SOUTH AFRICA: MICROSOFT BOSS BILL GATES MEETS PRESIDENT MANDELA

(11 Mar 1997) English/Nat

Microsoft boss Bill Gates met President Nelson Mandela in Cape Town on Tuesday.

Gates last week opened a new digital village in the black township of Soweto aimed at promoting computers in the country's impoverished areas.

Mandela, who has an e-mail address, told Gates he knew enough about computers to know they were important for the future.

Billionaire computer guru Bill Gates, on his first visit to South Africa, plans to take South Africa's growing computer industry by storm.

While in South Africa he met President Nelson Mandela.

SOUNDBITE:
"I came here both on business and also to relax. Which I've done for the last few days. It's very successful on both fronts."
SUPER CAPTION: Bill Gates, Microsoft

Mandela said he didn't know too much about digital technology, but realised that it was important for a developing country like South Africa.

SOUNDBITE:
"Well as you know I am a country boy. But I do like progress although I don't understand these things properly, but nevertheless I am aware that there is a generation gap and that therefore I have to try and follow what younger people do."
SUPERCAPTION: President Nelson Mandela

Mandela made light of his lack of technological expertise. He said when he was released from prison in 1992 he was frightened by a camera microphone boom.

SOUNDBITE:
"When I first saw this (referring to a camera boom) when I came from jail I tried to run away from it because I thought the journalist was drunk. I was seeing it for the first time."
SUPERCAPTION: President Nelson Mandela.

Microsoft plans to develop 900 computer resource centres throughout the country.

Computer development centres are desperately needed especially in South Africa's black townships.

President Nelson Mandela's government is aiming to improve the level of teaching in township schools, which were severely neglected under the previous apartheid government's policy of inferior education for blacks.

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