Cape Argus

Australian Government is out to improve its relations with Africa and the SADC
Cape Argus, 1 September 2009

SOUTH Africa and Australia have longstanding and good relations, not least because of the large and active South African-Australian population in his home state of Western Australia, says Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.

But his Labor Party government has made it one of its foreign policy goals to improve relations with Africa. And that also means boosting relations with South Africa, a key state in Africa and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).  

On a fleeting visit, Smith said South Africa and Australia were working closely through the Commonwealth and other organisations such as the UN and the G20 group of developed and emerging nations.

He had just met ANC treasurer general Matthews Phosa and the two had decided there was more the two countries could do on every front to enhance relations, including exchanging high-level visits. Phosa was about to lead a delegation of finance officials to Australia.

Smith himself would meet his South African counterpart, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, at the UN General Assembly next month and was keen to visit South Africa again and for this country's minister to visit Australia.

There were also standing invitations for President Jacob Zuma to visit Australia and for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to visit this country.

"We think more high-level visits will help, especially in those areas in which there is quite clearly mutual interest and benefit, including climate change, agriculture and the economy generally."

Smith said Australia was especially keen to enhance ties with the SADC. In January he became the first Australian foreign minister to visit an African Union summit. He told the AU foreign ministers Australia had neglected its relations with Africa and needed to enhance them.

While Australia had 21 million people, Africa was a continent of more than 50 countries and nearly a billion people, Smith said.

"Australia has become a prosperous country by becoming a great trading nation, so we can't ignore a continent of nearly a billion people. And we think there a lot of economic complementarities - mineral and petroleum resources are one, agriculture another, environmental and scientific areas, child and maternal health care. There is a range of areas where we think there are opportunities for economic exchanges or for capacity-building."

Zimbabwe was a cause of friction between the Mbeki administration and the previous Liberal Party government of Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

But Smith said it was not a problem now, although the Rudd administration agreed with the Howard administration that President Robert Mugabe should "go".

"But once transitional arrangements were effected, our view was that Australia should do whatever it could to assist that transition, to be supportive of Prime Minister (Morgan) Tsvangirai.

"A few months ago we announced assistance, which is (in effect) development assistance, in health and water and water sanitation. We are giving assistance... to help the local and provincial authorities get decent and effective infrastructure back in place for water sanitation purposes.

"At some stage Mugabe will go and the international community will then be faced with the challenge of working with the Zimbabwean government to improve its social and economic circumstances.

"Our attitude is that while we have to be careful about Mugabe's presence, we have to do everything we can to assist Tsvangirai, to assist his ministers to start the process of building infrastructure."

In helping with infrastructural development in Zimbabwe, Australia was giving more than humanitarian assistance alone. But it was not easing its targeted financial and travel sanctions against Mugabe and his cronies, said Smith, who was on his way to Brazil and Chile.

Was Australia, a highly developed country, struggling to be accepted in the South - which was more a grouping of developing countries than a geographic association?

"I think the better analysis is that every major international problem we are confronted with these days, whether it's climate change, global financial crisis, terrorism, can be met effectively only by countries working together."

Australia was a strong supporter of the G20, for example. "We think the G20 is the correct institution to seek to progress the international community's response to the global economic and financial difficulties.

"One of the beauties of the G20 is that you have a mixture of North and South, East and West, developed and developing... and some of the emerging economic powerhouses."  

Similarly, the Major Economies Forum - a grouping of 17 big carbon emitters, including South Africa and Australia - "is a better forum for seeking to get momentum and progress on climate change in the run-up to Copenhagen than the G8 because you've got more of a spread of the world in an issue where you've got to get the world moving together".