Durban — The South African High Commissioner to India, Sbu Ndebele, reminisced about the early days of democracy in South Africa after he was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement for Nation Building from the KwaZulu-Natal International Business Association (Kiba).
On receiving the award, Ndebele a former premier of KwaZulu-Natal, said he was pleased with his long political career was that of peace in KZN.
He was presented with the award when he visited South Africa on the sidelines of the Africa Travel Indaba, recently held at the International Convention Centre in Durban.
Ndebele said: “You must remember, I did not go to Parliament in 1994. I stayed in KwaZulu-Natal. A major task given to us was to bring stability and peace to the province. We had to remove the partition issues.”
During those days, he said “when you leave the city and wake up in the morning you hear that there is a massacre in a certain section, whereas there were attacks in others. Most people stay at home, but here, people were running away from home. To restore peace and have a peaceful province, means you then have a peaceful South Africa”.
“A lot of people were saying that we must bury the hatchet. But I do not believe so, because if you bury the hatchet, you remember where you buried it and you can dig it up again. Mandela said: ‘Throw away your panga, your spear, your gun. Because what he was saying is that if you bury that, you can pick it up. But if you throw it, you can’t pick it up. You must make peace irreversible. It must be a normal way of life’. And I think we achieved that,” he said.
Kiba president, Omie Singh said Ndebele had also played a huge role in facilitating trade relations between South Africa and India.
Meanwhile, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Kiba and the Progress, Harmony and Development Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The MoU is a proposed visit whereby a business delegation will visit New Delhi in India, to attend the Conclave on India-Africa Growth Partnership set for June 14 to 16.
Singh invited interested businesses to be part of the delegation.
“If we really want to encourage India to buy from us as much as we buy from them. We are looking at a 30-40 member delegation.”
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