Close ties to SA

SA established formal diplomatic relations with Guinea in 1995 and set up an embassy a decade later. Relations with the ANC, however, go back to struggle times.

In 1962, Guinea was one of the countries Nelson Mandela visited on a secret trip aimed at obtaining support for the ANC and Umkhonto we Sizwe.

Other liberation icons, including singersongwriter Miriam Makeba, spent time in the West African state. Makeba moved to Guinea in 1968, after the US cancelled her visa when she married Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael. Once there, she was given a passport and in 1975 became one of Guinea’s delegates to the UN.

Ties between the two countries today extend to business, says Solly Mollo, SA’s ambassador in Conakry. Guinea has the world’s largest reserves of bauxite — the primary source of aluminium — as well as iron ore and gold resources. Several SA miners are invested there, and AngloGold Ashanti’s Siguiri open-pit gold mine is one of the biggest in the country, he says.

SA companies are also involved in other mining-related activities, security and private jet charters.

“Business is running and continuing,” Mollo tells the FM, speaking a few days after the September 5 coup that ousted president Alpha Condé. He says he’s met with SA pilots working in the country, and reports that “they are here and they are safe”.

The same goes for the SA mining companies and the local branch of telecoms provider MTN.

A proponent of the African continental free trade area, Mollo would like to see more SA businesses investing in Guinea.

“It has immense potential as a country. Condé himself was very welcoming. If anybody is from SA, he was given business,” he says.

However, the SA-Guinea relationship hasn’t been entirely without challenges.

SA politicians and spies are alleged to have been involved in bribery and in helping Condé to rig the 2010 election, according to a Mail & Guardian report. And US authorities were in 2016 looking into Tokyo Sexwale’s business associate, Walter Hennig, for allegedly bribing Condé to obtain mining rights for SA companies.

As far as can be established, the suspicions of wrongdoing never became anything firmer.