The Children of Paradise: Without hope you're dead
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Three decades after the momentous transition from Apartheid to a democratic South Africa, Fergal Keane returns to see what happened to the hopes and promises of a better nation. In a famous speech thirty years ago, as he collected the Nobel Peace Prize, Nelson Mandela spoke of a “common humanity” in which all South Africans would live “like the children of paradise.” In this final episode, in which Fergal Keane and Milton Nkosi re-visit some of the places and people they encountered 30 years ago, they are in the Western Cape, around Cape Town. They visit a school in the sprawling Khayelitsha township, and the university in Stellenbosch, once the centre of white and Afrikaner intellectual thought. With the country’s high crime rates, lack of jobs, violence and intense corruption, is all lost or can South Africans still hold onto hope?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The look at the stories making the headlines with insights from the BBC's global |
| 0:14.2 | network of experts. Search for The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC |
| 0:19.4 | podcasts. |
| 0:21.6 | It's a three-part series, The Children of Paradise, and we've come to the final episode. |
| 0:30.0 | Once again, we've moved towards the Western Cape to Cape Town in the area around it. |
| 0:36.0 | Why are we ending up there? |
| 0:37.6 | Because that's where it all started. |
| 0:39.3 | That's where the first settlers came ashore in the 1650s and established a Cape colony which then went on to become |
| 0:46.9 | South Africa and ultimately a party in South Africa. |
| 0:50.1 | We're there because we're trying to see what hope there is. |
| 0:52.2 | We've heard an awful lot about corruption, about political violence, about people's |
| 0:56.6 | disillusionment and despair. But there is hope, and we're looking for it particularly among the |
| 1:02.2 | young people, the so-called |
| 1:03.3 | born-frees who were born after the elections in 1994. |
| 1:07.8 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. This is part three of the Children of Paradise. |
| 1:20.0 | From prisoner to president Nelson Rolichlachla Mandela came smiling into the |
| 1:25.1 | sunlight at the Union buildings. Into the old seat of colonial power came the air |
| 1:29.8 | to the leadership of a democratic nation. |
| 1:31.8 | I Nelson the leadership of a democratic nation. I, Nelson, Holy South of Mandela, do hereby serve to be faithful to the Republic of South Africa. |
| 1:43.5 | I'm Fergelkeen, and I was there on May 10th, 1994 |
| 1:48.0 | with my colleague and dear friend Milton and Coe, |
| 1:51.2 | when the leader of the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela, was |
... |
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