South Africa's political earthquake

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The resignation this week of Mmusi Maimana, the leader of the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party in South Africa, has exposed deep wounds from the apartheid era. Andrew Harding examines the implications for democracy in the country.

Demonstrators have been out in force on the streets of Santiago and other cities across Chile after the government announced it was raising the price of metro tickets. Jane Chambers has been speaking to the pot-banging protesters and says there are real fears of a return to the dark days of dictatorship.

A large shopping centre and an old Jewish cemetery: James Rodgers is in the Czech Republic, in a small town east of Prague, on the trail of scrolls saved from a synagogue there, which he'd first seen in Manchester.

Iceland is famously small, cold and welcoming to visitors. It's also a place where even the prime minister will take your call, as Lesley Curwen discovers.

It's 40 years since the release of Apocalypse Now, the Vietnam War epic directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which starred Marlon Brando. It was actually filmed in the Philippines. Howard Johnson has been to see if any traces of the set still exist.

Producer: Tim Mansel

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:05.0	Good morning.
0:06.3	Today, the streets of Chile are resounding
0:08.9	to the banging of pots and pans,
0:11.0	evoking memories of the dictatorship in the 80s. War echoes of the past for our
0:16.0	correspondent in a small town in the Czech Republic, sparked by some scrolls in Manchester.
0:22.0	Would you like to pick up the phone and... by some scrolls in Manchester.
0:23.1	Would you like to pick up the phone and have a word with the Prime Minister?
0:27.2	No, hold on.
0:28.6	This is in Iceland.
0:30.8	And we head for the Philippines, searching once again for Colonel Kurtz, 40 years since
0:35.9	Apocalypse now.
0:39.2	First, the ANC has been in power in South Africa for 25 years since the end of apartheid. Now many
0:46.2	desire change. Some had high hopes for Moosei Myomane, the first black leader of the Democratic Alliance, the main
0:54.4	opposition party which is traditionally drawn support from liberal white South
0:58.5	Africans. This week unexpectedly he resigned and according to Andrew Harding in Johannesburg
1:05.8	laying bare deep wounds from the apartheid era.
1:09.5	I walked home from the office the other day, a half hour stroll through Johannesburg's rolling leafy suburbs,
1:15.6	and I was struck not for the first time by the local pavements, specifically by the racist pavements.
1:23.0	Johannesburg sits on a high plateau.
1:25.0	Over the decades its residents have planted millions of trees here.
1:29.0	It's now touted as the world's largest man-made forest and it's currently basking in a purple haze
	...

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