President Jacob Zuma was feted in Angola on Thursday as he made his "homecoming" to the country he had served in as military commander of the ANC's military wing.

The Angolan parliament gave him a standing ovation and chanted "Zuma, Zuma, Zuma" after he finished his address to them by saying in Portuguese: "My country is your country, your country is my country. We are one people, one family, I feel at home here."

Not only Angolan parliamentarians and officials were in attendance, but also 11 South African cabinet ministers, who accompanied him on his first state visit as president and the first state visit between the two countries since 1994
"Angola was our home away from home" during the liberation struggle, when the country had given the ANC military bases at great peril to itself from apartheid SA's military, Zuma said.

"We remember that Umkhonto weSizwe cadres were free to walk around the streets of Luanda armed, manning roadblocks as if they were Angolans."

Zuma had successfully re-kindled the ties that were so strong during the liberation struggle, but which had frayed, for various reasons, since SA won its freedom in 1994.

At a joint press conference after meeting Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Zuma strongly denied that their was anything untoward about the long delay in having a state visit.

He attributed it entirely to historical circumstances, mainly the Angolan civil war.

Dos Santos noted that after the civil war ended in 2002, Angola had been preoccupied with demobilising soldiers, resettling 4 million internal refugees, rebuilding the war-ravaged country and re-establishing the political system.

Dos Santos announced that South African petroleum parastatal PetroSA and its Angolan counterpart, Sonangol, had signed an agreement for PetroSA to refine Angolan oil.

Although it is sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producer, Angola has to import petroleum because its single refinery cannot produce for domestic consumption.

Zuma noted that Angola was one of the biggest oil producers on the continent and SA had one of the largest economies, so there was a natural synergy between them.

Dos Santos said the two countries had also discussed the supply and distribution of electricity from the Democratic Republic of Congo's Inga hydroelectric plant, and other regional infrastructure projects, to facilitate business.

And they also signed air services and diplomatic consultation agreements, as well as other memorandums on trade, industry, commerce, housing, and sport and recreation.

They agreed in principle to establish a bi-national commission to upgrade and co-ordinate all relations between the two countries - political, economic and social.

But officials said this agreement had not been signed because of legal technicalities.

They said these would be worked out soon and the foreign ministers of both countries would meet to sign the necessary agreement.

The two sides also failed to conclude an agreement to scrap visa requirements for travellers between the two countries, but officials said they believed this would also be finalised soon.

The often laborious process of obtaining visas is considered an significant impediment to travel between the two countries, and therefore also commerce and tourism.

Zuma also brought the largest delegation of South African business leaders ever to have accompanied a state visit - about 150 of them, he said.

On Thursday, they concluded a two-day forum with Angolan business leaders to seek business opportunities and identify impediments.

Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies had earlier said total trade between the two countries had increased 17-fold between 1997 and 2007 to R17 billion, and nearly doubled again last year to R30bn.

But Zuma said the political channel now expanding would open the way for "many more billions" in trade.

Today Zuma was due to travel north of Luanda to visit former ANC military bases and to honour the MK cadres who died there