Kerala - Kochi   

South African team’s stress on sharing defence capabilities

KOCHI: A high-level South African delegation that arrived here as part of the Kochi visit of SAS Spioenkop, a South African frigate, stressed the core competency of India in training defence personnel and that of South Africa in designing warships and manufacturing armoured carriers and other weaponry.

The Chief of Naval Staff of South African Navy Rear Admiral M.H. Magalefa said many South African submariners had taken training at Indian Navy’s eastern base in Vizag. The report submitted by a senior South African naval officer highlighting India’s core competency in training personnel would be taken up with our political leadership, he said.

Talking about the newly-commissioned frigate, he said the German-built ship with cutting-edge technology was built to design specified by South African experts. “The ship’s sophisticated combat suite — the heart, soul, brain and feet of a warship — sets it apart from other warships. We think the Indian Navy too is serious about inducting a similar ship and naval officers would inspect the vessel.”

While leaving Kochi on Tuesday, the vessel will hold joint exercises with the Indian Navy. The ship’s commanding officer Capt. Christopher George Manig spoke of how the ship’s stealth design and ‘signature-reduction features’ binding acoustics, heat and radar were unique. Apart from India, the newly-acquired frigate visited Singapore, China, Malaysia and Vietnam and is scheduled to call at Mauritius.

The vessel got its name from a battle fought at a spy-hill with a similar name, close to Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Here, the Boer forces defeated a superior British force in the Second Anglo-Boer War.

South African High Commissioner in India Francis Moloi said the two countries have been friends for centuries. “The legacy of Gandhiji is very much alive in our country, in the form of museums, monuments and statues.” Defence Adviser to the S.African High Commissioner in India Col. Sydney M. Mdlulwa too was present.

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