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Friday, December 4, 1998 Published at 14:29 GMT

George Aligiah answers your questions

What are the prospects for a truce in the Sudan and if part of the country is likely to cecede?

Well I think the prospects are not that good. Remember this war has been going on now, this phase of it at any rate, for 15 years. And I think one of the problems with it is that we've always identified the war, both journalists and I think politicians, as one between a Muslim North and a largely Christian or traditional South. And I think the war's about something else. I think the war is about a war for wealth or there's another dimension to it at least, a war for wealth to do with the South's oil and gold and mineral resources. And I think we need to begin to address that because I think so long as there is competition for those resources, there's the water as well, the Nile's water, unless people address those, then I think they won't be getting to the root causes of this conflict.

An e-mail correspondent from America detects a degree of Western hypocrisy towards its policy to Sudan. Had Sudan been a big purchaser of weapons, for example, or had it had the rich resources of oil as in Kuwait, wouldn't the developed world have gone out of their way to offer their help?

I don't know that it's hypocrisy but clearly there's an element, I think, of the West taking a role and playing a part in this conflict. There is no question, in my mind, that America for example is, through proxy states in Africa, supporting the Southern rebel army, if you like, because they see it as part of the international attempt to shut down Islamic states that want to run themselves according to Islamic rules. And that is a worry and I think so long as in the region, when you talk to people, so long as America or the West is identified so closely with one side that seems to have such keen interest in holding down the Islamic government in Khartoum then there is a problem. That's not to say that I don't agree with people who say that the Islamic government in Khartoum has got policies which, I think, do not make for a peaceful and neighbourly state.
MR SUBRAMANI, Madras, India
I would like to ask you, when you were reporting from Rwanda - I've been following your reports from 1994 - what was at the back of your mind or rather what was your feeling when you saw the great human catastrophe unfolding before your eyes? That's one thing. Secondly, I would like to ask you, do you think Africa presents itself as a victim of total international neglect? I mean, for example, they haven't debt relief which they badly need from the developed world?

Ok let's go for the first one. My feelings in Rwanda, I think, were feelings that anybody would have had and in a sense as a reporter that's what you are, you're the eye witness, you try to be other people's eyes and ears and I can only tell you that, personally, the man in me was filled with utter despair at what I saw and indeed what I heard. Husbands and wives telling on each other, families split apart, children being asked, are you Tutsi or Hutu? - if they were from mixed marriages. And then being clubbed to death. The movement away from Rwanda into Goma which I witnessed in 1994 and that horrible dilemma when you saw so many people, tens of thousands coming over at one time and knowing in your heart that some of these people were guilty of genocide. But not knowing what you did with them collectively - this was a dilemma for the aid agencies, they couldn't separate the genocide, the people who'd committed genocide from the others who needed genuine help. So that was and will always stick in my mind as a place where there was no moral zone and one's attempts to say, this is good, this is evil, this is right, this is wrong, was very, very difficult, it was almost the absence of a moral zone.

As for Africa presenting itself as a victim, I think it's not so much Africa that has done it but obviously most people's view of Africa comes from broadcasters and journalists who work in countries outside Africa and they have perhaps portrayed Africa as a, kind of, victim continent. It's changing, I think; Africans are getting better at portraying themselves and, I think, African governments are getting better. There's a long, long way to go but I think in places like South Africa, in places like Uganda you're beginning to see a new kind of government and a new kind of pride in being African. I remember very well listening to Thabo Mbeki, the man who will become South Africa's President in about a year's time, giving a wonderful speech, Why I am an African. I am an African too and he tried to explain to the world what it was to be an African. And it was a very noble thing. People do often say that the image which we as journalists and particularly the image which the Western media project of Africa leads the vast majority of those who live outside that continent to think of it in a way which is not fair, which is not reasonable, which is not objective. Now do you think there is some truth in that? Well there is a problem there and I myself have probably been guilty of covering more disaster stories, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia etc. etc. and giving this impression. I think that's the nature of news. And I would say to those people who worry about this is that I don't think different standards are being applied to Africa than are being applied in Europe, for example. In London, on domestic news, very rarely do you see reporters go into a school or hospital and say: "This school is working wonderfully, this hospital is working wonderfully." Journalists tend to go into those hospitals when they're not working to try and alert the public. And I think that same standard is used in Africa. There is a problem though, that I think there isn't the same amount of attempt made to look at the more interesting sides of Africa, certainly not in the news, I mean, you do find it in current affairs programmes and so on. And I think there is a challenge for journalists to try and show the dignity and which is why, in my most recent story from Southern Sudan, I began the piece talking about the dignity of the people I found. They were starving, some of them were dying but they had the good grace to welcome me into their community.

ROBIN: What do you think about how George responded to that?

MR SUBRAMNI: He was specific to countries which are well off in Africa, so for example he was talking about South Africa but my worry is about Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and countries which are undergoing a kind of a trauma - what's George's response to that?

Well they are going through a trauma. What I was trying to suggest is that there are changes. I don't think Rwanda is by any means in the clear. What you have there is an untenable political situation where something like 18 per cent of the population - a party in the government that is seen to be representing something like 18 per cent of the government - trying to run the country and that is clearly not tenable and the arithmetic simple doesn't work. It's a bit like Israel and the Middle East. So I don't think it's out of the woods but I think if you look at Ethiopia, if you look at Eritrea, if you look at Uganda, these are not hugely wealthy countries or anything like that, in fact they've got, you know, Uganda for example needs to grow at the rate it's growing for about another 20 years before it's back where it was in the 60s and 70s. But what I am saying is that in one or two cases in those countries I think you have seen the leadership looking to find a new way of organising the state, a new way of creating some kind of national pride, national status, if you like.

An e-mail on the ethics of reporting: A well-known former BBC correspondent, now a member of Parliament, Martin Bell has argued that foreign correspondents should not be blindly neutral in their reporting. In what circumstances is not being neutral justified?

Well I've always found this notion of being neutral a rather strange thing because in fact, of course, very few of the papers and so-on are journalists who always said they were neutral, were neutral I think, often they took sides, whether it had been in debate about North/South. We've seen this question of nuclear weapons, I think you will find journalists in India having a very different view from journalists in New York. I'm not afraid, actually, of taking sides but I think what you do is you take sides with people, I don't think you take sides with companies, with governments but you can take sides. It is a nonsense to say that you can sit and be neutral even if you're a journalist between when Tutsi people and moderate Hutus are being the victims of genocide, you cannot be neutral. So, I think, really it's an understanding that journalism is a huge responsibility and that when you do have an opinion you have to be very sure that you're expressing it carefully.

Do you think, George, that journalists as a breed always have a tendency to take the side of the underdog, to take the side of the victim?

I think that's why we're in this business. I don't think many of us, not many of my friends, got into this business simply because we wanted to, if you like, become a, sort of, information arm of the government of the day. Most of us have a very keen sense of justice, most of the good ones, certainly, the brilliant ones - people like James Cameron in the past, who is someone I admire. And yes I think they are looking to expose those situations and areas in which people are not being treated well in injustice situations in governments that take advantage of them. I think that's part of what journalism is, it's not this kind of weird notion of neutrality that I think is going out of fashion now but certainly was the way people were being taught to be journalists a couple of decades ago.
ANTHONY JOHNS, London
I know Mr. Alagiah was born in Sri Lanka, went to school in Ghana and he speaks with a British accent. Does he consider himself Ghanian in Africa or British or at heart Sri Lankan?

I think it's a very interesting question. I think people are always looking to find labels to stick on people. I will tell you what I am. I am a man who is very, very comfortable in Britain and I'm a British citizen and I try to play that part as carefully and as diligently as I can. But I bring to Britain more than just that, my citizenship, I bring with me that Asian part of me that shows a deference for elder people, for example, I bring with me that part of me that grew up in Ghana where there was tremendous respect for community and communal gathering and so on. And I think it's wrong for people to try to push immigrants and try to get them to label themselves. It's like Norman Tebbit's old cricket test, you know, he could never understand why it was that Asians in Britain sometimes support an Indian or a Pakistani team. So what? What they were doing was celebrating cricket and in that why I celebrate my citizenship of Britain in lots of different ways.

But George that's a fairly complicated answer to the question. If you meet somebody socially and they say: "So where are you from George?" What's the short answer?

I say I'm British.

An e-mail from India which concerns Archbishop Desmond Tutu's recent criticism of Nelson Mandela's multi-coloured clothes. Will the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission realise the truth, namely that these colourful shirts are a joyous celebration of freedom particularly appropriate for a man who wore drab prison grey stripes for 27 years? George a fashion question for you - do you like his clothes?

I love his clothes and I wish the BBC would allow me to wear some of Nelson Mandela's shirts when I report for them. You know, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu, they're an interesting couple, I mean, they have had some rough words, cross words with each other but equally they're very, very good friends. They grew up in a similar part of Soweto and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, you know, he's got a very impish sense of humour and he never gives up the opportunity to have a go at Nelson Mandela, and I think that's what he was doing when he was talking about the President's shirts.

Do you think though that as well as a fashion statement, those shirts were also a political statement - I mean is the President trying to do something more with those shirts than just say, look I'm comfortable wearing these shirts?

I think he is, you know, I mean partly it's an attempt to Africanise his nation but also, I think, it's also an attempt to show that South Africa can be different, that we don't all have to wear suits and ties to be respected around the world. And he can carry it off. He looks terribly comfortable standing there in his silk shirt, flowing like that in the wind and Bill Clinton, on a warm day, looking very, kind of, stuffy and hot in Ghana in a suit. I think he is making a kind of point. I don't think he's making a terribly serious point but I think it's just lovely to see him like that in that kind of relaxed way.

KURT STOTTMEIER, Cape Cod, USA, I have lived in South Africa and my background is similar to yours, George, actually I'm born in Germany, lived in South Africa and I am now in Cape Cod. I have lived in South Africa, let me be the devil's advocate, will we have a Boer War every hundred years?

I don't think so. After three and half years in South Africa, a period that's coming to an end now, I think the conflicts are much much more complex than that and they will be economic and in a funny sort of way I have seen greater respect, actually, between the Afrikaners and Englishmen, I think, over the last few years than in the period before. I think what Nelson Mandela's Government has done is to open up a space for everybody and I think the competition that there was between Afrikaners and the English speaking population is not the same and it's not even going to be black and white, I think it will be about economics, it'll be about rich and poor.

What happens once Mandela's gone?

The interesting thing about it is, in some sense, is Nelson Mandela has already gone. The man who's been running this country, South Africa, really for about the last 18 months is Thabo Mbeki and I think Nelson Mandela's been very clever the way he's passed on responsibility slowly. And I don't think it'll change. And the truth of the matter is I think without any disrespect to Nelson Mandela, he has done the job that he set out to do, which was to try to reconcile this country with itself. There have been some failures but there's also been some huge successes. But I don't think he is the man to take South Africa into the next battle which is the economic battle, the battle for economic freedom and independence. And I think Thabo Mbeki is going to be better for that. Nelson Mandela, if you like, was the best of the old order, he is what other countries in Africa should have had, he is what Nkruma should have been, he is what Kenneth Kaunda could have been. You know he's shown that you can have, you can mix morality in politics so I think it's time now for someone else.

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