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Criticism levelled against South Africa’s involvement in the Brics grouping was unjustified and should stop, said the chief executive of the South African Maritime Safety Authority, Tsietsi Mokhele. <\/p>\n
His comments came as South Africa prepared to host the fifth Brics summit in Durban tomorrow. <\/p>\n
Brics is made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. <\/p>\n
Speaking at a pre-Brics maritime trade forum, Mokhele said South Africa had a key role to play in the formation and there was no need to continuously question the value of its membership. <\/p>\n
He said the grouping would not have been elevated to the level that it was without South Africa, and that the country had been involved with Brics countries even before it had become a member in 2011. <\/p>\n
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Addressing maritime experts, Mokhele said South Africa was a maritime state, had strong infrastructure, and its geographic location was a strength as it was the halfway state between East and West, and everything Africa traded was done via the oceans. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe remain relevant as the gateway to Africa,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
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However, unlike the other Brics countries, South Africa did not own any cargo vessels, and ships along its coast were foreign-registered and staffed by foreign crew. <\/p>\n
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Transport Minister Dikobe Ben Martins said 2013 had been declared the \u201cmaritime year\u201d and the focus was on improving the industry which was at a \u201cnascent level\u201d. He said there was greater potential to develop it as in the past it had always been a \u201c Cinderella\u201d industry. <\/p>\n
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Meanwhile Cosatu general secretary Zwelizima Vavi called for industrialisation to tackle inequality, unemployment and poverty in South Africa. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to stop the processes of de-industrialisation. We\u2019ve got to ensure that the trade relations that are mutually beneficial can ensure industrialisation in South Africa,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The National Development Plan did not see industrialisation as the core of South Africa\u2019s economic programme. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, it invested a lesser contribution by the manufacturing sector and therefore industrialisation in its target to drive unemployment to 6 percent by 2030,\u201d said Vavi. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a very critical problem because it then says the economy must continue to be service-orientated \u2013 meaning that all South Africa is going to be about is to buy goods that are already processed and produced by other countries and will be about tourism, retail and all of that.\u201d <\/p>\n
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Every successful industrialised nation in the world started by a painful process of building the manufacturing sector of the economy to be industrialised, Vavi said. <\/p>\n
Vavi said that the Brics summit should allow the trade unions to take part in the discussions. – The Mecury <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
http:\/\/sxc.hu\/ Criticism levelled against South Africa’s involvement in the Brics grouping was unjustified and should stop, said the chief executive of the South African Maritime Safety Authority, Tsietsi Mokhele. His comments came as South Africa prepared to host the fifth Brics summit in Durban tomorrow. Brics is made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-18921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}