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From Our Own Correspondent: Tensions in rural South Africa

24/10/2020

Tensions in rural South Africa

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent, Tensions in rural South Africa

Stories on racial tensions in rural South Africa, and from Paraguay, Tuscany and France.

Stories on racial tensions in rural South Africa, on record drought in Paraguay, becoming a true local in Tuscany, and the location of a novel set in France. With Kate Adie.

In South Africa, racial tensions have been heightened in some rural areas, particularly after the murder of Brendin Horner, a young white farm manager. Cases like his have led to claims of ethnic cleansing. But as President Ramaphosa pointed out, the killings are cases of criminality, not genocide.  Andrew Harding went to the small town of Senekal to investigate what's behind these racial tensions.
In Paraguay in South America, the river of the same name has dipped to its lowest level ever recorded after months of drought.  That’s a problem in this landlocked country which uses the waterway to transport the vast majority of its traded goods. And where does it leave the local fishermen? William Costa has been finding out, and asks what's causing the lack of rainfall.  
The Covid-19 pandemic has severely restricted international travel. That's meant Kamin Mohammadi can no longer divide her time between Italy, Britain and Iran as she used to, for family and work reasons. Now Tuscany has become a true home, not because of remote working, nor even finally having the time to appreciate things like bees on a lemon tree. But it was due to sharing the depths of Italy's sorrow at the height of the pandemic. 
After the First World War, tourists went to France to visit the battlefields.   Among them was the future novelist Rumer Godden. Then a girl of 15,  she was taken with her three sisters to see the theatres of war of the Marne. They stayed in the town of Château-Thierry,  east of Paris. That holiday formed the basis of Rumer Godden’s celebrated later novel, The Greengage Summer.  It’s a favourite of Hugh Schofield, so it was on something of a personal mission that he set off in search of … the greengage summer.

Presenter: Kate Adie 
Producer: Arlene Gregorius

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