Zuma says keen interest in rebuilding Angola

South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma left Angola on Wednesday promising increased economic activity between the two countries to help Angola emerge more rapidly from the devastation of its 27-year civil war. Zuma, who arrived in Angola on Sunday, said meetings with Angolan government ministers, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, and the business community, had sparked a keen interest in boosting trade. "Interacting with our comrades again has provoked our enthusiasm and commitment to working with each other and ensuring our relations are strong," Zuma told a news conference before boarding a plane back to South Africa. Both Zuma and Angola's Prime Minister Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos, better known as Nando, denied that the visit had been designed to thaw the alleged frosty relationship and regional rivalry between the two nations. Angola offered sanctuary to the African National Congress (ANC) and suffered significant humanitarian and economic loss at the hands of the apartheid South African Defence Force, which occupied the south of the country throughout the 1980s and backed the rebel UNITA movement. South African-based arms smugglers continued to supply UNITA after the ANC came to power in 1994. "There was no ice to be broken," Zuma told the news conference. "The fact that Angola was in a war situation, and the fact that the ANC had to build up government, meant we had no time to sit down and solve all our problems," Nando agreed. During the visit, the two countries focused on deepening bilateral cooperation and building strategic partnerships in areas spanning oil, agriculture, infrastructure and transport reconstruction, water supply projects, construction, tourism and sport. "The end of the conflict that had engulfed Angola, and the dawn of freedom in South Africa, affords us the opportunity to take active and sustained remedial measures to improve economic activity between the two countries," Zuma said in an address to the Angolan Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the South African business community in Angola. "We believe that these projects could herald a new area for Angola, in the spirit of mutual benefit," he said. South African firms, including supermarkets, car importers, construction companies and fast food chains, are already springing up in Angola as the country gets back on its feet after the destruction of the civil war. Zuma urged South African entrepreneurs doing business in Angola "to do so with an added objective of helping to rebuild this country, which has been destroyed by the ravages of war". "Therefore, such issues as skills and technology transfer and general contribution to the social development of the country would enhance the reconstruction and development agenda of this country, region and continent," he said.