Our relations are excellent. Tourism is one of our main aims

Ambassador Gerhard Visser, Charge d’affaires of the South African Embassy in Sofia

Ambassador Gerhard Visser has a Bachelor of Commerce and Honors Degree from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He started his diplomatic career in 1971 in the Department of Foreign Affairs. Through the years he held different diplomatic posts. Since 2004 he is Charge d’affaires a.i. of the South African Embassy in Bulgaria. He is married and has two children. Proficient in Afrikaans, English, German, French and Spanish.

Your Excellency, how do you feel in Bulgaria, what are your first impressions and what do you find most interesting?
It is all interesting. I have travelled a lot. I have been in the diplomatic service for 35 years. I am a career diplomat from the day I left university. I have never had another job, so I see myself as a little bit of a traveler.

It is my first visit posting to the Balkans and I must say I’m pleasantly surprised.

I knew many Bulgarians in South Africa – there are about 20 thousand of your compatriots living in South Africa. I know the Bulgarian ambassador in South Africa very well.

The people here are very pleasant and the country is beautiful.

This is my seventh embassy’s diplomatic posting in a long career. Before I came here I was the South African High Commissioner and Ambassador in Lesotho (1992-1997) and then from 1998-2004 I was the Deputy Chief of State Protocol of South Africa. In this position I had the opportunity of meeting many heads of state and government – George Bush, Bill Clinton, Fidel Castro, the Prime Minister of Japan Junichiro Koizumi, the Queen of England etc. I have also served in various diplomatic posts in Santiago, Berne, Asuncion, Geneva. This is a very rewarding career and as I say if I had to choose again, I would chose the diplomatic life again.

You sound like your work is your passion.
Yes, it’s my passion. I don’t think I would have been happy in any other work but the diplomatic life and I am fortunate and privileged to represent a country like South

Africa. South African diplomats have many opportunities to serve their country and it is a pleasant and challenging country to represent, now that it is a true democracy. South Africa stands for market orientated capitalism, good governance, true democracy, human rights for all, good relations with all and over all total transparency.

We are a modern country but we also have some unpleasant blemishes – there are too many poor people in the country and there is quite a big gap between the rich and the poor. This is something that my government is really working very hard on. Our economy is going strong, our currency is strong and exports are going very well and our inflation is about the same as Bulgaria’s. All in all, it is a strong economy but regrettably the unemployment is too high – it’s about 10 to 15 %, which is very high for a developing country like South Africa.

We are looking forward to a prosperous and strong future for our next generations. South Africa is the biggest economy among the 54 countries in Africa. But we don’t want to be a rich island surrounded by the poor. We would like to assist our neighbors to catch up and to that end South Africa is a member of the Southern African Development Council (SADC) which comprises fifteen Southern African countries and through this regional organization these countries are assisting each other and the poorer countries around us like Mozambique, Angola and Botswana to improve their economic performance.

About three years ago all the African countries (except Morocco) formed the African Union (AU) – it is like the European Union but many years behind. So the African Union is now trying to form an African Parliament – one parliament for the whole of Africa. The AU is eventually also looking towards an African Bank, an African Court of Justice, a single currency, etc. Of course, these are very long-term dreams. We are where the EU was about thirty-forty years ago.

Indeed, South Africa is a country known for its fast development and democratic changes. What is the modern outlook of your country and what would you like your country’s image to be?
South Africa is a country that came through a very depressing background. We became a true democracy in 1994. There was a protracted struggle against apartheid, a system, which separated the black and white people in all forms of life and was most demeaning to the black people in South Africa and worldwide. But in 1990, when Mr. Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in jail, after a long struggle by the different liberation movements, it was decided by the then white government of President Frederick de Klerk and Mr. Nelson Mandela’s group called African National Congress (ANC) and other liberation groups inside and outside of South Africa, to negotiate the future of South Africa rather than to fight about it.

South Africans had multi-party talks for four years with no outside interference. And we came up with a Constitution, which was acceptable to all parties. We had our first democratic elections in 1994 and Mr. Mandela became the first President of a democratic South Africa and since then we have been on the road of true democracy.

I think Mr. Mandela is a person I would love to be seen as portraying the real South Africa – humble though a strong leader, confident, but not arrogant and a forgiving and loyal person.

In the history of South Africa we have achieved a lot. We have won four Nobel Peace Prizes, (Chief Albert Luthuli, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Mandela and President De Klerk); two Nobel Prizes for medicine and two for literature (Nadine Gordimer) and our last winner was in 2004 – Mr. John Maxwell Coetzee.

Africa is a great continent with a great future and South Africa has a great future.

Would you describe the state of the bilateral contacts between Bulgaria and South Africa?
We have very good contacts. Your Vice President was in South Africa in December last year where he signed some bilateral agreements. Foreign Deputy Minister Draganov was in South Africa recently where he met with his South African counterpart to discuss relations between the countries. President Parvanov was in South Africa in 2003 for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. So there are a lot of contacts between South Africa and Bulgaria and I think the relations are excellent.

South Africa has just signed a cultural and sport agreement with Bulgaria. I think Bulgaria has the technical know-how as far as your sport managers and sport trainers are concerned and we would like to make use of that.

We are hosting the World Soccer Cup in 2010 after Germany. It’s the biggest event in our history and I think it is quite prestigious. So we hope it will contribute for our relations, because I am sure that Bulgaria will also be there with a strong soccer team. I think the relations with all countries can only strengthen with the World Soccer Cup in South Africa.

What are the priorities of your mission to Bulgaria?
Any diplomat nowadays is a salesman – you try to sell your country in various aspects. Our big main goal is to sell South Africa as a tourist attraction, to improve trade between the two countries and to assist with democracy.

We think we have earned our democracy. South Africa is approached by many countries to assist in democratic institutions and capacity building. For instance, we are helping in Africa – we are involved in Congo (DRC), Burundi, and Liberia; we assisted in Mozambique, Lesotho, Angola, Sudan, etc. I would like to stress that South Africa would like to assist when requested.

Tourism is one of our main aims in both directions – from South Africa to Bulgaria and from Bulgaria to South Africa. We are about to organize a tourism workshop so that we can inform the tourist industry in Bulgaria about what South Africa offers. South Africa is one of the leading holiday countries of the world. Cape Town has been chosen over and over as one of the top 5 city destinations in the world. South Africa has a wide range of tourism attractions. We call South Africa “a world in one country” – we have everything there (except snow pistes). One of our game reserves, the Kruger National Park is bigger than the Netherlands. We have many other national game reserves where any tourist can see lions, tigers, and marine reserves where you can see dolphins and whales ; traditional African dancing, and traditional way of living. We also have very good hotels and our general infrastructure is very good, too. South Africa’s road infrastructure is on par with many European countries.

Vice versa, South Africans like to try skiing – we don’t have snow in South Africa, we have reasonably cool winters but we have a very good climate. We have more than 300 sunshine days a year. Our climate and beaches are very good but the South Africans would like to come to Europe to see the older part of the world.

South Africa is a modern country. It is three hundred years old and Bulgaria is over 3000 years old. Sofia itself is a very beautiful tourist city and your beaches on the Black Sea are wonderful places. I think the two countries complement each other and our seasons also differ – when it’s summer there it’s winter here and so people can travel in good season.

What are the future projects of the South African Embassy in Sofia?
We are a very small mission – we are only two diplomats and 5 local recruits. We are planning to organize some photo exhibitions in different cities in Bulgaria. I have already written to Stara Zagora and Veliko Tarnovo. We would like to take part in the Plovdiv autumn show where we had a stand last year. There we sold South African wine and South African handicraft. Like Bulgaria, we have really good wines. We would like to enhance the cultural exchange. So that would be our projects for the next 6 months.

Tell us more about yourself and your family. What are your favorite pastimes here in Bulgaria?
I have a wife and 2 children. My son and daughter are in South Africa, they are 22 and 21. The daughter is a beauty therapist and is working in one of the leading hotels in Johannesburg. My son is studying for a degree in travel and tourism. We might bring him to Bulgaria to continue his studies. My wife and I love traveling, we have seen most of the bigger places in Bulgaria in one year. Sometimes it is very difficult to get out of Sofia as the social responsibilities keep you busy here. We have already been to Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania and Turkey since we have been here. We travel light and by car to these countries.

I like walking and I have hiked quite a lot in Vitosha Mountain. Every weekend I try to put in a couple of hours of it. Otherwise we like to read and go to the theater. I like history and am forever reading history books. We are sort of internal tourists – we like to walk around Sofia. Otherwise, we are homely people – we like to stay home also. We think Bulgaria is a wonderful country to be in and a most rewarding posting.

Juliana Tomova