(DRUMS AND CHANTING)
In a room in a bungalow in Mpulungu, Zambia,
a man believed to be a murderer is undergoing ritual interrogation.
His interrogator, dressed in red, calls himself Doctor Baela - the healer.
0thers call him a witch doctor.
(DRUMS AND RATTLING)
This ceremony - a disturbing combination of exorcism, magic show and histrionics -
is my introduction to one of the more advanced ex-British colonies of Africa.
Dr Baela has only recently arrived in town from Zaire.
He's already caught a thief. He's a big attraction.
He agrees to give me a private consultation - in public.
- Have I any evil spirits in me? - (INTERPRETER SPEAKS)
(SPEAKS NATIVE LANGUAGE)
(INTERPRETER) He says you have got a shadow.
You have got a shadow. This shadow is an evil shadow.
I have an evil shadow?
(INTERPRETER SPEAKS)
- (SPEAKS NATIVE LANGUAGE) - It is a bad shadow.
- What form does the shadow take? - (BAELA SPEAKS)
(INTERPRETER) He can see a shadow of a woman. I don't know who she is.
What does she look like?
(INTERPRETER) She is not tall. She is fat, a bit.
I have a long journey ahead of me. Is this shadow dangerous for me?
(INTERPRETER SPEAKS)
With his mesmerising, high-pitched voice and lazy, bloodshot, unavoidable eyes,
Dr Baela is certainly charismatic. But should I believe him?
(INTERPRETER) You have a bad shadow.
You can be rich, but sometimes that thing can drive out all your wealth.
- Can drive out? - All your riches.
- All my? - Your money, wealth.
- I see. Can drive out all my money. - Just like stealing.
When he tells me I'm bewitched by an evil shadow, it hardly matters what I believe -
everyone else believes him.
Can he help me?
Yes, he can help with medicine, but it won't be on the National Health.
What is in the medicine?
(INTERPRETER) The medicine is to wash in, not to drink.
- I wash in the medicine? - Yes.
Half expecting him to produce a chicken, I'm relieved to be prescribed tree bark -
one of his less menacing props.
(INTERPRETER) It's to wash the evil spirits from your body.
I'm not sure how I'm going to wash with it. Maybe I should just clout the evil spirits.
Thank you.
There is another side to life in Mpulungu -
the refreshingly un-spellbinding world of fish.
100 tons of Lake Tanganyika's finest is shipped south every month.
It's the direction we must go.
We've been trying to reach the tip of Africa in time to catch the supply ship, Agulhas,
which makes the only yearly crossing to Antarctica from Cape Town.
If we miss this connection, we fail to reach the Pole.
I take the first fish lorry out of town.
I feel as weary now as at any time on the journey.
It could be the heat, the memory of Dr Baela,
or the realisation of the distance we still have ahead of us.
Even the news seems ominous - in the first democratic election for 18 years,
Kenneth Kaunda has been rejected by the people he's ruled since independence.
(KAUNDA 0N RADl0) I tried to do my very best for Zambia,
its people and mankind as a whole.
If my very best did not completely meet the aspirations
of all those I tried to serve,
this was never out of lack of choice.
This is the nature of multiparty politics.
You win some and you lose some elections.
(PALIN) Not everybody's as gloomy as me and Kenneth Kaunda.
For the supporters of Frederick Chiluba, the slogan has worked - their hour has come.
It is our duty to build this vibrant Zambia.
The hour... The hour is ours.
(THEY CHANT)
Unfortunately, they think that the coming of their hour is being witnessed by a BBC news crew.
It's too late to tell them these pictures won't be on for a year.
- Have a beer. It's great. Congratulations. - Thanks.
- Keep the hour going. - To the Third Republic. Is that right?
- Yeah. - Takes me back.
I still don't really understand the politics.
200 miles south from Mpulungu,
my already confused system experiences violent culture shock.
This is Shiwa - an English country estate in the heart of the Zambian bush.
It's owned and run by John Harvey and his wife, Lorna. They've agreed to put us up.
I'm not sure if I'm really here at all.
It's like a tired traveller's dream - everything you think you miss about Britain.
The dream was here long ago. It belonged to Lorna's father, Sir Stewart Gore-Browne.
He came to this hilltop 80 years ago.
He now lies buried here.
0n his grave is the name the local people gave him - Chipembele.
It means "rhinoceros".
A rhino charges and then stops, and he was just like that -
evil-tempered man, and he would get very angry and five minutes later could be asking for a loan.
Our children are like that.
Here, he wanted to recreate the type of life that he'd known in England -
a big house, a big estate, himself as the squire.
(LIVELY SINGING)
His paternalist ambitions were not only fulfilled, they still shape life at Shiwa.
Every Sunday, the wives and children of the estate process to the Gore-Browne chapel.
There are always two services, one Catholic, one Protestant,
according to which missionary got there first.
This is the Catholic service and they're singing the "Gloria".
Sir Stewart's military background still casts a long shadow over Shiwa.
This is the muster ceremony.
Every morning at seven o'clock, the estate workers are summoned for roll-call.
Each man is then given his daily tasks.
The man who may inherit Sir Stewart's dream is John Harvey's son, David.
He learnt farming in England. Conditions are tougher here.
As a precaution against ticks, Shiwa's cattle must be put through the dip once every week.
There are 2,000 of them. The process takes three days.
A 150% inflation rate is the last in a series of misfortunes that have beset the Harveys.
They've always had to be ingenious,
but the estate is littered with the ghosts of "good ideas at the time".
This was an essential-oils factory supplying perfumes to Europe.
Since then they've tried timber, eggs, chickens. Nothing lasted for long.
John won't give up. His latest hope is a safari company.
If you look around Zambia, you will find that people like David, my son, are staying here.
His two brothers are here.
There are lots of people of that age group - trained overseas, educated in England -
who are coming back because they feel there is a life to be made here
and that they can make enough money to live happily.
Do you think you will retire or will you always be running Shiwa?
Well... Remember I told you that I was a soldier
and there is a saying that old soldiers fade away.
- They never die. - No, they never die!
I think that's going to happen to me.
Every evening, the flag bearing the Harvey coat of arms is lowered
and dinner is taken in the traditional British style - but the talk is of Africa.
I was taken to see a witch doctor in Mpulungu
who told me that I had an evil shadow and gave me something to get rid of it.
I thought at the time, "This is a joke, a fraud."
But ever since, especially as I didn't feel well the night afterwards,
I've thought, is there anything in it?
- What do you think? - I think there is a darker side.
I know of an incident in Chisamba, where we have another farm,
of a farmer losing a motor, having a motor stolen,
and he got very frustrated and ended up bringing in the witch doctor.
And he lined all his staff up
and the witch doctor tapped each member of staff on the shoulders with a stick,
and walked down this line.
Eventually he came to a man and he tapped him on the shoulder
and tore a strip of skin off him.
This man then duly broke down and cried
and admitted he was involved with stealing the motor.
- Would you use a witch doctor? - I think I would.
That makes me feel awful.
Since I left Shiwa, another chapter has been written in its brave but blighted history.
John and Lorna Harvey were attacked and killed in southern Zambia six months later.
At the nearest railhead we pick up a train
with a family travelling with everything and the kitchen sink.
I'm glad to be back on trains where, however briefly,
you do run the risk of meeting people.
There seemed to be your whole house going onto the train.
My son is moving to Livingstone. It's my son's household.
And what did he have? Bed, chairs and table.
- Has he taken everything? - Everything.
No problem finding a seat in the dining car.
This is due to a complete lack of anything on which to dine.
Everything except the tablecloth is off.
Few borders are as emphatic as that between Zambia and Zimbabwe
at the Victoria Falls.
The River Zambezi, which marks the frontier, plunges 300 feet over cliffs a mile long.
The column of spray thrown up can be seen 20 miles away.
It drew Livingstone here in 1855 - the first white man to set eyes on the falls.
At the bottom of the gorge, the river is flung about in a series of tortuous rapids.
There are people crazy enough to take boats over them
and, what's more, people daft enough to pay them to do it.
I'll try to make it easy for you to know which side is going first onto the downstream side.
The way I'll do it is to call for that side which is going first onto the downstream side.
When I say, "Crush forward", the first three go to crush and two go right up on top.
Hang on.
This is the world of white-water rafting.
Alex, our driver and guide, may look like Superman
but he's as tightly wrapped in a life jacket as the rest of us.
When I call "Go", turn around and face onto the wave side.
You guys all set?
Go!
Come on back!
0ne of us has fallen overboard already. This doesn't bode at all well.
- You ready for some action? - We've just had some.
Let's go rafting.
I have the extraordinary sensation that my stomach is several yards behind me.
For those interested in technicalities - Nigel's camera is strapped to his shoulder
and my microphone is waterproofed inside three condoms.
I'm still here. You haven't got rid of me yet. There's harder ones to come.
Starting from rapid number four will be some real good white water. Big class-four rapid.
After that rapid, number five is a class-five rapid
and then we're riding in some good class-four and five white water.
What's the class system of rapids then? What's the worst?
The highest class you can run in a raft is a class five.
So we're going for the highest?
We are. It's one of the biggest white waters you can get in the whole world.
So we're doing some real white-water rafting.
(SCREAMING)
There's hardly time for fear,
though at this point I distinctly remember something I want to change in my will.
The joy of survival is tempered by the knowledge that there's worse to come.
(SCREAMING)
The final irony is that in sheer exhilaration at surviving nine rapids,
I swim for shore, hit a rock, and crack a rib.
Next day, I make my way painfully slowly across the Zambezi Bridge,
trying to ignore any connection between witch doctors and rafting.
But if I think I did something silly yesterday, watch this.
A man throws himself into the 300-foot gorge... and back again.
For fun.
This is the sport of bungee jumping.
It makes white-water rafting look like a day at the paddling pool.
And it's so popular that people are actually queuing to jump off.
Five, four, three, two, one...
Bungee!
If something about the Zambezi Gorge attracts loonies,
then something about Zambia has attracted misfortune.
Apart from my rib, I've had a suitcase stolen and one of our crew has had malaria.
Last night I finally tried Dr Baela's medicine. Perhaps it was a bit late.
Anyway, the end of the bridge marks somewhere new - Zimbabwe.
At first Zimbabwe looks old-fashioned but, compared to Zambia, it's a land of progress.
Blessed with huge coal reserves, they've kept a lot of steam engines - and not just for nostalgia.
But Bulawayo station does take me back a few years
to those days before white-water rafting
when climbing on the footplate at Sheffield Midland was the ultimate excitement.
With a cracked rib, it's the ultimate test of the unreformed trainspotter.
- How old is this locomotive? - I think it's about 30 years old.
- How old are you? - I'm 34.
- About the same age. - Almost the same.
Why did you become an engine driver?
I've always liked trains. I used to like trains when I was young.
The railways of southern Africa were once described as "the sinews of empire".
The man who built them was Cecil John Rhodes.
His mixture of megalomania and foresight opened up the continent
and created a country in his name - Rhodesia.
This train proves he put his money where his mouth was.
A hundred years ago it was all the rage to have your own railway coach,
and as Rhodes owned a large chunk of Africa, he was not to be left out.
This one was made for him by Pullman in 1895
and has everything your African commuter could want.
A complete kitchen range and many other delights besides.
His own bathroom complete with enamel bath.
Bedroom - mahogany panelled.
And his reception room where he could entertain other people
who'd made spectacular amounts of money from carving up Africa.
This was also the coach in which he made his last journey.
At the age of 49 in 1902 he was brought from Cape Town, where he died,
to the place where he had requested to be buried, just outside Bulawayo.
In his will he wrote, "I admire the grandeur of the Matapos Mountains in Rhodesia.
"Therefore I desire to be buried on the hill which I called 'The View of The World'
"in a square to be cut in the rock, covered by a brass plate with these words thereon.
"Here lie the remains of Cecil John Rhodes."
Here, despite threats by Zimbabwe's rulers to dig him up and send him back,
Cecil Rhodes, the empire builder, still lies.
Rhodesia disappeared a decade ago after a violent guerrilla war,
but the country feels as English as anywhere I've been.
Bulawayo's streets and parks are evidence of that most European concept - civic pride.
The trauma of independence has had little effect on the BBC -
the Bulawayo Bowling Club.
Membership has dwindled from 400 to 120, but there are still five greens
and Pearle Sheppard, the club secretary, is bullish.
Our youngest member is a boy of about 14.
Goes to boarding school, so he just plays at school holidays.
Our oldest member is that lady you saw on the green. She's 86.
So you get a very representative crowd -
people from all walks of life and all ages all come and play bowls.
- Do you have any black African players? - We don't, no.
The Africans are not particularly interested in bowls.
All the clubs are open, of course.
The only black bowlers in Bulawayo belong to the Blind Bowlers Association.
They have been brought into the game through the association that helps blind people,
and they encourage them to play bowls.
It's fantastic to see some of them play because they might not be able to see,
yet they sometimes play incredible bowls.
0ne place no member of the BBC would be seen
is the gloriously named Umshitshimbo Beer Garden.
# Young boy dances, left in a dusty township... #
The Umshitshimbo Garden is a concrete patch behind a downtown hotel,
but it's one of the most popular places in Bulawayo to drink and jive.
The music scene is thriving.
Bands like Southern Freeway - fronted by a South African, Steve Dyer - pack the place.
(SOUTHERN FREEWAY SING "THABISO")
There's low life and high life at the Umshitshimbo.
Shots of gin top up the lager,
and when the band stops, there are long announcements on the dangers of AIDS.
No one listens.
Still, it's the happiest memory I take away from Bulawayo.
(SOUTHERN FREEWAY CONTINUE SINGING "THABISO")
200 miles south, we reach our last country in Africa -
our springboard to Antarctica and the South Pole.
0n the banks of the Limpopo,
miles of razor wire guard the Republic of South Africa from the rest of the world.
Life changes completely.
Despite years of sanctions and universal ostracism, Western luxury starts here.
Where else in Africa could you rent a white BMW?
Country number 14 is undergoing as profound a change as any we've passed through.
Four months before we arrived, apartheid was officially abolished.
No one quite knows where South Africa goes next.
In the shadow of slag heaps is Johannesburg -
the biggest city we've seen since Cairo.
Unlike Cairo, Johannesburg is cool, calm and corporate.
Retrieving the gold on which their wealth is built leads to spectacular engineering.
- We're travelling at 70 metres a second. - 70 metres a second. Two kilometres down.
This is Western Deep Levels mine.
It's in the "Guinness Book of Records" for the deepest penetration of man into the earth.
Two and a half miles.
7,000 men work down here.
They're drawn from so many different tribes that a mining language has developed.
Fanakalo is the Esperanto of the mines. It's taught in the world's deepest classroom.
Yenalo... sar-har.
Ini-lo.
(CLASS) Yenalo... sar-har.
Yenalo... spa-ne-rer.
Yenalo spa-ne-rer.
Mosheh. Ini-lo?
- Yenalo spa-ne-r. - Spa-ne-rer.
Ini-lo?
- Yenalo spa-ne-rer. - Mosheh.
Spa-ne-rer.
Armed with the word for "spanner",
we leave the air-conditioned tunnels for where mining gets painful.
- Bit dangerous here. - Where's the water from?
This is from where they're drilling. It's drilling water.
We're walking up the strike gully towards the strike itself.
- We'll be going up a ladderway. - Sure.
- It's quite hot now, isn't it? - Yeah. Hot and wet.
It's 30 degrees centigrade.
Crouched in a chamber four foot high, a team has been drilling for six hours.
0ne man operates the drill, one checks the equipment, one directs cooling water.
An engineer directs operations into an inch-wide gold-bearing seam.
He's the only white man.
It takes nearly four hours to change shifts.
The technicians are gathering at the crucible.
It's a very select band that witnesses the final act of the drama.
Is the gold coming through?
If you look there, you'll see the gold is now a greeny-silvery colour.
- It's changing, yeah. - You see it coming through the top.
That's how you know where the gold is coming out.
So how much gold is there in this particular smelting?
In this one we're probably getting about three bars of gold - that's about 80 kilograms.
Why do you have feather dusters in here?
It's a very industrial environment and there are feather dusters. What are they for?
All the dust in the smelt house could contain gold,
so every spot of dust is collected and put into the furnace.
Nothing is taken out. Even overalls are put into the furnace sometimes.
- I won't get an internal check? - No.
In Johannesburg, I'm made aware of how long I've been away.
We left in high summer. Now it's less than a month to the festive season.
(HE HUMS "IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER")
# Snow had fallen snow on snow
# Snow on snow
# In the bleak midwinter long ago #
There's nothing like Christmas to provoke homesickness.
But if all goes well, I could get home from the South Pole in time to start shopping.
(BELL RINGS)
But Africa has one last and particularly nasty trick in store for us.
Back at the hotel, a message is waiting.
Though it isn't from my witch doctor, it might as well be.
I can't quite believe the news and double-check with our production office in London.
Hello. Mimi? Yeah. It's Michael. I've just got your fax.
Yeah. I can't believe it. Is that?
About the Agulhas. They have no berths at all?
The Agulhas is sailing to Antarctica, but all places on board have been taken.
There is no room for us.
While our London office tries every alternative, we can only hope and wait.
We decide to spend the day at Soweto.
It has a Latin motto. "Conjuncte Agamus" - "Let's pull together".
The place is full of surprises.
This house, I'm told, boasts the ultimate in status symbols - a white security guard.
Jimmy, my guide, lives round here. He's a man of sharp wit and little sentiment.
He tells me that in Soweto, BMWstill means "Break My Windows".
Jimmy, to all intents and purposes, this looks like the Beverly Hills of Soweto.
What sort of people live here?
(JIMMY) It's the affluent black people.
Professional people, businessmen, doctors, lawyers...
Successful people, hard workers.
These are the people who work for the bank, not in the bank.
(PALIN) If you make a lot of money in Soweto,
do people tend to stay here or want to move?
(JIMMY) There's a feeling of people moving. I've been seeing signs - "For Sale" -
because the Group Areas Act is over, so it's a question now of economic apartheid.
Those who have the money can move with the Joneses.
(PALIN) Why do they move from Soweto?
(JIMMY) It's a feeling of... people tend to look for what they couldn't be given.
What you were prohibited from doing is exactly what you want to do.
Now it's open, people feel it's much nicer in the city, in the suburbs. Convenient.
Five minutes drive from wherever to the city or buses and transportation.
Transportation is a way to make money in Soweto.
So serious is the violence on railways
that Sowetans prefer to fight for a place on a private minibus.
There are currently 145,000 of them, and the numbers are rising.
Simply because there's more people...
Soweto was set up in 1933 to house a cheap labour force.
Shanty settlements like this one are the legacy of that decision.
These are the families of people who are not wanted and probably never will be.
If you leave your family, you could try one of the hostels.
Jimmy doesn't recommend it.
How can you have 16 men in one room?
16 smells of food - this one cooking that, this one doing this.
Sometimes people want to rest - you've been working at night, others during the day.
Men in general put together.
These are the barbers. Street barbers.
Money making, of course. It's connected electrically from the battery.
That's how they get the electricity to do all this.
- That's just someone doing a bit of work? - Yeah. Just a bit of work.
- How much do they pay for this? - 12 to 15 rand per bed.
- Different hostels have different prices. - For a month. £3 a month.
What are they earning? Are these the lowest wage earners?
Most people in the hostel are low wage earners, but you get a few earning more.
Roughly 500 rand a month, depending where they're working.
500 would be worth about £100 a month.
- There'd be people here with £100 a month? - Yeah.
(PALIN) It's much nicer inside than it is out.
(JIMMY) You can't imagine living eight in one. It's like dormitory style.
If you spend all your life here, this is pretty bad.
Before I leave, I have some visiting to do.
It's a sign of the times that the Gwangwa family - neighbours of ours in London -
have because of their ANC membership only just been allowed back into their country.
Six months ago, this visit would never have been possible.
Wrong day.
There's Michael, there's Michael, there's Michael.
Hey! There you are!
Hello!
- How great to see you. - How great to see you.
- That's wonderful. - Keeto.
Hello.
And my My-Lucy? Where's My-Lucy? Somewhere else.
That's right. Oh, look at that.
"Welcome, Michael, to the Gwangwa family."
- You do that for everybody! - No!
This is... They use... cow dung.
- Cow dung, is it? - That's the decorations that they do.
- Fresh cow dung. - We couldn't get the cow dung in London!
Kicking our heels for another day, we join a football crowd.
Sport is multiracial in South Africa now,
but rugby remains the white game and soccer the black game.
(SOFT SINGING)
Today's match is a Cup semi-final.
Sundowns of Pretoria are taking on Cosmos of Johannesburg.
(HORN TRUMPETS)
Oh, what a shot!
It was a very good shot.
We leave Johannesburg with nothing decided - but we leave in style.
This is the Blue Train, which runs expensively between Pretoria and Cape Town.
I justify it as a reward for all our rough-riding through Africa.
The Nile Valley Express in Sudan carried 4,000 people.
The Blue Train's carrying just 92 and no one's allowed on the roof.
The contrast with everything that's gone before is almost unnerving.
What does one do with nine pieces of cutlery?
The answer is you order a bottle of South African Chardonnay and stop feeling guilty.
After all, how many people here have cracked ribs and evil shadows?
No one ever gets on, no one ever gets off.
In this air-conditioned double-glazed luxury, I feel like an overfed goldfish -
able to observe the world from my bowl whilst remaining completely detached from it.
It could quite easily drive you mad.
The last 900 miles of Africa run across the High Veld
and the wide, dry plain they call the Karoo
to approach the Cape in a scenic display of mountains, valleys and vineyards.
7,000 miles, and nearly three months after entering Port Said,
the unmistakable shape of Table Mountain marks the end of Africa.
I think Africa's changed me.
Until Mpulungu I was an incurable optimist, but something went wrong there
and I've reached Cape Town as an incurable fatalist - what will be, will be.
From the top of Table Mountain, you can see where the Indian and Atlantic 0ceans meet.
Beyond that, 2,500 miles over the horizon, is Antarctica.
But the most poignant sight of all
is the red-hulled supply ship we've chased through Africa to reach.
We made it, but our appeal for space on board the Agulhas has failed.
When she sails tomorrow on the only voyage of the year to the Antarctic,
we'll still be here.
The journey, it seems, is over.