South Africa's Born Frees at 25

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's a generation in South Africa who are known as the Born Frees. They were born in 1994, the year of the elections in which black citizens were allowed to vote for the first time.

The Born Frees are 25 years old now – graduating from universities, getting established in their careers, or still living in enduring poverty, which has reduced since 1994 but is still profound. The government estimates that 13 million South Africans still live in what they call 'extreme poverty.' This is a major disappointment to many who queued for hours to vote in the 1994 election which brought Nelson Mandela to power. Despite spending twenty-seven years in an Apartheid gaol, Mandela was dedicated to creating a 'rainbow nation', with dignity and opportunity for everyone, regardless of race.

BBC correspondent Hugh Sykes has visited South Africa regularly since 1994, and in this programme he tells us about the politics of the country, education, corruption and poverty.

Transcript

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0:00.0	60 seconds. We choose to go to the moon.
0:03.0	40 feet down 2.5.
0:05.0	Neil said we can't land here.
0:07.0	Everyone is sitting there not knowing what has happened.
0:10.0	30 seconds.
0:11.0	We might not make it.
0:12.0	13 minutes to the moon,
0:14.4	from the BBC World Service,
0:17.2	coming soon. This is the documentary. I'm Hugh Sykes in South Africa with the born freeze at 25.
0:35.0	25 years ago, Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa
0:40.0	in the first elections in which everyone could vote regardless of color.
0:45.0	Everywhere in the world people are fighting for free.
0:52.0	Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in jail fighting for freedom.
0:57.0	He was fighting apartheid, the system of strict racial segregation in South Africa.
1:07.0	This is war and crime by South African reggae artist Lucky Dubé.
1:17.0	It was released in 1984 and banned.
1:27.0	Since 1994, Democratic South Africa has been ruled by the party that liberated the country from apartheid, the African National Congress.
1:35.7	They still command intense loyalty, but it's reducing and their arrivals determined to dislodge them at the elections this year.
1:45.0	We know where we come from but we don't know where we go away.
1:50.0	So stop.
1:51.0	I don't we burry down the E. Democratic Alliance, but the ANC brought freedom.
1:55.0	Democratic Alliance.
	...

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