Durban, South Africa Wants to Cooperate With Russian Cities

Signing a sister city agreement is a common method of cooperation between different cities around the world with the goal of promoting cultural and commercial ties. Cape Town, South Africa has been the sister city of St. Petersburg, Russia since 2001.

The South African coastal city Durban wants to cooperate with Sevastopol, a Russian coastal city in Crimea, Musa Mbhele, head of the Durban city administration told Sputnik.

"We would like to cooperate with St. Petersburg and Moscow, because we have common issues to tackle. We have already signed a sister city agreement with St. Petersburg. We will be happy if more cities want to become partners with us. We are not against collaborating with Crimean cities, including the port city Sevastopol," he pointed out.

Mbhele elaborated that he would like to exchange experiences in port infrastructure construction, the application of various social investment mechanisms and share views on the energy transition problem.

“Our city is prone to power outages - I would like to learn how other cities deal with this issue. Russian experience could help us determine whether we are on the right track in our efforts to reorient ourselves toward so-called clean energy. Russians could express their opinions on the subject,” he indicated.

When it comes to Russia's experience dealing with power outages, which Mbhele mentioned, Sevastopol indeed has plenty. In the autumn of 2015, shortly after the Crimean peninsula became Russian territory, Ukraine attempted to impose an energy blockade on the peninsula by damaging power transmission towers in the Kherson region, which connected Crimea to continental Ukraine. The pillars of four power lines were blown up in November 2015, cutting off the supply of electricity to Crimea and leaving nearly 2 million people without power.

As a result of the power outage, Crimea declared a state of emergency and switched to local emergency power generation. Furthermore, in order to mitigate the effects of sabotage, Russian authorities outfitted Crimea's boiler houses with diesel generators. In addition, the first stage of the "energy bridge" between mainland Russia and Crimea was inaugurated in the winter of 2015. By 2016, Russia had completed and operationalized the fourth - and final - chain of the Crimean energy bridge.

South Africa and BRICS

Mbhele also stated that his city is open to cooperation with other cities of the BRICS member countries.

BRICS, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, was formed in 2006 and aims to enhance economic cooperation between its members.

Currently, Argentina, Iran, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are showing active interest in the organization, with the governor of the country's capital Algiers confirming last week his country's desire to join BRICS.

Algiers' governor also stated that in order to join the organization, the country must standardize some of its legislative acts. Earlier, Algeria submitted an official application to join the BRICS economic bloc.