Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
History revisited
TREVOR MCDONALD: RETURN TO SOUTH AFRICA
ITV, 9pm IT’S shocking to think that just three decades ago, South Africans were living in a segregated society.
Signs in shops and streets directed ‘whites’ to one area and ‘blacks, coloureds and asians’ to another.
“It’s over 30 years since I saw for myself the horrors of Apartheid South Africa,” says Sir Trevor Mcdonald, who was appalled by the oppression that he saw there.
To mark what would have been Nelson Mandela’s 100th birthday, Sir Trevor now returns. He was the first journalist to interview Mandela after his release from prison in 1990 having served 27 years, and saw history in the making. Mandela wanted a rainbow nation, but does that exist in today’s South Africa?
Despite having changed massively, it is still a land defined by division, inequality and violent crime. As Sir Trevor travels around the country, one with shocking contrasts, it’s clearly a very personal tour for him.
He visits Vilakazi Street, the site of Nelson Mandela’s family home, where he conducted the interview.
Sir Trevor also discovers a very different Soweto to the townships of the 1980s, meeting real estate agent Matseleng Mogodi who sells luxury houses to the new, black middle class.
By contrast, he visits a squatter camp in Munsieville where white families, once protected by the economics of Apartheid, are now struggling to make ends meet.
There’s also a trip through the notorious Cape Flats, known as “the murder capital of the world”, which sits not far from the gated Val de Vie, the most luxurious development in South Africa.