President in SA on State visit

Mabasa Sasa in TSHWANE, South Africa
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has a packed programme for the duration of his historic two-day State visit to South Africa, including crucial deliberations with President Jacob Zuma and the business community.

Accompanied by eight Cabinet ministers, President Mugabe’s delegation will seek to give a fillip to the historically solid economic, political and cultural ties between the two neighbours.

This is the Sadc and African Union Chairman’s first State visit to South Africa in 21 years, with South Africa International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane saying focus was “largely on consolidation of our bilateral ties, political and economic” co-operation.

Today, President Mugabe will head to Union Buildings, the seat of the South African government, where he will first inspect a guard of honour before having a tête-à-tête with President Zuma.

Thereafter, the two leaders will engage in closed-door talks that will set the pace for the plenary session of ministers that is expected to result in a Bi-National Commission Agreement to further trade and broader economic ties.

A private lunch follows, and then there will be a visit to Tshwane’s Freedom Park, where people killed in various wars — from World War 1 to the independence struggle — are interred.

President Mugabe will then have closed door talks with South Africa Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, before the day is wound down by a State banquet that President Zuma will host for his guest.

On Thursday, President Mugabe begins by meeting the business community, an engagement that is expected to take up about half his day leading to a private lunch. He will then tour the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto, which was built to immortalise the 1976 Sharpeville Massacre and as a symbol of resistance to apartheid.

Hector Pieterson became globally known when photographer Sam Nzima captured an image of the dying 13-year-old boy after police shot him and a fellow pupil carried him away from the scene of the massacre as his sister ran crying beside him.