By IANS
New Delhi : Congress president Sonia Gandhi flew Tuesday for South Africa for four days even as a political crisis sparked by the Left’s objections to the Indo-US nuclear deal intensified.
Gandhi, invited by South Africa’s Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka during her trip to India last year, is also scheduled to visit Cape Town and Pretoria, where she would be holding talks with President Thabo Mbeki.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson is expected to call on former South African president Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg.
She will deliver a lecture on “The relevance of Gandhian Philosophy in the 21st Century” at the University of Cape Town and undertake a trip to the Centre for Women Empowerment at the Kayalitsha black township, said Congress sources here.
During her visit, which coincides with the centenary celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha campaign, Gandhi will also go to the Pietermaritzburg railway station where Mahatma Gandhi was thrown off a train after riding in a whites-only compartment in the late 1800s.
However, Gandhi has axed her scheduled trip to Durban. “She was planning to visit Durban also. But due to the political crisis here, she has cancelled it,” said a Congress source.
Accompanying Gandhi is Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma.
The source indicated that Gandhi had decided to go to South Africa despite the political uncertainty because “there will not be much to do in the coming days” as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and cabinet ministers would be busy with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe.
Indian communists, who provide a crucial parliamentary support to Manmohan Singh’s coalition government, have warned the government of serious consequences if it goes ahead with the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.