South Africa had made six warheads and that
all had been dismantled.
Castro, who spoke for an hour-and-a-half while Deputy President Jacob Zuma
waited patiently on the platform behind him for his turn, was greeted by a sea
of Cuban paper flags, and shouts of "Cuba, Cuba" from the several
thousand NGO delegates in his audience.
He said the forum was a "symbol of the future", and that he
realised people were trying to build a new world, in which justice prevailed. "We
should be hopeful, that is how we conceive the world of tomorrow, that is how we
conceive the United Nations of tomorrow," he said.
"There are many obstacles to overcome, but we are hopeful that a new
United Nations system is emerging, really new, without the privileges of the
veto." He was referring to the power of veto enjoyed by major powers in the
UN security council.
Addressing that inter-governmental session of the WCAR, Castro backed
African and Carribean calls for reparations for slavery.
Sapa | 
