Hope and Disillusion in South Africa

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kate Adie introduces dispatches from South Africa, Syria, the Netherlands and Germany.

Fergal Keane reported from South Africa during the country's difficult transition to democracy after the end of apartheid. He revisits some familiar neighbourhoods and reflects on what happened to the hope and ambition that gripped the country at the time.

Four years after Islamic State was defeated in Syria, thousands of children whose parents supported the group, are living in camps and detention centres with their mothers. Poonam Taneja met some of the children with uncertain futures, still hoping for a return to a normal life.

The Dutch far-right populist leader Geert Wilders swept to a surprise victory in parliamentary elections last month, but there is still no guarantee he will become prime minister. Housing, immigration and the cost of living dominated the election campaign. Anna Holligan spoke to voters in the seaside suburbs of The Hague.

Germany's plans for its much-vaunted ‘green energy transition’ are in deep water after a ruling by the country’s constitutional court blew a 60 billion euro hole in the project’s finances. Meanwhile German voters are questioning the cost of going green. Bob Howard was in Bremen.

Series producer: Serena Tarling Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:05.0	Today in Syria we hear what happened to the children who lived under IS rule
0:11.0	as they speak of their hopes for a different future.
0:14.0	In the Netherlands we hear how a shock victory for the far right
0:18.6	might not lead to power and in Germany
0:22.2	voters are increasingly disgruntled about the rising cost of going green.
0:28.0	But first it's nearly three decades since the end of apartheid in South Africa, a time when hopes were high for a future
0:37.3	that would deliver equality for the country's black majority after centuries of injustice and poverty.
0:44.8	In the process of taking this step, President de Clerc and Nelson Mandela sought to open a new
0:51.0	chapter for the country free from the discrimination and
0:54.4	violence of the past. Fergalkeen reported on this historic period of
0:59.7	transition and recently returned to South Africa to see how much the country has changed and what had happened to the hopes for a better nation.
1:12.0	The old Greek grocery Store was gone.
1:15.0	We used to buy our vegetables there from two surly brothers.
1:19.0	I don't ever remember either of them smiling.
1:22.0	They seemed eternally harassed.
1:25.4	With Black Staff and the occasional Black customer who wandered in, they appeared hardly aware of
1:31.3	their presence.
1:32.8	When they did engage it was with a curt command or reprimand.
1:37.4	Beyond the store, history was beginning its great heave towards,
1:42.0	well towards what we were not quite certain, civil war, a free and fair election,
1:48.6	a military coup.
	...

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