A working meeting with representatives of a number of the RSA organizations which cooperate with JINR was held on 21 March 2014 in Stellenbosch. It is symbolic that the initiator of the meeting was the University of Fort Hare (UFH), a graduate of which was the former South African President Nelson Mandela, and the meeting was held on the Human Rights Day, the national holiday of the Republic of South Africa. JINR was represented by Head of RSA–JINR cooperation, Head of the JINR International Cooperation Department D.V. Kamanin.

On the UFH side the meeting was attended by Head of the Department of Physics Professor A. Mdebuka and Professor K. Phumezo who recently visited Dubna with a group of the RSA professors in October 2013. UFH expressed great interest in establishing close business contacts with JINR, for which in the frames of associate membership of the Republic of South Africa at JINR UFH intends to conclude with JINR an individual cooperation agreement which defines the areas of cooperation of the parties and the expected results. In particular, UFH is interested to take an active part in joint research projects (JRP) or, possibly, to initiate a new project.

Another block of discussed issues was associated with the planned establishment of a Fission laboratory in the Military Academy of the University of Stellenbosch in Saldanha, under the direction of Professor Noel Mkaza in the frames of the current joint research project “Fission and clustering”. A virtual laboratory which is being established jointly with the JINR University center on the basis of this project could become a good basis for inter-University cooperation in South Africa in the future. As participants noted there is such positive experience in the frames of the Nuclear Research Video project.

The meeting was also attended by other active participants of joint projects: Head of the Accelerator and Engineering Department of the cyclotron laboratory iThemba LABS Professor Lowry Conradie, Professor of the University of Stellenbosch Ben Herbst and Professor of the University of Pretoria Sergei Rakityanski. This meeting was a stage of preparation of the Strategic workshop on development of the RSA-JINR cooperation which will be held on 27 March 2014 in Dubna.