THE President, Mrs Robinson, has ended her state visit to South Africa with high praise for the scale and heroism of the South African achievement.
On the last night of her stay in Pretoria, Mrs Robinson told The Irish Times she was struck by the amount of reconciliation and progress achieved in South Africa since she attended President Nelson Mandela's inauguration in April 1994.
"It was just such an incredible time. But I think I am more impressed by the scale of what has been put in place since then for a society that had been so divided, that has had such a traumatic past, that didn't know itself," she said.
"President Mandela said a very interesting thing to me. He said, before I was elected president I didn't know my people. But of course, how could he know really the Afrikaner section of the population, how could they know him.
"It's the way this society is getting to know itself in its diversity and addressing issues that I find very impressive. And in case anybody thinks that I don't estimate the difficulties, I very much estimate the scale of the difficulties. That is why the whole engagement is so heroic, it is so impressive."
She believes South Africa's on going process of reconciliation has definite lessons for Ireland.
"Just the scale of reconciliation that's been taking place here. I've said a few times, they don't say I wish the other side was more generous. The tendency is to be generous to achieve an objective, and then the other side responds generously," Mrs Robinson said.
"I also think that there is an opportunity for Ireland to play a role as a genuine friend of the new South Africa, which Ireland is. Because what this country very much needs is training, and an expertise in developing human resource skills. And why Ireland is particularly well tuned and well capable of doing that is because we've never been a rich country.
"We've never had the kind of resources that ideally you want to do the job. So we have trained our people to make do with less than ideal resources. And that is exactly what the new SA has to do."
Earlier Mrs Robinson travelled to the city of Bloemfontein in the Free State province with her entourage, which includes her husband Mr Nick Robinson and the Minister of State at the Department of Defence, Mr Jim Higgins.
Their first call was to South Africa's Supreme Court, where the President was given a guided tour by Chief Justice Michael Corbett. At the University of the Orange Free State the group was briefed on Irish aid projects, hosted by the university's vice chancellor, Professor Franscois Relief.
Afterwards the President was guest of honour at a lunch hosted by the Premier of the Free State, Mr Patrick "Terror" Lekota.
The Irish group was then flown in a South African Air Force C30 back to Pretoria, where it had an opportunity to rest before returning for Ireland last night. Their departure was held up, however, by a three hour delay in their South Africa Airways flight to London.
