S

outh African leaders have expressed enthusiasm over the upcoming 60th anniversary of the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung because of its great contribution in helping South Africans in the struggles against the apartheid regime.

President Jacob Zuma himself will lead his country'€™s delegation to the summit, scheduled to be held late next month in Jakarta and Bandung.

'€œThe 1955 Bandung Conference is part of our history,'€ top South African politician Zweli Mkhize told Indonesian journalists, including from The Jakarta Post, in Johannesburg on Wednesday. '€œIt became a very significant platform for launching solidarity and international support for the people of South Africa,'€ added the treasurer general of the African National Congress (ANC), to which the late former president and hero Nelson Mandela belonged.

South African anti-apartheid activists Molvi Ismail Cachalia and Moses Kotane attended the historic conference in Bandung as observers, in spite of the apartheid regime having denied them passports.

They presented the well-received Memorandum against Apartheid, which significantly helped internationalize the issue and the lobbying for support of the liberation movement.

Mkhize praised the role of then Indonesian president Sukarno in initiating the conference, which he said '€œconnected the leaders of Asia and Africa under the same values for the first time and the solidarity it created stimulated a wave of decolonization.'€

'€œFor us in South Africa, the significance of the Bandung Conference is that ['€¦] after Cachalia and Kotane sent the message of South Africans to the conference, the world became much more aware of the suffering of our people and much support was able to be generated to fight for universal human rights and equality for the majority of the South African people,'€ Mkhize said.

Molvi'€™s daughter, Saeedah Cachalia, herself also an activist, underscored that the 1955 conference had helped to ensconce the anti-apartheid struggle and quickened the demise of the regime.

Thanks to the help of international pressure, apartheid eventually ended in 1993 and Mandela was democratically elected as president in 1994. Indonesia subsequently opened diplomatic relations with South Africa.

'€œThe liberating spirit of Bandung should continue, particularly between Indonesia and South Africa in the form of economic, educational, and cultural solidarity,'€ Saeedah said during an interview at her house in Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, Zuma confirmed his attendance of the conference'€™s 60th commemoration next month.

'€œSouth Africa will participate in that conference in April in memory of [Kotane] who travelled
the world for 11 months, lobbying for support for our struggle for freedom, which we enjoy today,'€ he said.

'€œIndonesia has always been special for South Africa. The Bandung Conference and its positive impacts were always mentioned in numerous events,'€ Indonesian Ambassador to South Africa Suprapto Martosetomo said.

Not long after assuming office, Mandela visited Indonesia in 1994 and repeated his visit three years later. Four Indonesian presidents have visited South Africa, namely Soeharto, who arrived there in 1997, then Abdurrahman '€œGus Dur'€ Wahid in 2000, Megawati Soekarnoputri, who is also Soekarno'€™s daughter, in 2002 and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2008.

The historic link between the two countries actually stretches back hundreds of years to when Indonesian independence fighter and Muslim figure Sheikh Yusuf was exiled to South Africa'€™s Cape of Good Hope in the 1600s.