THE President, Mrs Robinson, is to make a week long state visit to South Africa at the end of March. The visit, her second, follows her, attendance at the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela in May 1994.
During her stay Mrs Robinson will meet President Mandela and is expected to address the South African parliament in Cape Town. She is due to meet business leaders in Johannesburg but it is not yet clear if an Irish trade delegation will accompany her.
The President will arrive in Cape Town, on March 25th with the state visit proper beginning the following day, when she will meet President Mandela, address the parliament and attend a state banquet. She will stay in the Cape Town area and visit development projects in the black and coloured townships, particularly those with an Irish involvement.
On March 27th, the presidential party is scheduled to travel to Johannesburg, South Africa's economic capital, where she will meet the Gauteng provincial premier, Mr Tokyo Sexwale. There is also likely to be a forum with business leaders and a visit to Soweto, the largest black township in South Africa and probably its largest urban area.
This is likely to be followed by a trip to Pietersburg in the northern Transvaal, possibly to visit a water project in this drought prone area. South Africa's minister for water affairs and forestry, Prof Kader Asmal, was once a colleague of Mrs Robinson in the law department of Trinity College.
The programme for the President's visit has not been finalised, and other engagements could be added. For instance, a trip to Durban is a possibility before the President flies home on March 31st. There may also be engagements involving South Africa's constitutional court and the proposed Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is shortly to begin investigating apartheid era political crime.
This is the President's fifth visit to Africa since she was elected in 1990. Her first was to Somalia during the famine of 1992. In 1994, she visited South Africa for the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela and later that year made official visits to Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, followed by a brief fact finding tour of Rwanda, Zaire and Burundi.
The first foreign head of state to visit Rwanda following the genocide of April to June 1994, she repeated her visit in October last year.