Issued by: SA Communication Service
Mr President,
Your kind works to me this evening concerning Gabon and her people have greatly touched me.
I should like to thank you for this all the more in that they reflect the quality of the unreserved welcome by you yourself as well as by the other State authorities and the South African people.
For my part, allow me on behalf of my wife and the delegation accompanying me to tell you that it is a genuine pleasure and an honour to be back on South African soil, this time on a first State Visit.
In accepting your invitation, I wished, in so doing, to honour the stature of an exceptional statesman and to salute the courage of a people who, with dignity and determination, have been able to confront and overcome adversity and antagonism in order to build a new nation where cohesion, tolerance and respect for differences prevail, even an extraordinary capacity for forgiveness.
Indeed, Mr President, through your personality, you have been able to imprint on the fact of the world a model for the struggle, for perseverance and for humility.
Your life, in fact, has been a long walk towards the conquest of freedom, since that day in 1963 until the joyous event of May 1994, the date of your accession to the highest office, thus dedicating the birth of the new South Africa, multiracial, united and democratic, and her return to the concert of free nations.
It is here that we salute all those parties who toiled for this joyous success, and I should like to mention Mr Frederik De Klerk as being the first among these.
Mr President,
Our continent is confronted by difficulties of all kinds which are seriously undermining economic development; so it is that the fratricidal wars in Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia and Zaire are subjects of concern which call out to all the countries on the continent with a view to finding a concerted and overall solution.
Africa needs its entire economic and human potential; she cannot, therefore, allow self-destruction, especially at a time when she is becoming increasingly marginalized in an international environment which is more hostile than ever.
In the past, we were united against the colonial yoke of apartheid. Today, we must be so against underdevelopment.
In this spirit of cohesion, South Africa, I believe, has a determining role to play. I should like, in this respect, to rejoice at your government's availability in contributing towards the international community's efforts in order to relieve the suffering of refugees in Zaire.
Concerning relations between Gabon and South Africa, may I point with pride to the excellence of these relations which prevail so happily between our governments and, thus, between our peoples.
I should like also to highlight in particular the friendship you have shown me and my country by your having undertaken a trip there immediately after your release in 1990. Likewise, I speak of the particular honour you personally bestowed on me by inviting me to the historic ceremony of your investiture as President of the new Republic of South Africa in 1994.
Buoyed up by this, I should like to see these relations being enhanced and further developed in all spheres and this, in the mutual interest of our respective nations.
In Gabon, we have launched a policy of opening up and of diversification of economic partners. We are convinced that South Africa, thanks to her aptitude, experience and skills, will be an active partner in this policy.
In short, Mr President, South African investors and businessmen are welcome in Gabon in order to increase already existing trade and to strengthen cooperation between our countries.
To conclude, I invite you to raise your glasses to the friendship between Gabon and South African, to your personal happiness and to the progress of the South African people.
Long live the Republic of South Africa!
Long live intra-African cooperation!
Thank You