INTERVIEW/South African Ambassador: South Africans can learn a lot from Romanians

The ambassador of South Africa in Bucharest, Thenjiwe Mtintso, states in an interview granted to AGERPRES that South Africans could learn from Romanians how to preserve their cultural heritage, while Romanians could learn from South Africans how to encourage the participation of women in political life.

Photo credit: (c) Simion MECHNO / AGERPRES PHOTO

"South Africans can learn a lot from Romanians especially the preservation of heritage, historic and cultural sites. We could also learn how to increase our emergency health capacity as in SMURD. Romania could learn about improving the participation of women in politics. Romania's is still lagging far behind many countries in women in Parliament. The world average is 22 per cent, Romania is at 11 per cent and South Africa is at 41.2 per cent," says the ambassador in the interview.

AGERPRES: What is your opinion about Romania? And the people?

Thenjiwe Mtintso: I have been visiting many different places in the past year: Timisoara, Cluj, Sighisoara, Sibiu, Sinaia, Oradea, Brasov, Ploiesti and Constanta and met many government officials, academics, students and communities. I have seen the different levels of development of each county just as our South African provinces...some advanced and other still needing a lot of inputs.

I have found lots of commonalities in some of the cultural aspects like bright beads, colourful clothes, similar dances, food like for instance what we call "pap" and it is called polenta here, though ours is white, the cooking is the same; I have found similar flavours in our wines especially the red wine.

Above all, I have found the hospitality, acceptance, respect, support, warmth and friendliness very similar to ours in South Africa... the human-ness...