Phosa on a mission for defence company
ANTI-apartheid activist Dr Mathews Phosa stole the show yesterday at the Africa Aerospace Defence Exhibition when he was announced as the first black partner of a defence and aerospace company.
National and international media had a paparazzi moment when they covered the historic announcement, witnessed by international delegates and Minister of Defence Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
Phosa is now the chairman of the transformed enterprise Paramount South Africa, founded in South Africa but trading only internationally.
Phosa’s company already has offices, and his team has started engaging clients and securing partners, such as the CSIR.
The company seeks to provide defence and aerospace equipment required by the South African National Defence Force, police, border and peacekeeping forces operating in South Africa.
Phosa said: “This means that for the first time in defence and aerospace, we have black participants who can stand on their own. We are not a big company, but a black-owned company; that’s what we are.
“We are independent; we are on our own and we are proud of being a South African company to come and say there is nothing that is being manufactured for land, for air, for sea which we will not manufacture. We will do so much more and be able to supply our police, army and intelligence forces.”
Phosa said he was against poaching and his team would manufacture helicopters with night vision to catch perpetrators.
The founder and chairman of the International Paramount Group, Ivor Ichikowitz, said: “This is one of the most important days in my working life. Paramount was born in South Africa 24 years ago, and we made a conscious decision not to do business in South Africa.
“We’ve taken South African skills and expertise and technologies developed here to the world.”
He said the company had helped governments all over the world to develop institutions of security and protect their democracy.
“We have taken a decision that government has created a sufficiently enabling environment to come back to South African and follow our president’s vision and to create Paramount South Africa,” Ichikowitz added.