Notes following South Africa – Greece Joint Media Briefing
Media Centre, Union Buildings, Pretoria, Monday 21 January 2008

Remarks by Deputy Minister Van der Merwe

Good morning everybody and thank you very much for coming here.  I have welcomed Deputy Minister Kassimis from Greece here today.  It’s been a great pleasure to have an interaction with him on a range of issues.  We have talked a lot about the experiences that Greece has in the Balkans, and they have expressed their views to us, most of which we find agreement on.  We have also discussed the question of the opening of the World Council for the Hellenes Abroad offices that will be in South Africa, in Pretoria.  It will be a regional office.  We are looking forward to that opportunity in a few hours time.  But in the meantime we had very useful and wide-ranging bilateral discussions between our two countries.  As you know our relationship between our two countries, South Africa and Greece have been warm, and we have a very great deal of agreement on most of the issues that we deal with both bilaterally and on the multilateral arena.  So it’s been my great pleasure to have the Deputy Minister here to talk about this range of issues.  We’ll be proceeding afterwards to the opening, the launch of the regional office, but we are very grateful to him for spending some time with us here today. Thank you.

Remarks by Deputy Minister Theodoros Kassimis 

Thank you very much.  I’m very glad to be here and as I said we came from the mother to visit the daughter.  Because as Nelson Mandela said Greece is the mother of democracy and South Africa is the daughter of democracy, and I’m very glad to be here.  We have a very strong relationship with South Africa.  We appreciate very much the role of the South African government to help the stability and the development in Sub-Saharan Africa.  And we had a very good dialogue about the development in this area and the development in the Balkan countries in the east Mediterranean area.  And we agreed that we have a lot of things to do especially in the economic field.  In the trade and investment Greek business are very interested to invest in South Africa because they believe in the future of the economy of South Africa.  And we exchanged also ideas about closer cooperation in the educational field and we are ready to make a few steps further.  And I would like to thank my colleague for, not only the warm hospitality, but also for the information which she gave us about the developments in South Africa area, and especially that they supported all the Greek interests in the international organisations.  And I can say that we are very glad that South Africa represents the democratic Africa in the Security Council of the United Nations.

Questions and answers

Question:  You mentioned that you are ready to take a few steps, perhaps if you could elaborate on that in terms of trade and investment.  And the Council of the Hellenes Abroad, perhaps if you could just embellish that a little, or what exactly it will be doing.  Thank you.

Deputy Minister Kassimis:  Allow me to answer in Greek and Mr… will translate because we have Greek journalists also here.  A group of businessmen led by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs who is responsible for bilateral economic relations will be visiting in the near future South Africa, in order to have contacts with members of South African chambers of commerce and big industry and identify sectors of bilateral interest to improve cooperation, especially the shipping sector.  As far as the Council of the Hellenes Abroad is concerned, we consider it very important that the base for South Africa and near east is here.  The role of the coordinating Council for Hellenes Abroad is to coordinate all our organisations in Africa in order to develop ties with Greece, and more particularly in as far second and third generation Greeks are concerned who have an additional responsibility that is to convey the Greek spirit and civilisation in the country they are living in.  I would like to point out that in South Africa there is a very dynamic Greek community.  Our goal is to enhance the intervention and presence in the cultural field in two ways: both by inviting and having stronger presence here, and by in exchange of having visits realised in Greece.  We are also very much interested in giving the possibility to learn the Greek language, not only to children of the Greek community but also to South Africans who are interested in learning our language.

Question:  Minister you spoke that you discussed a range of issues.  With the exception of economic and trade issues, what other issues did you deal with and to what extent did you discuss them?

Question:  Is that to me?
Answer:  Both ministers.
Deputy Minister Van der Merwe:  Thank you very much. We discussed issues relating to the Balkans.  We discussed the question of Kosovo, as well as other matters relating to the African Union and the European Union meeting that took place recently.  I also shared some of our thoughts with the Deputy Minister on South Africa’s view of the situation in Africa, and particularly in Southern Africa.  And we also discussed Security Council positions that South Africa has taken, in regard to some of these matter relating both to Africa but also to the Balkans region.  So those were a number of the matters and as the Deputy Minister has mentioned, we also discussed economic ties with Greece.  As I have said we have very strong bilateral relationship.  We have agreed that we can do more in terms of trade and investment cooperation between the two countries, and we will be pursuing that in the next year or so.  But I think the Deputy Minister has expanded a little bit on some of the things they plan to do, bringing a visiting group of business people from Greece here and so on.  But it was a general discussion as you know more to further positions that the two countries take in respect of those matters, African issues as well as Balkan issues that concern both our countries.  Thank you.

Deputy Minister Kassimis:  May I add just two things to what the Deputy Minister has said.  I just asked to be informed and at the same time I underlined satisfaction in this respect by Greece and the European Union for the important role played by South Africa for the stabilisation and economic development of the region of the Southern part of the continent.  And more particularly for the political intervention by President Mbeki to the questions in Zimbabwe which appear to be in a rather good way.  Its very hopeful that they deal not only with the immediate problem, the problem of the immediate future but also they dealt with creating broader constitutional and law conditions that might allow stability and development of economic development of the area.  I would like to underline that a singular transitions require patience.  We in the Balkans have gone through similar situations.  Being hasty has never been a good piece of advice.  That’s why I have insisted that patience and persistence are the recipes that might induce a solution to the problem.

Question:  South Africa is ready to organise the 2010 “mundia” Greece has its sort of experience.  Will there be any collaboration in this field?

Deputy Minister Van der Merwe:  Thank you very much.  We definitely will use whatever friendship we have with the Greek Government to use their expertise and gain insight into the organisation of such enormous events.  As you know the 2010 World Cup will be here in South Africa.  We are very much on track to deliver on the stadiums, infrastructure that is required to host such an event.  Also the Deputy Minister and I did discuss this and we are informed that the Greek team will be coming.  And I have said that I thought what we should aim for is a final between Bafana Bafana and the Greek team.  But certainly Greece’s experience with the Olympics and other international events will be very useful to us in our efforts to prepare properly for the 2010 World Cup finals.

Deputy Minister Kassimis:  We are ready to give our assistance to South Africa in any field they will ask us, especially in hospitality, in the tourism section.  We are ready to help.  But I’m sure that they will have a really, really very successful championship here in three years.

Issued by Department of Foreign Affairs
Private Bag X152
Pretoria
0001

21 January 2008