BRUSSELS, Kingdom of Belgium, June 10, 2013 – The High Representative Catherine Ashton and South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana Mashabane met in Brussels on 10 June 2013 for the annual Ministerial Political Dialogue.
Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South African Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, on the right, and Catherine Ashton
They welcomed the continued deepening of the EU-South Africa Strategic Partnership. In particular, they noted a number of important steps forward with the launching of the EU-South Africa Dialogue Forum on Human Rights in Pretoria on 27 May 2013 and the establishment of a sub-committee within the Peace and Security Dialogue on Maritime Security in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. They also noted the value of on-going Development Cooperation. Despite South Africa’s middle income status, the support it provided to social inclusion, skills, education, innovation and capacity development continued to make a significant contribution to alleviating the conditions of inequality, unemployment and poverty that persisted. They encouraged all those engaged in other areas of cooperation, including migration, energy, employment and trade, to press forward with their existing work programmes to deliver progress, including in advance of the forthcoming EU-South Africa Summit in Gauteng on 18 July 2013. It was proposed that the Summit focus on the theme of job creation, economic growth, investment and skills.
They also discussed closer EU-South Africa cooperation on African and international issues. They recognised the two parties’ common interests in building peace, security and good governance in areas where it was lacking. They agreed to continue working closely together to enable peaceful, transparent and credible elections in Zimbabwe, Madagascar and Mali, and to help build security and inclusive political processes in the DRC, CAR, Guinea Bissau and Somalia.
