BBC Radio 4
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 October 2010
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A mesmerising speech from a great South African churchman: the retirement of Archbishop Tutu is marked by Allan Little; Ian Pannell on the increasingly unsafe roads of Afghanistan; Farhana Dawood is in Leipzig noting the continuing divisions between Germans from the east and west of the country; Martin Patience tells us how the Chinese government is having to consider the implications of an ever-older population while Christine Finn is in the Northern Irish fishing village of Ardglass tasting one of the "silver darlings" on which the port has built its reputation.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there, you've downloaded the BBC Radio programme from our own correspondent. |
| 0:04.5 | We make two versions, and if you'd like to hear our World Service programme, you'll find it on the BBC iPlayer. |
| 0:10.4 | This, though, is the edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's presented by Kate Adie. |
| 0:15.7 | Today, tea and cricket beckon for the South African churchmen who battle the apartheid government. |
| 0:21.6 | How bandits and insurgents are tightening their grip on the roads of Afghanistan. |
| 0:26.5 | There's coffee and cake in Leipzig, as we're told only East Germans are allowed to poke fun at the old DDR. |
| 0:34.3 | And we outsmart an Irish cat to enjoy a fresh silver darling, that's a herring, in Ardglass County Down. |
| 0:43.3 | Desmond Tutu, who celebrates his 79th birthday today, says the time has come for him to withdraw from public life. |
| 0:51.7 | The Archbishop told reporters earlier this year he'd been fortunate to contribute to the |
| 0:56.2 | development of the new democratic South Africa, a country which he described as exhilarating |
| 1:02.0 | and sometimes exasperating. His plans for retirement apparently include watching cricket, |
| 1:08.8 | visiting his grandchildren, and spending more time drinking |
| 1:12.0 | tea with his wife. Desmond Tutu has made his mark on generations of BBC correspondence covering |
| 1:18.5 | the South African story. Among them, Alan Little. When Desmond Tutu was made Archbishop of Cape Town |
| 1:24.8 | in the early 1980s, he broke the law just by moving |
| 1:28.3 | into the official residence. Bishop's Court was located in a part of the city, which under the |
| 1:34.2 | apartheid regime was designated for whites only. The government, led by the veteran Africana nationalist |
| 1:41.1 | P.W. Berta did not try to stop him living there, for the symbolic heft of this charismatic African cleric was already clear. |
| 1:50.3 | 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. |
| 1:59.8 | He would have to be declared an honorary |
| 2:02.7 | white. This offer, he declined. In 1984, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, but he had no |
| 2:10.9 | passport to travel. He had been refused South African citizenship because he had declined to say |
... |
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