← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC Radio 4
00:28:02
A mesmerising speech from a great South African churchman: the retirement of Tutu is...
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Hi there.
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You've downloaded the BBC radio programme from our own correspondent. We make two versions and if you'd like to hear our World Service programme, you'll find it on the BBC iPlayer. This, though, is the edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's presented by Kate Ady.
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Today, tea and cricket beckon for the South African churchmen who battled the apartheid government. How bandits and insurgents are tightening their grip on the roads of Afghanistan. There's coffee and cake in Leipzig, as we're told, only East Germans are allowed to poke fun at the old DDR. And we outsmart an Irish cat to enjoy a fresh silver. Darling, that's a herring. In Ardglass, County Down, Desmond Tutu, who celebrates his 79th birthday today, says the time has come for him to withdraw from public life. The Archbishop told reporters earlier this year he'd been fortunate to contribute to the development of the new democratic South Africa, a country which he described as exhilarating and sometimes exasperating. His plans for retirement apparently include watching cricket, visiting his grandchildren and spending more time drinking tea with his wife. Desmond Tutu has made his mark on generations of BBC correspondents covering the South African story, among them Alan Little.
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When Desmond Tutu was made archbishop of Cape Town in the early 1980s, he broke the law just by moving into the official residence. Bishop's Court was located in a part of the city which under the apartheid regime was designated for whites only. The government, led by the veteran Afrikaner nationalist P.W. berta, did not try to stop him living there, for the symbolic heft of this charismatic African cleric was already clear. But it did tell him that he would have to apply for membership of a special racial category that had been created mostly for foreign diplomats and businessmen. He would have to be declared an honorary white. This offer he declined. In 1984, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, but he had no passport to travel. He had been refused South African citizenship because he had declined to say which of the so called Bantustans he regarded as as his homeland. The state finally allowed him to travel on a refugee document. Beside the word nationality, a government official had typed the single word unknown. He stopped in London on his way to Sweden. He spoke at St. Paul's Cathedral. I was there from the pulpit, he said. I was on retreat in a forest in Northern California. I went for a walk at dawn and met an old woman, the widow of a forestry worker. She recognized me and told me that from now on she would include me in her daily prayers. And then he paused Spread his arms as though to embrace the entire congregation. The entire world. I am being prayed for by a woodcutter's widow in Northern California. He bellowed. What chance does PW Berta stand? This was his vision, that he could summon the goodness of the world, an international hunger for justice, and and send it into battle against apartheid, the system of whites only rule and racial oppression that his people were living under. We think of Desmond Tutu as a highly political priest. When you meet him, it does not seem so. The first time I interviewed him was in cape town in 1995. Before you turn on your camera, he said, sitting down opposite me, let us say a prayer together. I've interviewed him perhaps a dozen times now. He does this every time. The life he wants to lead, does lead, is not political at all, but above all, spiritual. It is the source of his extraordinary power to move and inspire. That power gets him into enormous trouble at times. He has risked his own life to stand up for what he believes is right. In the 1980s, he was in one of the townships when an angry crowd turned on a man believed to be a police informer. The man was about to be killed by the method then known as necklacing. A tire placed around the neck, full of petrol and then ignited. Bishop Tutu waded into the maddened throng to save the man, and the crowd calmed and a life was saved. There was at that time, perhaps no one else who could have done it and survived. And his only defense was his personal moral authority. The last time I saw him was in Scotland a little over a year ago. He was addressing the governing body of the Church of Scotland, the General assembly in Edinburgh. The great controversy of that General assembly was homosexuality in the ministry of the church. One minister in a parish in Aberdeen had come out as gay, was living with his male partner, and despite being supported by the overwhelming bulk of his own parishioners, the evangelicals in the church wanted him out. Desmond Tutu waded into this fight too. He approached the microphone high above the assembly hall. 2000 assembled Christians, clergy and laity gazed up at him, rather awestruck. You know, he said, I'm not as young as I look. And it brought the house down. Friendly, self deprecating, disarming. We are all, he said again and again, created in the image of God. All, all. And he repeated the word over and over. All, all. I've been fighting discrimination all my life. We are all created in the image of God. Black and white and brown, male and female. All, all. African and European and Asian. And American all all. Lesbian and gay and so called straight all. It was a mesmerizing performance by a man who has never been afraid to make enemies. He has retained all his life a solid faith in the essential goodness of human nature, and he has mobilized it to devastating effect.
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Our former Africa correspondent, Alan Little. It's nine years since the west launched its war in Afghanistan. Today the fighting often seems fiercer than ever. The number of dead soldiers, insurgents and civilians continues to rise relentlessly. So is there any scope for optimism? Or is Afghanistan destined for even worse to come? Ian Pannell is as well placed as anyone to answer those questions. He's been based in Kabul for the past two years, and as his assignment there draws to a close, he's been reflecting on the changes he's seen.
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Haji Mirage has been a bus driver through three decades of war in Afghanistan, and his beard has grown long and grey. We met at a coach station on the outskirts of Mazar I Sharif, a flat, dusty sprawl in the plains of the north. It's one of only two relatively safe cities left in Afghanistan, and despite a long and bloody history, it's been pretty immune from the creeping insecurity of recent years. Until now, Haji was wearing the ubiquitous shalwar kameez, a faded checkered scarf wrapped around his shoulders and a white prayer cap on his head. Other drivers edged in as we were talking, a motley bunch, slightly grimy after too many days loitering at the Fumeville bus station, waiting to ferry passengers to Kabul. I ask him, how is security? It's got worse in the last two years, he replies. The road from here to Kabul takes him a good eight hours or so. It's a journey I first made two years ago, winding up from the capital through the steep valleys of Parwan, where hills give way to the mountains of the mighty Hindu Kush. Afghanistan is a land of great journeys, and this is one of its most spectacular. It's always been a precarious route, with the risk of rock falls in summer and avalanches in winter. But today the journey carries new dangers. Armed bandits prey on vulnerable travelers, and Hadji says drivers have become wary of entering the tunnel that cuts through the mountains at night. And when it's not highway robbery he must guard against, it's the Taliban. When I first visited this part of the country two years ago, it was the threadbare economy that preyed on people's minds. Today, it's just as likely to be the threat from armed men. Those who can afford it now buy a plane ticket instead. And those who can't have no choice but to take the bus and run the risk. The north is no longer immune. Slowly and perniciously, insurgents and criminals have spread across many formerly safe parts of the country. In the last two years, I've travelled around much of Afghanistan, and it's gradually become harder and harder to do. Kidnappings, roadside bombs and banditry are constant worries. Some people now store Taliban songs on their mobile phones as an insurance policy at insurgent checkpoints, where they can quickly play the music to demonstrate their support for the cause. The place I've visited the most is the hot desert of Helmand Province, where the war against the Taliban has claimed so many lives. I've met the young, the brave and the zealous, shared jokes with men barely out of their teens who were gunned down or blown up days later. I've trusted strangers with weapons to keep me safe, seen soldiers shake with fear and shock as a comrade is killed, and met militants who would rather die on the spot than surrender. The military will tell you that Helmand today is safer than when I first went there in 2008. But civilians there won't tell you that. Nor will they in much of the rest of the country. That's the way things have been in the last two years, and it sounds bleak, but it isn't the whole picture. I did something the other day that I've never managed to do before in Afghanistan. I sat down and interviewed four local women. As a foreign man in a deeply conservative country, this is usually impossible for me, but they were all living in a shelter for abused women and felt safe enough to talk about their lives. Speaking from behind the gauze window of her blue burqa, Zara told me how she'd been forced to marry a mentally ill man. Fearing for her life, she'd run away from home. I asked her what she thought the difference was between her life and that of women elsewhere. The big difference, she said, is that our lives are full of violence, even from childhood. So I asked whether life had improved at all for Afghan women. It wasn't the answer I expected. They all said yes. Now they could go to school, sometimes to work. If they're in trouble, there are courts to appeal to and shelters to hide in. It doesn't mean that life is anything approaching good, but in their opinion, it is getting better. This is the country I've grown to love. Dangerous, yes, but it has a wild, seductive beauty. It's a land of great adventure, where hope springs from the most barren ground. As I leave Afghanistan, I struggle not to feel gloomy about its future. I'll never forget the kindness and hospitality I've been shown, or the strength in the face of adversity I've seen. And if people who suffered unimaginable pain dare to hope for a better life, then surely that's the least they deserve.
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Ian PANEL there Germans have been spending the week considering how reunification and the fall of the Berlin Wall have affected their lives. The weekend saw the 20th anniversary of east and West coming together, and television, radio and the newspapers have all had plenty to say on the subject. The former chancellor Helmut Kohl, who oversaw reunification in 1990, was pictured on TV wiping away a tear at a ceremony in front of the Reichstag in Berlin. Overcoming years of separation and opposing political systems hasn't been easy for the Germans, and Farhana Dawood says there are still problems, particularly in the former east, where unemployment remains high and many young people leave to search for jobs in the West.
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I've visited Leipzig in eastern Germany many times over the past decade and have never felt it to be as prosperous and confident as it is today. The residents are proud to demonstrate their wealth, driving the essential Mercedes Benz or BMW, striding confidently along grand boulevards adorned in the latest fashions, and stepping out of cafes selling organic food and frothy coffee. But despite these trappings of capitalism, Leipziggers aren't Wessies, the nickname they assign to their West German compatriots, and they are increasingly proud of their different heritage. I'm invited for coffee and cake, essential to most social gatherings. At the home of Gisela in her hallway, I'm struck by a bumper sticker that exclaims, or we're also in the West. Gisla says she bought the sticker because she feels it's time West Germans woke up to the progress East Germans have made in 20 years of hard work since reunification. She and others I met on this trip complain of what they call condescension from West Germans. There's a complex and sometimes contradictory mix of feelings here. While Gisela wants recognition for the difficult transition she and her fellow Aussies were, or East Germans have endured, she is by no means willing to let go of her past. To this end, she's brought her son, an architect who now lives in London, a folding ruler emblazoned with the old GDR slogan, Hero of Work. The words glare out across thick, bold stripes of the national colours of red, yellow and black. As Deirdre, her son, explains, hero of Work was an award of high esteem given by GDR officials to citizens who made an extraordinary contribution to the state's productivity. They chuckle and explain that these reminders of their past are important enough. Time has now elapsed to consider their history with nostalgia. But only East Germans are allowed to poke fun. As Ricarda, an artist, explained to me, she's delighted by her recent acquisition of a mini encyclopaedia of the GDR that details the laws, awards, slogans, products and prices that she grew up with. She says it's important Aussies don't forget their heritage. And like others I spoke to, she especially resents West Germans. Telling the GDR story, she takes me to visit a sprawling ruin of a building she bought a few months ago. Yes, Ricarda, the proud artist of the strictly socialist gdr is now a landowner. But in keeping with her roots, she invited friends to a sapotnik, a day of volunteer labour, which used to be common in the gdr, to help clear the backyard. Determined stumps of decades old trees still poke out amidst the broken paving stones. Ricarda is an established contemporary photographer whose stark pictures exploring memories of the old gdr, are displayed in prestigious galleries around the world. But like many Leipzig residents, she has something of a cash flow problem. Her building was cheap, but the necessary refurbishments will be expensive and require a bank mortgage she's unable to obtain. Most of the buildings like this one in Leipzig, have already been renovated, courtesy of the German state. But in recent years, in line with the East's progression towards a market economy, the remainder have been sold to private owners. So today, much of Leipzig, like other baroque gems of eastern Germany, is beautifully restored, with housing cheap and of high quality. Laura, a film student, tells me she was surprised by the expensive homes she's visited in Hamburg and Berlin that have, in her words, outdated heating and plumbing compared to Leipzig. And yet she said her West German acquaintances thought most East Germans lived in shabby conditions. Dieter agrees. Perceptions built up over decades are hard to break. On a lovely rowing trip down one of Leipzig's historic industrial canals, Dieter directs my attention to a deluxe Venetian style gondola, complete with gondolier dressed in black. Two middle aged passengers, a man and a woman, are comfortably stretched out in front of him in the afternoon sun. Look at the man's body language and facial expression. He tells me he's like a king on a throne, surveying the land he owns. Typical Wessie in his London life, Dieter works, has dated and lived with West Germans. But when back in the east, he often seems to find West German visitors offensive. So much so that when deciding on a restaurant in Weimar, he rejected my first choice on the basis that the bar was full of West Germans. November will mark 21 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. And yet the labels of east and west are still broadly used throughout Germany today. It may well take a few more decades to break down the prejudice and disdain that still linger on the edges of that great divide.
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And that was Farhana Darwood. Governments everywhere are being forced to consider the implications of ever older populations. Better diets and health care are improving life spans everywhere. Traditionally, the elderly in China, the world's most populous nation, were always looked after by their families. But a low birth rate and the one child only policy mean this is changing. Martin Patience tells us that the authorities are now trying to work out how they can provide pensions, health care and other programs for all their old people.
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Imagine a country in which the population is rapidly aging and yet people don't want to talk about how to care for the elderly because they think it could bring bad luck. And where most of the people don't even write a will, believing that it could actually bring death one step closer. Well, that country is China. And on the issue of aging and dying, much of the country has a collective response. We don't want to talk about it. To be old is to be venerated. In China, the young, as tradition dictates, should care for the elderly and. And to die with dignity is to die at home, surrounded by the family. That's the way it's always been and that's how it should be in the future. Or is it? China's economy has boomed in the last 20 years. It's on track to become the world's second largest by the end of the year. The country has seen and continues to see the largest migration in history, as the young move to the factory towns and cities and in search of jobs and fortunes. It's seen by many here as a march of progress. But less well documented is the painful process of social upheaval being felt across the country. China may be getting richer, but are its traditions under assault? Central to this are the country's elderly, and the problem of how to care for them is becoming more acute. Largely because of the country's population controls, this society is rapidly aging. By 2050, it's estimated that 400 million Chinese will be of retirement age, a quarter of the population. And slowly China's beginning to wake up to the problem. The government's building up pensions and in the state run newspapers, you'll read Stories about empty nests, aging parents left behind with. With her children living elsewhere. But it appears to be a muted conversation, a painful dialogue, an issue that everyone simply wishes would just go away. In Shanghai, I visited the home of Yan Yong Ying, a 22 year old who works in finance. She also cares for her grandparents and helps her father look after a mother who is ill with cancer. But it's tough holding down a job and getting a boyfriend while you're supporting your entire family. In her quiet voice, she told me that many of her friends were optimistic about the future, having just graduated from university. But, she added, they've yet to feel the pressure. And that pressure is building. And it's already led to change. A handful of residential homes and hospices for the elderly have opened across the country, and in China, they face stiff resistance. These institutions may be taken for granted in the west, but in China they are nothing short of a social revolution. Where to grow old, to possibly die, and somewhere other than your home is seen as being abandoned by your family. And in China, there's no bigger social stigma. I visited one of the country's hospices. It had been forced to move locations an incredible seven times. Locals felt that a building in which so many people were dying brought bad luck. They blocked the entrances, preventing staff and families from getting in to visit their dying relatives. The head nurse at the hospice told me that attitudes needed to change, that the Chinese must realize that hospices offer the best way to care for old people. She compared sending the elderly to hospices to young children attending kindergartens. It is, she said, simply, the cycle of life. But in China, it's more than that. It goes to the very heart of this culture. I always remember one friend in the Middle east asking me how the west could consider itself civilized when many of us stick our mothers in retirement homes and visit them once a month. I didn't have an answer then, and I don't have an answer now. But currently, China is facing up to its own version of that question. And it's not just about caring for the elderly. It's a fundamental question about what the country wants to be, what it will stand for in the future, and whether it's prepared to compromise on its traditions for continued economic growth. And at the moment, it's not clear how China will choose to answer.
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Martin Patience in Shanghai. Not so long ago, you could look out over the harbour at Ardglass in Northern Ireland and see perhaps four or five hundred fishing boats unloading their catch of herrings. Today, it's a very different picture. Dwindling stocks of fish and tight quotas have severely reduced the fleet. Now only some 30 boats sail out of Ardglass to fish the Irish Sea and beyond. Van Morrison fans will know. He sang about stopping off at Ardglass for a couple of jars of mussels and some potted herrings, in case we get famished before dinner. Christine Finn says the great hunt for herring once shaped the lives of king countless families, including her own.
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In the fishing village of Ard Glass, south of Belfast, they like to tell the tale of the local man who in 1851 found the biggest gold nugget in California. John Hughes returned home from the rush, sold his find for a fortune and set up as a trader of goods to Russia. There's still a thriving trade between Ardglass and Russia today, not thanks to gold, but to the silver Darlings, the name for the herring which made Ardglass one of the busiest fishing ports in Ireland. Today, the herring caught in the Irish Sea are processed at local fish factories and exported to the Baltic. I've a soft spot for Ardglass. I'd heard the tale at my grandfather's knee that our family was once part of its fishing industry. Grandpa Finn told me that his father, my great grandfather, ran a fishing boat between Ardglass and the Scottish port of Campbeltown, just across the Irish Sea. The children were born where the fish were. He told me, explaining why he was born in Scotland and his sisters in Ireland. Many from Ardglass and Campbeltown sailed on even further for new lives in America, New Zealand and Australia. I snagged a harbour view room at a bed and breakfast and headed to the local bar to start my research. It turned out the fortunes of Ardglass have ebbed and flowed with the fishing. Once you could walk the harbour from one side to another simply on boats. I was told hundreds of boats out there. But the story about my great granddad stood up. He would have been one of the drifters, fishermen who followed the shoals each season, sometimes captaining their own boats, other times working on them. Women stayed ashore. They were thought to be unlucky at sea, and sometimes they still are. But those herring girls were also drifters, many crossing Ireland to spend summer days gutting fish, thousands and thousands, and packing them in baskets. Sometimes they also landed a fisherman and stayed. But now the local boats chug out to sea for prawn. The herring is left to the trawlers who chase it to the Isle of Man and employ the new transient workers from Poland and the Philippines. Today, the nets are tangled up with the EU bureaucracy of fishing quotas and licensing laws which insist decommissioned boats are destroyed. If I couldn't go to sea, what could I see? I asked the owner of a characterful 24 hour corner shop which sold everything from smoke bombs and fishing line to a postcard montage of ard glass and herring inspired by the Van Morrison song in Coney Island. He did some calculations with the tide tables and said the trawler would be in at 4 in the morning. That night I left my bedroom curtains and window open and listened. Sudden activity, lights and a crane manoeuvring and then the chugga, chugga, chugga of a trawler coasting in. I rushed to the dock and there she was, the huge 21st century herringboat. Tonnes and tons of silver darlings in her belly. I breathed in the brine as the herring were pumped out of the trawler straight into one of the tanker lorries which grind their way between harbour and the fish factories. I introduced myself and my great grandfather to one of the trawlermen. Have you brought a bag? He was offering me some herring from the catch. That's plenty, thanks. I called as the scales flew sparkling into the black plastic. I padded back to the guest house beside the fish factory workers just as dawn was breaking. I could hardly leave my hall in my centrally heated room, so had a surreal moment looking for a place to hide it from cats amongst the flower pots in the front garden. After breakfast, I retrieved the salty stash just as the house cat strode purposefully towards it. My landlady fried me two of the herring for lunch. Bliss. She mentioned that the fish was hard to find fresh in Ardglass these days. So after a few days of interviewing and befriending locals, being bought drinks and invited out to dinner, what better gift for my host than something almost as rare as that historic gold nugget, a dozen silver freshly gutted Ardglass herring.
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And with Christine Finn proving much too sharp for the Ardglass cat, we've reached the end of another edition, but I'll be here again on Saturday morning with more from our own correspondence and I do hope you'll join us then. Good bye.