← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
July 9, 2011
00:28:14
They are celebrating in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, the world's newest country.
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This is from our own correspondent. We make an edition for the BBC World Service as well.
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But this is a download of the
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latest Radio 4 programme and here to
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introduce it as ever, Kate Ady.
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Today, the echoes of history surrounding this morning's joyful celebrations in Africa's newest nation. How India is still haunted by the ghosts of caste, even though the system was supposed to have been abolished 60 years ago. In the hills of Libya, we examine one of the world's greatest archaeological sites, accompanied only by cows and goats and a new idea for a sweltering summer day in Algiers, a long, cool, fizzy drink from Scotland. Leaders from many parts of Africa have been listening to a formal declaration of independence by the world's newest nation, South Sudan. The solemnity of this morning's occasion, taking place under a blazing sun, followed scenes of joy. Overnight, citizens of the new state danced in the streets of the capital, Juba, as independence formally began. At midnight, South Sudan is expected to become the 193rd country recognized by the United Nations. The UN's created a new peacekeeping force to help consolidate the peace. But Fergus Nickel, who's there, says that many sources of potential conflict remain.
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I saw them first from out on the water. Rusting steel hulks of riverboats, barges as long as 20 metres prowse aground high on the crumbling earth bank, but sloping sharply back down into the water, the stern resting somewhere beneath me on the silty bed of the Nile. There are skeleton steamers too, and pleasure boats, remnants of battered sunscreens flapping in the light breeze. Ghost ships from a time when colonial officials took to the water in the cool of evening. Once ashore, I go back for a second look. A young man in blue engineer's overalls, sleeves and trouser legs rolled up, clambers up the bank for a chat. His face glistens with Nile water from his wash down by the river. These old boats, he says they're Egyptian. Well, he might be right. Long before the British came, the Ottoman Egyptian army did maintain substantial garrisons this far south. But during the era of Anglo Egyptian rule, the so called condominium. While the two flags flew side by side over this occupied territory, Cairo generally did the paying and London did the ruling, with the so called bog barons administering huge swathes of forest, farmland and bush. With just a handful of personnel. These relics of empire at Malakal seem to me to reflect the power of the south to absorb. Leaving aside the tenacity of the SPLA rebel movement, there's been a deeper, deep dogged passive resistance to outside control and it comes to an end today after more than a century and a half. That's not to say, of course, that nothing remains from the past in today's society. And there are echoes of history that the new government will need urgently to address not least the destructive force of tribal rivalry. But the arrival of the gun, combined with the internecine splits within the southern political and military movement, prompted often by little more than frustrated personal ambition, have changed everything. At least two substantial well armed militias still roam the countryside, a direct challenge to Juba's authority and spreading terror everywhere they go. And ancient disputes over grazing rights, let alone deliberate cattle raiding, acquire a new deadly aspect when one side is supplied with guns. But by a powerful ally in Khartoum, there suddenly seems no need to resort to the traditional practice of season by season negotiations between clan chiefs when you can simply take what you want and kill anyone who gets in your way. That combination of age old rivalry and modern weaponry helps explain the virulence of the recent clashes between the Murlay and neighbouring tribes in eastern Zhongli. The men I met in Bor Central Prison this week were there for a variety of crimes, from murder to adultery, but they all shared a horrified dread of the Murlay, whose raiding parties number in the thousands and who think nothing of abducting the children of those they kill. More fundamental to the future success of the Republic of South Sudan will be the extent to which the Sudan People's Liberation army will transforms itself into an accountable democratic and representative government, one that shares wealth too, across these communal divides. The problem is, one man told me, they have no ideology. They aren't communists, they aren't capitalists, they're used to the autocracy of military rule, and they have nothing to compete with the Islamist drive of the regime in Khartoum. So they have to deliver, and soon. In the claustrophobic and sometimes incestuous political atmosphere in Juba, where the opposition is feisty but outnumbered, the honeymoon is likely to be short. But it would be rash to underestimate the immense amount of goodwill among the people here. A fervent desire that the sacrifices, the two and a half million dead, the millions more displaced and traumatized, will have been worth it. Perhaps the clearest sign of hope lies in the calm maturity with which President Salva Kiir has handled the recent confrontations in the disputed border enclave of Abye and the Khartoum government's assault on the Nuba Mountains by refusing to rise to the bait with the concerted military response. An attitude, by the way, mirrored by an amnesty offered this week to dissident militias in Zhongle state. Salvaki has shown that the cross border relationship will be one between equals. South Sudan will tread quietly but carry a big stick just in case.
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Fergus Nickel Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has suffered a rebuff at the hands of the grand old man of Italian politics, the country's president, Giorgio Napolitano. Mr. Berlusconi attempted to slip a clause into an austerity budget that would have let him off the hook in a long running business corruption case. The Italian head of state called his bluff, forcing Mr. Berlusconi to eat humble pie and cancel his latest attempt to create legal immunity for himself in an ongoing series of criminal prosecutions. David Willie in Rome recalls many meetings with President Napolitano, who last month celebrated his 86th birthday and was awarded an honorary law degree from Oxford University.
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Italian politics are difficult to follow, even for Italians. My own feeling is that trying to explain the Machiavellian machinations of parliament in Rome to foreigners may be, as Mussolini himself once admitted in a revealing moment of truth about his experiences in governing Italy, simply futile. Too many names, too many political parties, over 20 of them at the last elections, too many plots and subplots and characters and portaborce a lovely Italian word meaning briefcase carriers, the obsequious yet pushy political wannabes who cluster around party leaders. But standing head and shoulders above the rest is a former communist apparatchik who converted many years ago to social democracy. For the past five years, Giorgio Napolitano has been Italy's elected head of state. He lives amid the tapestried and frescoed splendor of a gigantic 400-year-old former Papal palace in the center of Rome. Keep steady hand on the tiller of a country in the throes of deep political, economic and social malaise. Italy's favourite politician has a popularity rating of 80%. By comparison, Silvio Berlusconi has a meager 30%. Unlike President Sarkozy of France, however, President Napolitano is a non executive president with largely ceremonial functions. Yet he he is the person who has to appoint a new prime minister every time there's a government crisis. He is the guarantor of Italy's constitution, hammered out immediately after World War II by the founding fathers of the Republic following two decades of fascist rule. I first met Mr. Napolitano in the 1970s when he represented the moderate wing of the Italian Communist Party. That was entirely acceptable to the European and American left. He was the only senior party functionary to speak fluent English and was warmly welcomed in the United States when he delivered a series of lectures at leading universities there in 1978. I remember interviewing him in his sparsely decorated and modest office at Communist Party headquarters in Rome's street of the Dark Shops during those years and found him an open and cultured politician, not at all afraid to challenge the hegemony of the Soviet Union. How times change. The President has actually outlived the party which brought him to political prominence. The Communist Party headquarters was sold off to a development company a few years ago. Mr. Napolitano's former office is now part of a block of luxury apartments. He later became a strong critic of Soviet foreign policy, roundly condemning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 80s, during which he he also came round to being a supporter of NATO. President Napolitano. Balding now, he's never felt it necessary to resort to a facelift or a hair transplant to conceal his age. Walks with a slight stoop, but his voice is still forceful. He's still a man of great dignity, as I saw for myself during a recent visit to the Quirinal palace, where he has an expert staff sifting through the various laws sent for his signature by Parliament. His power to reject laws is limited, but he's learned to respect the spirit as well as the letter of the laws he's called on to countersign. He's proven a staunch defender of the values of the now mostly long dead statesman who set up Italy's first modern republic. It's been a busy year for the President, travelling up and down the peninsula, officiating at ceremonies marking the 150th anniversary of the unification of this patchwork of four former independent states into a united country for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire. In a keynote speech, the President quoted the stark words of the 19th century Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, another Anglophile who spent long periods of his life in London, about the abject state of his fellow countrymen in the mid 19th century, before unification. We have no flag, mazzini lamented. No politics, no voice among the nations of Europe, no common centre, no common. No common market. We are dismembered into eight separate states separated by eight customs barriers, eight different currencies, systems of weights and measures, of civil and criminal law. Well, that's all been resolved long ago. But the former divisions of Italy remain stubbornly present as the country struggles to deal with such chronic problems as the disposal of the 2000 tons of trash generated each day in the city of Naples, which has run out of landfills where it can be dumped. President Napolitano recently made a heartfelt appeal to the other regions of Italy to play their part in resolving the rubbish crisis. But the answer has in general been not in my backyard. Italy's unification still has a lot of unfinished business.
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David Willey in Rome Libya's tourist industry seemed about to benefit from an influx of visitors when the seasons abruptly changed and the winds of the Arab Spring started to blow. Suddenly the cruise ships were diverted and plans to build five star hotels and develop miles of coastline for free spending. Sun seekers from northern Europe were put on hold. Quiet descended too, upon the country's famous archaeological sites, including the ancient Greek city Cyrene in eastern Libya. There are, however, foreign visitors, including until recently, Justin Marotsi in the nearby rebel held city of Benghazi.
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It's good to get out of the Benghazi bubble. The capital of liberated Libya is home to the National Transitional Council and a swirl of foreign diplomats, advisors, humanitarian agencies, NGOs, consultants and conflict entrepreneurs. It can get a little claustrophobic. Most of the talk revolves around politics, getting rid of Gaddafi and economics. The council is going bust and would dearly love to get its hands on the 1.4 billion Libyan dinars impounded by the British government sitting in the uk. It's time to get away from all this and head for the hills. Spend some time in the Jebel Akdar, or Green Mountains, of eastern Libya and you can see why the Italians were once so keen to colonize what they called their fourth shore. The fine red soil, teeming fruit groves and terraced fields reminded the imperialists of Tuscany. Yet it's not so much the Italians I'm thinking about among these scrubby sun bleached mountains as the ancient Greeks who got here two and a half thousand years before the fascists, According to the historian Herodotus, who recorded the first Greek settlement in Libya. I have an appointment with Dr. Fadhl Ali, the newly appointed Minister for Archaeology in Libya, for a private tour of one of the most remarkable ancient sites in the Mediterranean. Founded as a Greek colony in 631 BC, Cyrene was the jewel of Cyrenaica, the easternmost province of Libya, and became one of the greatest cities in the Greek world, the athens of Africa. Dr. Fardel, a handsome donnish man with tousled hair and salt and pepper eyebrows, chats away as we circumnavigate the temple. Ferns shoot up among the stones Wild sage pokes through pedestals and clusters around sandstone columns. Even to an untrained eye, the site looks in disrepair. We need urgent restoration. Dr. Fidel sighs can you imagine there's been no work here during 42 years of Gaddafi. We need excavations, site maps, training for archaeologists, security hotels. We don't even have a museum. People are building houses and putting animals into the ruins. Today, by the occasional goat and cow, we have the place to ourselves. Cyrene slumbers in the wind filled sky. Like many Libyans, Dr. Fadl is an ardent Anglophile. He tells me an extraordinary story of a British archaeologist who studied the necropolis of Cyrene for a quarter of a century, spending long subterranean days with only a notebook, a hunk of bread and cheese and a flask of water for company. Recently, after falling gravely ill, the archaeologist had to ask his wife to donate one of her own kidneys to him to enable a final visit to the ancient site he so loved. Dr. Fardel encouraged him to seek permission to be buried in Cyrene, but neither the British nor Libyan governments approved. Last year, he says, the scholar's widow returned with a jar containing her husband's ashes. We buried him in Cyrene, he says it was his favourite place in the world. If the ancient Greeks left their magnificent mark in eastern Libya, their modern day descendants still cut a dash in Benghazi. George Sianos is one of the leading lights of a now tiny Greek population that numbered 3,000 in his childhood. His great grandfather came from Crete in 1896 and bartered Olive oil, rice and pasta for leather from the wandering shepherds. His grandfather bought a plot of land from king Idris in 1967 and founded the Greek school in Benghazi. Today it's the European school and Sayanos is its chairman. We meet by chance one evening in a fish restaurant on the Corniche. Sea air streams among the diners and quickens the appetite. Fearing another evening of alcohol free beer, I have fortified myself with a Benghazi Bellini 1 part moonshine, 2 parts apricot juice and a spoonful of Jebel Akdar honey. We set to work on a plate piled high with calamari. A couple of days later, Sayanos shows me around his school, which boasts by far the best educational facilities in the city. Hibiscus, begonia, bougainvillea and flame. Trees shoot bright flashes of pink mauvan red into the dazzling white light of a pink Benghazi summer. I feel proud. The Greeks were here in eastern Libya and developed these Beautiful sites, he says. It's part of our history. In some ways, we in Benghazi are a living link to that past. And of course, he adds with a smile, herodotus is very much part of the curriculum.
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And that's Justin Marozi. The world of the untouchable in India is supposed to have been abolished by the Indian constitution in 1950. Caste, it was deemed, would no longer determine people's lives and occupations. Yet hardly a day goes by still without horrifying stories emerging of supposed higher caste Indians abusing, even murdering, those said to be of a lower order. Craig Jeffrey's been to the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where he says caste like the Chamars, who used to be labelled untouchables, still face discrimination on a daily basis.
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I think Manoj Jatov is one of the most remarkable men I've met. Short and smartly dressed, he exudes a restless Energy. He's a 30 year old Chamar. He had to leave school three times to help his parents with their small business stitching footballs. But Manoj eventually passed through high school and he went on to Meerut University where he got a BA and ma. His friends call him the book Insect. Manoj works as a tutor for children in his village. He's a role model for them too. He's often to be found holding court at the village bus stop, advising younger children about where to go to school, what jobs to do, that sort of thing. There's much work to be done locally in helping villagers negotiate with state officials, and Manoj is in the forefront here too. There was a fight recently between high castes and low castes in the village. Manoj went to see the local police inspector and persuaded him to help the low castes. Manoj also organizes political protests, many of which are deliberately rather mischievous. He recently staged a relay hunger strike on the university campus to protest about corruption. Manoj and his friends took turns to fast for half an hour each. At the end of the 30 minutes, the person who'd been fasting staggered around feigning hunger, and the press took photographs. Young, confident, active, Manoj is symbolic of wider changes afoot in India. In the 1950s, there was a caste system in India that tied different people to different occupations. Low castes performed services like shoemaking and water carrying. For higher castes, there were complex rules about what food high castes could eat with low castes, rules that were linked to Hindu notions of purity and pollution. In some parts of India, low castes were forced to wear brooms behind them to sweep the polluted ground that they'd trodden. And there were even a caste of unseeables who could only come out at night. All this seems to have changed. There are many people from low castes in modern occupations. Low castes go to school in large numbers. In Uttar Pradesh there's now a low caste chief minister. Manoj is typical of a new breed of confident low caste youth. Making modern India from below. But caste remains important in India. It's important in politics where parties use caste to campaign for votes. It's important in marriage. People still want to marry within their caste. And it's important too in daily life. High castes still make negative judgments about low castes. Manoj recently led me into a dimly lit tea store in Meerut. Surrounded by vast cauldrons of boiling fat used for frying samosas. Manoj began to describe in hushed tones the hardships of growing up as a former untouchable. He told me, we see caste at the everyday level. Our sisters are harassed by high caste men in the fields. We feel like we're going to explode. The high caste women. They hitch up their saris when they walk through our part of the village. And they wash their hands five times if they happen to touch us. How can we live with such disrespect? Sometimes casteism takes violent forms. Manoj said that one of his student friends had been forced by high caste bullies to urinate into an electric heater. The young man had been badly burnt, though he survived. As we chatted over tea. Manoj said that caste discrimination has been more subtle in his case. Professors have refused to take him on as a research student. And he's found it difficult to rent a flat in Meerut because of his caste. But he hasn't faced overt discrimination in the city. A high caste student called Lekpal arrived at the tea store. With a thin beard and piercing hazel eyes. Lechpal styles himself as a social reformer. He works with Manoj to publicize caste atrocities. But listening to Lekpal only deepened my sense that things are slow to change. Lekpal said, I want to fight against casteism. We need to get rid of this feudal mindset. But what can I do when I meet someone from my own caste? I feel this strange feeling of happiness welling up from within. What's interesting here is Lechpal's reference to a strange feeling of happiness. He recognises the mismatch between his response to meeting a fellow caste member and his liberal views. But he feels powerless to keep his emotions in check. India is haunted by the Ghost of
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Caste that was Craig Jeffrey. Now, the temperature in Algiers this morning, I'm told, is a sizzling 34 degrees Celsius with no rain in sight. It's not a country which does a British style summer. Enjoying a nice long cooled drink is therefore one of the pleasures of life in this North African country with a troubled history. It's a largely Muslim nation, of course, so the Lauga option's not much available. But the soft drinks line includes orangeades, lemonades and of course the all conquering American colas. And now there's competition. Chloe Arnold tells us that a local entrepreneur has just begun importing a distinctive concoction from Scotland.
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Ask an Algerian what his favourite cold drink is and the chances are he'll answer without hesitation. Hammud. A cloudy primrose coloured lemonade. Hamoud is sold in thick glass bottles with old fashioned labels and drunk by the gallon. No wedding party, birthday celebration or picnic is complete without half a dozen bottles of the stuff. And Algerians will tell you proudly that Hammood has been around for a great deal longer than Coca Cola and Pepsi. But Othman Ben Sheikh, an entrepreneur with a penchant for all things sweet, is hoping to change that. Earlier this year he started importing a new soft drink to Algeria, one he hopes will one day be as popular here as Hamoud. What is it? Iron brew. That amber coloured potion born in Scotland back at the turn of the 19th century and beloved of Scots the world over. It's said that Scotland is the only country in the world that doesn't have Coca Cola as its top selling soft drink. In Algeria, I imagine coke sales must be neck and neck with Hamud. I arrange to meet Othman on a sweltering summer day in the capital, Algiers. Exactly the sort of weather for a long, cold, fizzy drink. Othman collects me in a huge van painted orange and blue, the colours of an iron brew can. In the back are dozens of crates of the drink, which clink every time we turn a corner. So why iron brew? I ask him. We're heading towards a suburb where a supermarket has started selling the drink. Because I love it, he says. And everyone I've tried it out on loves it too. But how did he come across it in the first place? I ask as we hurtle around another roundabout. And so he tells me his story. 24 years ago, Othman left Algeria to escape a civil war that was unfolding in his homeland. Nationwide rallies, sparked by price rises had led to the government calling fresh elections. But when the Islamists won a Resounding victory, the government annulled the results of the election, triggering a decade of violence. Quarter of a million people lost their lives in bloody fighting between security forces and Islamist rebels, and anyone who could get out did. Othman travelled to Britain where he had contacts and began working in restaurant kitchens in London. He loved the catering business. He said, anything to do with food and drinking. And a few years later he completed a catering course at Westminster College. Soon he was working in Michelin starred restaurants and around the same time he met his future wife. A British born Italian, Othman settled in the uk. Two decades living there mean he now has British citizenship, but he regularly comes back to Algeria to see his family. He has seven brothers and sisters and this time his import business means he can work in both countries. My neighbours in London were Scottish and they first introduced me to iron Brew. Innit? He says. He speaks perfect Cockney and like many Algerians who spent time in Britain, he ends most of his sentences with innit. At the supermarket, Othman leads me to the soft drinks aisle. Nestled on the top shelf are two dozen cans of his iron brew, jostling for space with colas, iced teas and of course, Hamoud. Ironbrew is on sale in other parts of the Arab world Bahrain, Saudi Arabia. But there it's sold primarily to expats, often Scots pining for a little taste of home. Here, it's different. Expats are thin on the ground. That decade of civil war put paid to the tourist industry and the security situation, still ranked as serious by most embassies here, means a lot of foreigners have stayed away. For Othman, it's the domestic market he's targeting, and as we stand chatting about the drink, I corner a customer and ask him if he'll taste it. He looks alarmed, but we open the can and he takes a wee sip. Not bad, he concludes, though he can't pinpoint the flavour. Is it lemon? He asks. Orange. Strawberry. In fact, it's none of those things, just a long list of flavourings, colourings and E numbers. But there is a tiny percentage of ammonium ferric citrate, which puts the iron in the brew. A long time ago, an ad for the drink used to announce it was made in Scotland from girders, though I suspect EU regulations calling for all ingredients to be named may have been the reason that campaign was shelved. As we leave the shop, Othman tells me he's planning to bring other British goods to Algeria in the near future. Lemon curd, orange marmalade, peanut butter and digestive biscuits. What about Marmite? I venture Nothing could be more British than Marmite. We climb back into the van and Othman shakes his head. Algerians like sweet things, he says, wrinkling his nose. You'd never get an Algerian to touch Marmite, innit?
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I don't know. Couscous and marmite. Sounds like a winner to me. Chloe Arnold in Algiers, bringing this edition to a close. We'll be back next Saturday morning. Do join us, innit?