PRETORIA, Dec 20 (AFP) - South Africa has donated more than four million rand (524,000 dollars / 579,000 euros) as well as goods like clothes and food to Angola's war victims, the social development minister said Wednesday.
At a ceremony to hand over the donation to United Nations agencies, Minister Zola Skweyiya thanked Angolans for their support during South Africa's struggle against apartheid and promised solidarity with their peace efforts.
"The future peace and economic stability for our country is integrally linked to that of the southern African region and indeed the African continent as a whole," Skweyiya said.
"It is only when we build solid partnerships ... that we can tackle the complex problems and challenges like poverty, HIV/AIDS and the wars raging in the region."
Presently about 500,000 Angolans are refugees, over four million are internally displaced and more than 70,000 have been injured by landmines planted during the course of the country's 25-year-old civil war, the minister said.
"Worse, thousands of women and children have been killed and many more are still dying almost daily," he said. "Hunger and death have become the order of the day."
An Angolan Solidarity campaign, launched by the government in September 1999, has gathered popular support with the private sector and civil society collecting 230,000 rand for Angolans.
"Faith-based organisations will take the campaign forward next year and hope to raise five million rand from the public," the minister's spokesman Mbulelo Musi told AFP.
On December 15, the UN's World Food Programme warned of a break in its Angolan food pipeline -- which assists more than a million people -- unless it received immediate new funding for its emergency aid operations.
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