Transcripts For BBCNEWS Witness History 20240710

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Now on Bbc News, Witness History. Hello and welcome to Witness History with me, Ciru Muriuki in nairobi, with more remarkable moments and today, we present five of our most memorable recent stories. Coming up, haute tunisian woman became some of the most liberated Women In The World in the 1950s. We found out about the 1950s. We found out about the zimbabwe empire, plus The Kenyan Pop Song that became a global hit. I miss my friend, steve biko, and i am forever in his debt. Steve biko is one of the people that originated the new generation of young political minded black people the black Consciousness Movement. We believe that in our country there shall be no minority, there shall be no majority, there shall be just the people. And those people will have the same status before the law and they will have the same rights before the law. The Apartheid Government ensured there was no resistance against its doctrines and against its policies. There was a roadblock and they then searched the car. They found an identity document, which was mine, they then said, who is peterjones . And i said, thats me. He said, oh, and who are you, Big Man . Thats now steve. And steve said, i am steve bantu biko. And we were then locked up together in one cell. The next morning we started getting an uneasy feeling because there were now more police and in a convoy of three cars we sped towards Port Elizabeth. In Port Elizabeth was the headquarters of the Security Police for that region. The building has been converted into a block of flats. Steve biko was being walked to his death, along this very corridor, a man poised to fill the void left behind after mandela was jailed. We got taken up to the fifth floor and we were manacled, each to a separate window. One of the senior police, a major, came in and said, now i can confirm that you are officially being detained under section six of the terrorism act. That is the act in which you literally disappear. They separated us, i only had a chance to shout Steves Name and that was the last time i saw steve alive. Three weeks and three days later, i had just heard a lot of commotion, many, many people singing protest songs, the cell next to mine was being filled with many people. Then this young man told me that they have just returned from the funeral of steve biko, and that was the first time that i heard about the death of steve biko. I went to my mat, that was my bed, and i then just sat there. With. To me, it was like a huge hole in my soul, just inconsolability which even today would make me weep at unexpected moments. File footage the police said the leader of the black Consciousness Movement had lost his life by accident when his head struck a wall while he was being restrained. Steve Bikos Family believe he was thrown at the wall quite deliberately, by the police officers. Steve Bikos Death and the brutality of it highlighted, like no other event at the time, the extent to which the Apartheid Regime would go to protect itself. Peterjones there remembering his friend, steve biko. Next we go to tunisia in the 1950s and the introduction of equal Rights Laws which gave women notjust the right to vote but the right to contraception and in some cases abortion. The wide ranging reforms were brought in by the countrys first president following independence. Saida El Gueyed remembers when President Bourguiba asked her to help him introduce the laws to tunisian women. File footage the women who, 10 years ago, had no rights, were contracted to a marriage by their parents, were covering their faces when they left the house, these tunisians are not doing at all badly. This is, one imagines, as emancipated as any girl can get. These Swinging Tunisian Dolly Birds represent one of the most remarkable social transformations of present times. Translation the equal Rights Law was the biggest ever gain. For tunisian women. President bourguiba said he was notjust A Liberator Of Tunisia but A Liberator Of Tunisian women as well. File Footage Bourguiba is tunisia. For 30 years, hes fought for his country. First, he battled for independence from france, and wasjailed and exiled for his trouble. Since independence, hes been his nations leader. Translation i knew President Bourguiba l during the struggle against colonialism. In the equal Rights Law, he banned polygamy, he gave women social, political and economic rights. He introduced the law on 13 august 1956. Thanks to this law, women were allowed to vote and also become politicians. I am one of the founders of the tunisian Womens Union and President Bourguiba relied on us. File footage in this school, 100 miles from tunis, a teacher hammers home the newly discovered facts of female life to 60 teenagers. There are 13 such schools in tunisia, organised and staffed by the tunisian Womens Union, a militant and powerful body of opinion in the land. The teacher leaves them in no doubts about their right. She tells them, you are not slaves anymore, you are like european women. You have Equal Rights with men. This, you must understand. Translation this law protected girls. J fathers were no longer able to force their daughters to marry against their will. President bourguiba encouraged us to make sure families were not stopping girls from getting an education. File footage theyre taught about Contraception And Abortion and the law is giving them Equal Rights. After three months here, they spread the word in their villages because its here, in the tunisian countryside that the modern tunisian woman has to win the fight for equality that the territory for centuries has remained the unassailable stronghold of tunisian men. Translation we spoke to men more than we did to women because we faced opposition from them. We spent a lot of time meeting them and explaining the law to them. Family traditions used to oppress girls, but now they are free to choose who to love. File footage tunisian women were given yet another safeguard against massive families when they became the first women in any muslim country able to have abortions. The law at present is that any tunisian woman with four children can have an abortion without her husbands consent. The operation is paid for by the government. President bourguiba told us to make women feel like they have a role to play, that they have the right to live in dignity and to trust themselves and their soul. He said he gave women these rights not as a gift but because he saw Womens Power to lead in post independence society. Saida El Gueyed there, who continues to campaign for the rights of women. Now lets go back hundreds of years to the ancient ruined city of Great Zimbabwe. When colonial explorers discovered it in the 19th century, they insisted foreigners must have built. Then, following zimbabwes independence, the country was able to reclaim its full heritage. Our next witness, dr ken mufuka, was the historian tasked with rewriting the history books. This is one of the most remarkable sites in africa. These are the corridors of power of an ancient african civilisation. This is Great Zimbabwe. Everybody in power wants to control history because it brings them legitimacy. The europeans said, the africans did not build the ruins. It belonged to somebody else, the phoenicians, arabs, the queen of sheba. Anybody else except the africans. Great zimbabwe was the greatest Civilisation South of egypt. It carried about 10,000 people, so that was quite a large city. It was also the centre of religion and the economy of zimbabwe, it was gold. It could be traced far back as 1100. I was raised about 10 miles away. I was obsessed with history. So i visited it as a child. There was a Bus Tour of Great Zimbabwe but this was for tourists blacks were not allowed there. But wed just turn up and if theres no white visitors, you can wander about. The structures are massive. The stones are chiselled to be exactly the same size, and they are not connected by mortar or cement. We felt in some ways deprived of what belonged to us, that we belonged to a great people that were oppressed by the colonial regime. File footage when europeans first saw Great Zimbabwe in the 1890s, they could not believe that so imposing a structure could have been built by the ancestors of the africans they found living there. Zimbabwe was not built i by either blacks or whites. The people who built it were semitic, they were brown in colour and were evidently the sabaean people, who were a mixture of arabs and jews. I the europeans were going there to civilise africans, who are in darkness, who had no history. So if they accepted that some of these africans had these wonderful civilisations, the reasoning would fall apart. 0n april18, 1980, zimbabwe became independent. It was a great moment for us. History became important. They were going to find a new identity by going into the past. I was the first black director of the national museum. I was supposed to use my abilities as a writer to write a new manual for the Great Zimbabwe, getting away from the eurocentric interpretation. So that heritage could be reclaimed. It was one of my happiest times. But it was also full of challenges, because the politicians, they insisted that i must say that Great Zimbabwe was built by revolutionaries. And i refused, said no, there is nothing revolutionary about it, it was ordinary people living as they were told by the king. They were angry with me, and i had to leave zimbabwe in a hurry because now they were looking to lock me up. I think my life explains why history is very exciting, because look at the problems that ive gone through because of my writing of history. Dr ken mufuka, on the enduring power of history. You can watch Witness History every month on the Bbc News channel, or you can catch up on all of our films along with thousands of regular programmes in the online archives. Just search online for bbc Witness History. Now, a story about hope and nationality. Our next witness began life in somalia but relocated in 1991, and in the following year she found herself living in Dadaab Refugee Camp in kenya. For a long time, it became the worlds largest refugee camp, and currently holds more than 200,000 people. There are commercial hubs in the camp. Many residents have known no other home. You dont know what life holds for you. Youve been in mogadishu, in a big city, with a good life, and then we end up in a refugee camp. In mogadishu, when the war started, there were Militia Groups everywhere. We were scared, dead bodies were scattered everywhere, just things that you cant imagine. We were attacked by the Militia Groups. I think there were about ten. They came to one of my uncles, and then they shot at my father that night. He was shot in his left leg. And then from the back, it was going out from his side. My father survived. We fled from mogadishu at the beginning of 1982, we travelled to the border of kenya. We were very young at that time and my father could not walk. We had a donkey cart, we are trying to cross the border. You know that you can be caught by the bandits at any time. If they catch you, that is the end of your life. Also, that day, if you are caught by the soldiers from kenya, that will be the end of your life also. So the means of survival was 50 50. Everybody was trying to come to kenya to look for means of survival, but we never expected that we would be going to a refugee camp. At the beginning, when the camp was established, it was just, like, you collect branches from a tree and then you build a Small Hut and then it is covered by plastic. The environment is so harsh. It was dusty, the soil was not fertile, you cannot grow anything. Rainfall is so low. It might happen that in three years, there might be no rain. It was so hot. Sometimes it could reach up to a0 or 50 degrees. When we arrived at the refugee camp, they were men with guns, they would come to you at night time, they would rape girls, they would take away what you have. They would kill. It was not safe at the beginning. But things become calmer as time goes. It is like a city now, big city. We thought we could have stayed there, like, two years or one year, but we never thought we could have stayed there, like, 25 years. You cannot travel from there to another part of kenya. And you cannot go back to somalia. So, you know, necessity is the mother of intervention. Youve got a good education. I got a scholarship from unicef, to go to university. Now i feel, like, kenyan. I feel kenyan because i was four years in somalia and 2a years in kenya. But kenya was telling us the other day that what they want is to close the camps and take away the somali people living in the camps, back to somalia. Newsreel dadaab is the worlds largest refugee camp, and now kenya wants to close it down. Many of them have never been anywhere else. Where will i go back to . We are not kenyans, because kenya is telling us, you are refugees. But we are somali neither, because we were brought up in kenya. So we are caught in between. That was zamzam abdi gelle. And finally, a0 years ago, tourism here in kenya was booming, with visitors coming for the wildlife as well as its beautiful beaches. Our next witnesses were Making A Living Playing Music at hotels when they were inspired to write a song which went on to become a global hit. This is the story ofJambo Bwana. Plays Jambo Bwana on saxophone. Jambo, Jambo Bwana habari gani, mzuri sana. Wageni, wakaribishwa. Kenya yetu, Hakuna Matata. Kenya nchi nzuri, Hakuna Matata. Thats the way it went. The tourists were just crazy about this song. Jambo, Jambo Bwana it went silver, then gold, then platinum. That came as a complete surprise to me. Wakaribishwa, Hakuna Matata i started the group, them mushrooms, in 1972. Me and him were working at the Cement Factory in mombasa. There was a lot of tourists coming into mombasa, so it was a really vibrant scene in mombasa. We were playing mostly congolese stuff, and kenyan music, and whatever, but when we realised we could make more money and play for less time for the tourists and hotels, we switched to playing Disco Cover versions of Pop Music from europe and from america. One night, i think it was late, 1979, i was sitting at the Pool Bar after a performance, and there were these tourists in the pool, playing around and joking, trying to speak swahili, jambo, hibari, Hakuna Matata, you know, and i got this idea. Maybe i should write a song with the simplest words in swahili and get the tourists to sing along and dance to our music. Jambo, Jambo Bwana. Habari gani. It says jambo, Jambo Bwana, which means hello, hello mister. It says habari gani, how are you . Mzuri sana is very well, thank you. Then it says, welcome, all guests, all visitors are welcome to kenya. Kenya yetu, Hakuna Matata, there are no problems in kenya. Thats a very simple song. Whenever we finished, another tourist would come over and say, can you do thisjambojambo . We had to do at about 20 times. And then the financial director of polygram said, here is my card, you call me, i want us to record this song. We didnt know that it was going to be this big. Jambo, Jambo Bwana. Like, they say, the rest is history. After the recording, the rest was history. When we signed an agreement with polygram at that time, i didnt know much about corporate ownership. We were just happy to have our music recorded, and so many people have wanted to do cover versions. Most kenyans say, ah, this is a song for foreigners, not for us kenyans, you know . But they are proud of it, that at least it has given some kind of identity to kenya, you know . Any kenyan who goes overseas, they will always ask you, do you know that song, Jambo Bwana . They start singing the song, you know . So that is a big honour for us. Billy Sarro Harrison and teddy Kalanda Harrison on the enduring appeal ofJambo Bwana. This song put kenya on the map and its hook, Hakuna Matata, even made it into the lion king. Thats all from this Special Edition of Witness History, coming to you from the national museum in nairobi, kenya. We will be back next month with a selection of extraordinary accounts of women in history. For now, from me and the rest of the Witness History crew, its kwaheri goodbye. Hello there. On wednesday, it was a lovely day across scotland and Northern Ireland. Widespread sunshine and pretty warm with 25 celsius recorded in sterlingshire. Further south for england and wales it was rather cloudy. The next few days it is a similar set up. The best of the sunshine across the north, more cloud in the south. Its this area of High Pressure that weve had for nearly two weeks now. Pretty much in the same position bringing that East Or Northeast airflow. So a lot of cloud generally to start the day thursday. Eventually we start to see the cloud breaking up across scotland and Northern Ireland and into Northern England so increasing sunshine here, it will turn quite warm into the afternoon. But again, for much of england and wales, a lot of cloud around. Some sunny breaks here and there, more of a breeze again across the south and through the channel. Lighter winds further north, could see temperatures reach the low to Mid 20s in the sunny spots across scotland. Otherwise for most where you have the cloud around 17 19, 20 degrees. 0ur Area of High Pressure still with us on friday. Moving a little bit towards the east but still bringing an easterly wind. There will be a lot of cloud still wrapped up in this system. And again friday pretty similar, most of the cloud i think across central, southern southern eastern areas, the best of the sunshine towards the west where it will feel a little bit warmer. As we head on into the weekend we start to see our area of high Pressure Drift in towards the near continent with low pressure approaching from the west, thats going to allow a run of southerly winds to develop across the country. And we start to tap into some warmth across france. I think a gradual process but during the Weekend Temperatures will be climbing up gradually. We should start to see increasing amount of sunshine as we draw up some Dryer Air from the south. Saturday pretty similar to how thursday and Friday Shape up with quite a bit of cloud around. I think later in the day there are signs of increasing sunshine across southern england, south wales. That will push the temperatures up to 23 degrees or so. But for most again, the mid to high teens or up to around 20. I think on sunday theres a greater chance of seeing more widespread sunshine. Certainly a brighter day for much of england and wales then weve had over the past week. As winds coming in from the south from france pushing up into around the Mid 20s across the south or high teens further north. And then its warmer still into the start of next week. Could be looking at values closer to the mid to upper 20s celsius, particularly across central and southern areas. Welcome to Bbc News im mark lobel. Our top stories. As the taliban puts on a show of its new military Muscle Speculation a government may soon be announced. But the economy is close to collapse the value of the afghan Currency Plummets while the price of goods soars. The Us Supreme Court ignores appeals against a new law in texas banning almost all abortions. President biden says it violates the constitution. Twitter says its launching a new feature that it hopes will help crack down on trolling and abuse. And the rain in Spain Flooding causes chaos as roads are closed and thousands are left without power

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