The South African government on Friday apologised to the Iranian government after a senior foreign affairs official accused Tehran of industrial espionage.
The apology followed a formal protest by the Iranian Embassy. An embassy official denied the accusations and said that Iran had ”no clandestine activities in South Africa”.
The diplomatic incident follows Wednesday’s briefing by John Sunde, the acting chief director of the Middle East directorate, to Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, which was reported in the
media.
In a statement of Friday, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad apologised and expressed regret at Sunde’s comments.
”Presentations to the foreign relations committee (sic) are substantially a reflection of South Africa’s foreign policy perspectives and not individual interpretations of events.”
The statement attributed to Sunde bore no resemblance to South Africa’s foreign policy approach to Iran nor was it a mandated position of either the department or the ministry, Pahad said.
”Accordingly, the department extends its unequivocal apology to the government and people of Iran for this alleged misrepresentation of SA’ policy towards Iran.
Pretoria would continue to bolster its relations with Iran through an existing bilateral commission, he said.
Department representative Ronnie Mamoepa said he was not aware whether any action would be taken against Sunde.
Sunde told MPs that Pretoria was concerned about industrial espionage by Iran.
”We have concerns for industrial espionage. We get a lot of Iranian technical missions that come here with video cameras.”
A classic example was when the Iranian deputy minister of agriculture and other officials visited South Africa a few years ago, accompanied by a technical team, Sunde said.
Until then Iran had no ostrich farming industry.
They toured an ostrich farm in Oudtshoorn and were given a copy of its booklet.
”Now today if you go to Iran …where they have started the ostrich farming industry, you see that book that they picked up on the farm which has been translated into Farsi. They haven’t bothered to change the pictures, its exactly the same pictures.”
”When you suggest to them that they should pay royalties for this, they believe in the free lunch (and) they can’t understand that they don’t get it,” Sunde said.
South Africa imports mostly crude oil from Iran, totalling R9-billion in 2001, while its main export to that country is sugar, totalling R471-million. – Sapa