Jeremy Lovell, Windsor | Wednesday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki, ending the first day of his first state visit to Britain on Tuesday, thanked his royal hosts and the country for support since the end of apartheid seven years ago.
“We know it as a matter of fact that Her Majesty, the rest of the royal family and the people of these isles wish us well,” he told a state banquet at Windsor Castle, the royal residence west of London.
“We will strive constantly, in a principled manner, without bitterness, avoiding being driven by the animosities of the past, towards a future of happiness for all the children of our country, both black and white,” he added.
Queen Elizabeth, hosting the Sussex University-trained economist and his wife Zanele during the four-day state visit — the second in five years by a South African head of state — in turn praised Mbeki for maintaining the momentum of reform.
“It is to your credit. Mr President, that this drive forward has continued,” she said. “It is easy to forget just how much has been achieved.”
Earlier the Queen and Mbeki brought the centre of the sleepy town to a standstill in a horse-drawn procession.
“It was nice to see the Queen again, but who was that with her,” a Hell’s Angel biker remarked to a friend.
Mbeki later had lunch with the Queen, met the leaders of opposition political parties and then took tea with the centegenarian Queen Mother.
But behind the pomp of the state visit both sides are keen to demonstrate their commitment to each other.
Trade, investment, conflicts across Africa, particularly growing anarchy in Zimbabwe, security and globalisation will feature during the four-day visit, but the Aids pandemic devastating the continent is firmly off the agenda.
Mbeki has been criticised for questioning the link between HIV and Aids, and his government has come under attack for dragging its heels on providing anti-retroviral drugs to millions of HIV-infected people.
Mbeki travels to Scotland on Wednesday to make a keynote speech to the fledgling parliament in Edinburgh, returning to London in the evening for another banquet.
He gets down to business on Thursday with addresses to two meeting in London on investment, meeting newly re-elected Prime Minister Tony Blair in-between.
Diplomats say relations between the two men are good, and there have always been strong ties between the ruling British Labour Party and Mbeki’s own African National Congress.
Mbeki will urge foreign investment in his country where local investment is inadequate to create the growth needed to tackle unemployment of over 30%.
He is likely to be told that while South Africa looks stable and has a strong economy despite rampant crime and rising racial tensions, it is surrounded by strife and potentially at risk.
This is especially so in the case of its northern neighbour Zimbabwe whose President Robert Mugabe is pushing ahead with state land grabs as the economy crumbles and anarchy spreads. – Reuters
ZA *NOW:
Thabo takes tea with the Queen June 12, 2001