Johannesburg, 13 September {No. 96-158} - Director-General Federico Mayor today completed an official visit to South Africa after assuring President Nelson Mandela of the Organization's support for the country's programmes in the fields of education, culture, science and communication.

"We need more examples like yours," Mr Mayor said during a reception in his honour by some 100 members of the South African parliament in Cape Town. "You have transformed this country for the better; help us to transform the world," he said.

During his three-day visit 11 to 13 September, Mr Mayor travelled to Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesburg--the first trip to South Africa by a UNESCO Director-General since the country rejoined the Organization in December 1994 after a 38-year absence. Mr Mayor signed an accord creating the South African National Commission for UNESCO. The new body will co-ordinate South African activities in the Organization's fields of competence.

In reply to President Mandela's remarks concerning the priority he is giving to education and training to overcome the country's 60 percent illiteracy rate among blacks, Mr Mayor emphasised the assistance UNESCO intends to provide South Africa's education system, especially through the Organization's "Learning Without Frontiers" programme, which promotes diversified and open-learning systems using the latest audio-visual technologies. Such learning should aid the poorest sectors of the population to acquire professional qualifications, he said.

South African Education Minister Sibusiso Bengu acknowledged that the country had already begun to benefit from its renewed membership in the Organization. "Through our re-entry to UNESCO we have already greatly benefited from the support and solidarity of the nations of the world as we wrestle with our bitter legacy," he said, "and strive together, in hope, to construct our democratic future." The Director-General's visit "signalled that South Africa had indeed come of age," he added.

In talks with various government ministers, Mr Mayor discussed furthering South Africa's participation in the Organization's fields of competence. Thus in his meeting with the minister of water affairs and forestry, Kader Asmal, the Director-General announced the creation of a UNESCO chair for water management. He also welcomed Mr Asmal's proposal for an international conference next April on cloud seeding, seen as a way to combat drought.

With the minister of environmental affairs and tourism, Pallo Jordan, the Director-General assured that UNESCO will support "eco-tourism" in South Africa to reconcile tourism and protection of nature. In his meeting with L. Mtshalithe, minister of arts and culture, science and technology, Mr Mayor said the Organization will help promote the country's policy of restoring African cultures that had suffered from neglect during the period of apartheid.

UNESCO will also give particular importance to the Orange Free State University centre for microbiology, which the Organization helped to create, and which forms part of an international UNESCO-supported network of 25 such centres.

Speaking to an audience of South African university deans and professors, Mr Mayor pointed out that activities such as the Organization's interdisciplinary UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs programme, which promote inter-university co-operation, would enable South Africa's universities to co-operate among themselves and with those in the industrialised world. "Universities must not be for a privileged few, but a framework for continuing education open to society so as to be accessible to the greatest possible number," he said.