India, SA in new era of co-operation
IT IS time for old friends India and South Africa to be a part of each other’s growth story as they step into a new era of friendship and co-operation, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said at the India-South Africa Business Summit, which ended on Monday.
The much-anticipated summit concluded in Johannesburg with a session on “India South Africa Relations – The Way Forward” in which speakers, experts and diplomats from both countries, as well as business leaders, sought to chart the way forward for the relationship.
India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry and Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu, lauded the efforts of the High Commission of India and various South African government departments in organising the event in the run-up to the Brics summit in July. He said this was a harbinger of good things, and both countries were poised to take off in the next few years on a higher growth trajectory.
Indian High Commissioner to South Africa Ruchira Kamboj said the partnership was not just about the unbreakable ties of solidarity that have linked the peoples and the liberation movements of India and South Africa, but also about a shared future.
The summit witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Invest SA and Invest India, strengthening a rapidly growing economic and trade partnership between two strategic partner countries. A sponsored white paper was also released which spotlights the good work being done by Indian businesses in South Africa, with an accent on localisation, skilling South Africans and working for mutually beneficial growth.
The summit was also the launchpad for a new book by Gauteng-based author and
POST correspondent Fakir Hassen. The book, The Red Fort Declaration – The Legacy 20 Years On, was launched by Prabhu, Kamboj and Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies.
It is a 300-page coffee-table collection of articles and photographs captured by Hassen over two decades.
“It has been two years in the making. The idea was born when I realised that the original Red Fort Declaration, signed in 1996 by then Indian prime minister Deve Gowda and Nelson Mandela in 1996 – after he became our country’s first democratically elected president – was the founding document of all the elements of the great relationship that developed over the decades between the two countries,” said Hassen.
“The High Commission saw value in this and largely funded the publication, which was supported by Sammy Naidoo of Apple Print and Packaging as part of their CSI initiatives.”
The book was launched at a banquet that paid tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and Mandela.