The Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, left our country on Tuesday October 3 to return home, having spent a few days in our country. He visited us to hold official bilateral discussions with our government as well as join us in celebrating the Centenary of Satyagraha.

We must again thank the Prime Minister, his wife and his delegation, which included CEOs of some leading Indian companies, for taking the time to be with us in what proved to be a very successful visit of friendship and solidarity that will surely help further to strengthen the already excellent relations that exist between our countries and peoples, and which stretch back well over a century.

It was indeed a matter of great pleasure and honour to us to host Prime Minister Singh, head of government of India, one of the rising giants among the global community of nations. All of us must be very happy that in Prime Minister Singh we have a true, genuine and dependable friend of our country and people, who is committed to doing everything possible further to strengthen our bilateral relations, among other things to help us to achieve our goal of establishing ourselves as a winning nation.

To strengthen our cooperation in this regard, Prime Minister Singh and I signed the important document entitled "The Tshwane Declaration on Reaffirming the Strategic Partnership between South Africa and India". Among others, this Declaration says:

"Both leaders noted that the political interaction between India and South Africa, marked by an exceptional degree of understanding, mutual trust and confidence, has gathered further momentum and substance. The number of Ministerial visits exchanged had increased significantly since the milestone visit of President Mbeki to India in 2003.

"They expressed their satisfaction at the continued and steady consolidation of bilateral relations. Besides the deep political bond that was first forged more than a century ago, the partnership now extends to the economic, human resources development, public administration and governance, urban and rural settlement, health, defence, cultural and science and technology fields.

"Recalling that the Red Fort Declaration had recognised that the economies of South Africa and India have certain comparative advantages, complementarities and resources which can be exploited to mutual benefit through trade, investment and transfer of technology, they noted with satisfaction the progress that had taken place in these areas, resulting in more than doubling of the total bilateral trade since 2003 and a significant increase in investments in both directions.

"They acknowledged however, that the full potential in this regard was yet to be tapped and reaffirmed their determination to explore these opportunities to their optimal extent, particularly in the following priority sectors: energy, tourism, health, automobiles and auto components, chemicals, dyes, textiles, fertilisers, information technology, small and medium business and infrastructure."

Whatever the content of the continuing debate about globalisation, the fact of the matter is that global integration and interdependence among the nations is expanding at an increasing rate. In many respects, this process is producing the disastrous consequence of the further widening of the disparity in wealth and development within countries and between the countries of the North and the South.

This phenomenon also finds serious expression both in South Africa and India. In this regard, we are in the fortunate position that the governments and peoples of both our countries have recognised the fact that this is a serious challenge that we must address both individually and collectively. This is the real significance of the passages from the "Tshwane Declaration" we have cited.

These passages indicate what the governments of India and South Africa are determined to do, covering many fields, to promote mutually beneficial cooperation between our countries. We are resolved vigorously to implement this programme of cooperation because we are convinced that it will help both our countries to speed up our advance to the achievement of the goal of the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment in our countries, and thus the protection and enhancement of the human dignity of the masses of the people in India and South Africa.

This defines us as like-minded countries and peoples, providing a firm base for us to elaborate common programmes aimed at achieving shared objectives. In addition, and of great importance, is the observation contained in the "Tshwane Declaration", about the long-established ties of friendship and solidarity between South Africa and India.

In this regard we spoke of "an exceptional degree of understanding, mutual trust and confidence" between our countries and peoples, and "the deep political bond (between India and South Africa) that was first forged more than a century ago".

It is this that gives particular significance to the fact that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh joined us to celebrate the Centenary of Satyagraha. In his book, "Satyagraha in South Africa", Gandhi writes about the moment in Johannesburg on September 11, 1906, when the Transvaal Indian population met and took a decision to defy the then draft colonial Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance.

At this meeting he said: "The Ordinance seeks to humiliate not only ourselves but also the motherland (India). The humiliation consists in the degradation of innocent men.We are innocent, and insult offered to a single innocent member of a nation is tantamount to insulting the nation as a whole.God will come to our help, if we calmly think out and carry out in time measures of resistance, presenting a united front and bearing the hardship, which such resistance brings in its train."

This is the message that Mahatma Gandhi left with our people as he sailed from Cape Town to return to India. He conveyed to the Indian people this same message, which had marked the beginning of Satyagraha.

Because the peoples of both South Africa and India fully absorbed and acted on this message, they attained the freedom to which the Mahatma dedicated his life and for which he perished. Given this, and much else besides, it could not but be that the relations between our peoples and countries should be characterised by "an exceptional degree of understanding, mutual trust and confidence".

Necessarily, the Centenary Celebration of Satyagraha also constituted a salute to that outstanding human being, Mahatma Gandhi. It will, for a long time, remain a black mark against our movement and our people that on October 1, we brought our esteemed guest, a comrade-in-arms and an outstanding representative of the sister people of India, Manmohan Singh, to a virtually empty Sahara Kingsmead Stadium at Ethekwini.

I must in all sincerity thank the South African patriots who came to the Sahara Kingsmead Stadium, the only occasion our government had arranged for Prime Minister Singh to talk directly to the masses of our people, to whom he is intensely attached and to whose welfare he is deeply committed.

In time the full story will be told of what happened that kept our people away from Sahara Kingsmead on October 1. The truth will be told of who those were, who did what they did on the stands of the Stadium to disrupt the prayers said by our religious leaders of all faiths to open our proceedings by requesting God's blessings on the national celebrations of the Centenary of Satyagraha.

I know this as a matter of fact that the excellently prepared Sahara Kingsmead Stadium did not inadvertently find itself serving as a site for the perpetration of acts of national humiliation for the reason that the masses of our people have turned their backs on the noble values of Satyagraha, on the Mahatma and the country of his birth, on friendship and solidarity between India and South Africa, and on their own glorious history of struggle.

Throughout the 94 years of the existence of our movement, some have tried their best to destroy and negate what we stand for, and failed. I know this as a matter of fact as well, that even one hundred years after the birth of Satyagraha, the masses of our people, all true patriots, and genuine members of the ANC will not allow that anybody should destroy or negate the common and noble message of the true liberation and dignity of all our people that Mahatma Gandhi, John Langalibalele Dube and Pixley ka Isaka Seme preached in 1906.

In the 1995 book edited by Fatima Meer, entitled "The South African Gandhi", Judge Lewis Skweyiya of our Constitutional Court described the Mahatma as "A universal man, timeless in impact, as relevant today, as he was yesterday, as he will be tomorrow: a South African of phenomenal magnitude who laid the foundations of the human struggle against colonial and racial oppression."

In the same book Nelson Mandela wrote: "So in the Indian struggle, in a sense, is rooted the African. M.K. Gandhi and John Dube, first President of the African National Congress were neighbours in Inanda, and each influenced the other, for both men established, at about the same time, two monuments to human development within a stone's throw of each other, the Ohlange Institute and the Phoenix Settlement. Both institutions suffer today the trauma of the violence that has overtaken that region; hopefully, both will rise again, phoenix-like, to lead us to undreamed heights.

"Though separated (from Gandhi) in time, there remains a bond between us, in our shared prison experiences, our defiance of unjust laws and in the fact that violence threatens our aspirations for peace and reconciliation."

Four years before Gandhi was assassinated in 1944, the eminent scientist Albert Einstein said "generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such a one as this even in flesh and blood walked upon this earth." After the Mahatma was assassinated, the outstanding Indian Prime Minister of the day, Jawaharlal Nehru, said:

"The light has gone out of our lives. And there is darkness everywhere.The light has gone out, I said and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light. The light that has illuminated this country for these many years will illumine this country for many more years and a thousand years later that light will be seen in this country and the world will see it and it will give solace to innumerable hearts."

Nehru, Mandela, Einstein and Skweyiya were speaking of a native son of India who came to our country in 1893 and left 21 years later in 1914. He came to our country as a lawyer and left our shores as a liberator. It is just that Judge Skweyiya should describe him as a South African, because he helped to lay for us the foundations of our struggle against colonial and racial oppression.

It is just that we claim him as our own because it was in our midst that he developed in all respects into the extraordinary light that came properly to be called the Mahatma - one of great soul! - having been given this term of reverence derived from the ancient Sanskrit language, by the outstanding Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore.

Today we are inspired to read learned discussions about India that appear under such titles as, "China and India Reshape Global Industrial Geography" and "China, India and the World Economy". We draw the necessary lessons from analytical observations such as:

"The success of the Indian software industry is now internationally recognized. Consequently, scholars, policymakers, and industry officials everywhere generally anticipate the increasing competitiveness of India in high technology activities", and that:

"In terms of the absolute level of Gross National Income (GNI) at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) exchange rates in 2003, China, with $6.4 trillion in GNI, was second largest in the World, second only to the United States at $11 trillion. India with $3 trillion in GNI was fourth after the U.S., China and Japan (3.6 trillion) (World Bank, 2005). It is likely that in 2005, India replaced Japan as the country with the third largest GNI."

History has placed our country and people in the privileged position that that we can truly count this emerging global giant, India, as one of our greatest and steadfast friends and strategic partner on our universe, as human society refashions itself within the context of the rapidly changing world defined by a complex process of globalisation.

A few days before he left our country, Mahatma Gandhi wrote an Open Letter to our people, the Indian South Africans, dated July 15, 1914. Addressed to "Dear Brother or Sister", as he concluded his Letter the Mahatma said:

"Though I am leaving for the motherland, I am not likely to forget South Africa. I should like friends who may have occasion to go to India to come and see me there. I do intend, of course, to work in India in regard to the disabilities here. And I shall be able to work better if the people in South Africa ask for my services.

"Above all, I wish to say that it is up to the community to win its freedom and that its ultimate weapon, an irresistible one, is satyagraha.I am, of course, a satyagrahi and I hope always to remain one, but in December last I fell more under the spell of indenture."

The Open Letter was signed: "The community's indentured labourer, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi."

As the possibilities of the day dictated, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi left our country by ship from Cape Town, sailing to India via England, travelling from one British Colony to another British Colony, via the seat of the Imperial Power. Manmohan Singh left our country by air, flying from the O.R. Tambo Johannesburg International Airport directly to New Delhi.

I know that he too, as he left our shores, left us the moving and deeply felt message of the friendship of a humble human being with other human beings, who are tied to him and his people by more than the Indian Ocean, that:

"Though I am leaving for the motherland, I am not likely to forget South Africa. I should like friends who may have occasion to go to India to come and see me there. I do intend, of course, to work in India in regard to the disabilities here.

"I am, of course, a satyagrahi and I hope always to remain one."

We will gladly respond to his invitation to visit him and his people, claiming the liberty to enter India as our second home, because we too, like the Mahatma and him, would have done our best to serve as the community's indentured labourers. We shall come again to India hoping that we can truthfully say that, of course, we too are satyagrahi and hope always to remain so.

Thabo Mbeki