MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivian president-elect visits South Africa

Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales arrived in South Africa on Tuesday on an international tour that already has taken him to Europe and China.

His three-day visit to South Africa included meetings with business and political leaders, including Roelf Meyer, a former apartheid Cabinet minister who helped negotiate the end of white rule, governing African National Congress Secretary-General Kgalema Motlanthe and South African Community Party Secretary-General Blade Nzimande.

Today, Morales was to meet President Thabo Mbeki. Morales had requested a meeting with Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, but the anti-apartheid hero was out of the country until the end of the month.

"The struggle of our South African brothers is the same as the struggle of our people," Mr Morales said. "We were discriminated against as a people. We share a common history of discrimination." Bolivia's indigenous majority live mostly in poverty, governed for centuries by a wealthy minority, predominantly of Spanish and European extraction.

Morales, a former union leader who like Mandela has a warm relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, has pledged to nationalize his country's oil and gas resources. As he wrapped up a visit to China on Monday, he declared that country his ideological ally.

But in Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and France earlier on his tour, Morales reassured political leaders and energy executives that his government will respect foreign capital while inviting investors to become "partners not owners" in exploiting Bolivia's wealth.

And he has found common ground with Bolivian business leaders, telling them he would work to attract foreign investment and create jobs.

Similarly, South Africa's post-apartheid leaders have proven pragmatic, not prisoners of socialist ideology, as they struggle to bring prosperity to the long-neglected black majority.