Parte 13 - LA36 KB articles 1988 98 and cuttings 005 013

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13 Earlier, speaking at a press conference in late December, during the visit of the Chinese Vice Premier and Foreign Minister, South African Foreign Minister, Alfred Nzo, said that the leaders of China had been an inspiration during the long and bitter years of struggle against apartheid and China "today provides once again an example for Africa, this time for economic liberation and the renaissance of Africa." I could cite countless similar statements from other contemporary African leaders, in Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Madagascar, Benin, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, Lesotho, Seychelles, Tanzania, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, and so on. Or from the leaders of socialist Cuba and Vietnam, whose relations with China are becoming steadily closer; of nationalist and progressive Libya, Syria and Yemen, whose President Ali Abdullah Saleh visited Beijing earlier this year, pointing out that most of the roads in his country had been built by China; of the liberation movements in Palestine, El Salvador and Guatemala, who have all recently had senior delegations in China; or the communist parties leading the fightback in the former socialist countries; and the communist parties, with a long history of intimate collaboration with their Chinese counterpart, struggling to lift their peoples from misery and super-exploitation, from India and Nepal to Brazil and Peru. This genuine and deep-seated inspiration that China provides to the oppressed of the world is the lesson of the Chinese revolution yesterday, today and tomorrow. It is the lesson we should take to working people, youth and students, women, national minorities and progressive intellectuals in this country too. Before concluding, and this is a very relevant and timely example of China's lessons for us here, I would like to return to the December press conference given jointly by the foreign ministers of China and South Africa, both veteran revolutionaries. Comrade Qian Qichen said on that occasion: "Indeed, South Africa attaches great importance to the issue of human rights and this is quite understandable as the South African people suffered from the deprivation of various types of human rights as a result of the apartheid policy...During a meeting with me yesterday, President Mandela spoke on many issues, for example the problems occurring in Northern Ireland. He said we do not interfere in the internal affairs of other

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