Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez paid homage Tuesday to "mother Africa" as his country signed a raft of energy agreements with Pretoria as part of burgeoning cooperation between South America and the continent.
   
In a speech that celebrated Nelson Mandela and retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the Venezuelan leader spoke passionately about the importance of so-called south-south cooperation between Africa and South America.
   
"We are fully aware of the fact that we are visiting a mother. Because for us Africa is the mother. A good and great mother," said Chavez, making his first visit to South Africa.
   
"We want to give this relationship a profoundly strategic character," he added.
   
The two countries signed a string of energy cooperation agreements that South African President Thabo Mbeki said aimed to cut out the middle man in plans to foster oil trade between the two countries.
   
Chavez said it was critical for the two continents to work together and that the agreements should be implemented "as soon as possible".
   
"It is high time that Venezuela starts sending oil to our countries of the south, to the developing countries. It's a matter of justice," he told a joint press conference. "Only united we might be free and only free can we develop fully."
   
"We cannot waste a second more. It is essential to unite these people of the south in order to conduct a true stategic change in international relations."
   
Chavez went on to invite South Africa's state-owned oil company PetroSA to "immediately" begin exploiting the Orinoco belt, which he described as the largest oil resource on the planet.
   
Mbeki said the agreements -- including those on exploiting mature oil fields and drilling new deposits -- meant Caracas and Pretoria could now build a mutually beneficial relationship which could empower other southern countries.     Although rich in other natural resources, Africa's economic powerhouse imports the bulk of its oil from the Middle East.
   
Pretoria sees Venezuela's oil as a way of circumventing the kind of crisis in the coal-driven electricity supply that struck earlier this year when acute shortages caused widespread blackouts.
   
"The objective is to assist in the process of reducing the cost of energy with a positive impact on the country and the lives of the people," Mbeki said.
   
Venezuela, a member of oil cartel OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), has one of the world's largest oil reserves.
   
Turning away from the economy, Chavez then launched into the kind of outburst with which he has regularly provoked the ire of western powers, particularly the United States, since he came to power in 1998.
   
He insisted that the former colonial masters of Africa and South America should apologise for "the greatest genocide in history".
   
"We demand that the genocides which occurred in Africa, in South America, be condemned," he told reporters as he stood alongside Mbeki.
   
"Africa has suffered the greatest genocide in history," Chavez said, in a reference to colonisation by European powers and to slavery.
   
"In this we are brothers because we have known such a genocide in South America," he said, citing native Maya, Aztec and Inca civilizations which disappeared under Spain's Conquistadors.
   
"The countries that led that genocide have not asked for forgiveness yet and some of them are even upset because we remember this."
   
"But we have the obligation to remember this. It is our duty to explain this, to tell current and future generations what happened," added the former army paratrooper.
   
Chavez is scheduled to wrap up his visit here Wednesday.