Thank you for downloading this podcast. We make from our own correspondent for the BBC World Service as well.

But this is the edition broadcast on Radio 4 and it's introduced by Kate Eadie.

Hello. Today battles over books and statues.

South Africans wonder what poo on the face of Cecil Roads

means for their country's future. The U.S. tells South Korea and Japan to stop

bickering about history. Comandante Fidel makes a rare appearance as Cuba and the U.S. turn their backs on more than half a century of

hostility. And no novels, no Wi-Fi, no bed, we find out if our correspondent managed to find inner peace at a monastery in Thailand.

The students in Cape Town were cheering on Thursday as a statue of the British colonialist

Cecil Rhodes was removed from the university after weeks of

protests. It had been vandalised and then covered up as students, both black and white, demanded

its removal. The campaign against the statue led to

attacks on other monuments considered to represent the country's racist

past. Andrew Harding's been considering what the week's developments say about the state of South Africa today.

It all started with some excrement.

One night last month a student called Chumani Macquale scoops and poo from one of the portable toilets that dot the often turbulent crowded townships on the wind sweat plains outside Cape Town.

The next morning, Mr Macquelle took his package to the foot of nearby Table Mountain

and to the imposing grounds of one of South Africa's oldest and most prestigious universities.

Overlooking the rugby field in the centre of the campus is an old bronze statue of a white man.

He's in an armchair, one hand on his chin, the other, holding some paper, and he's sitting forwards,

like a man startled by something he's just seen on television.

Mr Macquelle promptly said about smearing the statue and in the process ignited a furious

fascinating row about history, race and equality. The statue of course was of Cecil

...