CAPE TOWN -- French President Fran?ois Mitterrand became the first foreigner to address South Africa's parliament Monday, promising that as the country recovered from the ravages of apartheid France would "be by your side." "France is offering herself as a partner to you with her resources, with the means at her disposal and also with her ideals," Mitterrand told the 490 black and white legislators. "The struggle for democracy is always an honorable struggle. You are building a new nation. My ambition is that France should be by your side." Mitterrand arrived earlier Monday on a two-day state visit as President Nelson Mandela's first official guest in post-apartheid South Africa. He was given a standing ovation as the first non-member and first foreigner to take a seat in parliament. "I welcome as a prominent world citizen President Fran?ois Mitterrand of France, a freedom fighter and a friend of democratic South Africa," speaker Frene Ginwala said. Mandela, a political prisoner for 27 years who became South Africa's first black president on May 10, told Mitterrand in his welcome: "We shall always cherish this great moment." Recalling a famous address to members of the white parliament in 1960, he said: "In these houses of parliament, then the den of racial infamy, Harold Macmillan, the prime minister of Great Britain, spoke of the wind of change sweeping across Africa. "Today, you join us as we celebrate the cleansing effect of the breeze of freedom."
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