The Compass

Andrew Harding travels to Angola, and the site of Africa’s largest battlefield in the Cold War. When Portugal relinquished its colonies in 1975, it looked as though a Communist-backed government would take over in Angola. Instead, there followed nearly 30 years of fighting: American and South African-backed rebels on one side, Cuban and Soviet-backed forces on the other. Nearly half a million Cubans – soldiers, doctors, teachers and technicians – made the six thousand mile journey to play their part in Angola’s long and bloody civil war.

The Cold War ended thirty years ago, but its proxy in Angola rumbled on for another decade, fuelled as much by the rich resources of oil and minerals as by political ideology. Today, a peaceful Angola is one of the wealthiest countries on the African continent. Yet vast tracts of land are still contaminated by the hidden terror of landmines, and dotted with the rusting hulks of abandoned tanks. What will it take for Angola to be truly free of the legacy of Africa’s Cold War?

Presenter: Andrew Harding

Picture Credit: BBC

Oslo is now the fastest-growing major city in all of Europe. Its growth is attributed to high birth rates and migration. Oslo is keenly aware that as the city expands, it is important to do so in a sustainable way. As a result, they have made a commitment to reducing carbon use and emissions while they grow, which some would say is an impossible challenge. Can Oslo’s plans work? And can it avoid urban pitfalls that may lead to segregation and inequality?

Can Oslo join the list of cities who can prove to be a real example to others around the world?

(Photo: Sculptures by Gustav Vigeland displayed in The Vigeland Park in Oslo. Credit: Rune Hellestad/Corbis/Getty Images)

Divya Arya looks at what happened in India at the height of the Cold War, and afterwards as the Berlin Wall came down, 30 years ago. She explores the rich politics of a country which chose not to pick a side during the Cold War. Where realpolitik and clever diplomacy have been key components for Indian leaders on the world stage from Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1940s to Narendra Modi today.

As two superpowers fought for power and influence during the Cold War, India played a game of diplomacy, moving between the USA and Soviet Union, whilst trying to prioritise its’ own interests. The Non Aligned Movement was founded in a newly independent India, by the country’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. It is the position that India took when it formed a coalition of countries which refused to pick a side, instead remaining friendly with both. Nehru believed that in an atomic age, peace was the only guarantee of survival. This stance was tested during the 1950s and 1960s; India signed a quasi-military agreement with the Soviet Union but trade liberalisation has brought India closer to the USA more recently. How is India navigating international relations today? Does it bend to the will of the USA or can it continue to choose its own path as it did during the Cold War?

Presenter: Divya Arya

(Photo: Maharaja Krishna Rasgotra (M K Rasgotra) is an Indian diplomat and former Indian Foreign Secretary under Indira Gandhi)

In 1965, in a little known chapter of the Cold War, at least half a million people died in organised military-led killings of suspected communist sympathisers in Indonesia, with the blessing of the United States. For almost 50 years speaking about that time has been taboo, and school history books gloss over the killings. Attempts by the current government to start a process of truth-telling and reconciliation are reopening old wounds and have met fierce resistance from the military and old guard. Communism remains banned in Indonesia and students have been detained for reading Marxist books. But the silence is being broken.

Rebecca Henschke travels across Java to meet some of the killers, those still seeking justice and brave members of the young generation who are seeking out the truth and trying to come to terms with what happened in one of the darkest periods of Indonesia’s history.

(Photo: Pipet’s daughter holding a photo of Pipet’s mum Ani, with others at the detention camp where they were held in the 1960s and 70s) Photo credit: Anindita Pradana – BBC Indonesia

Brazil’s controversial new President, Jair Bolsonaro, has praised the country’s military dictatorship, which took power in 1964 and ruled for 21 years. In an echo of the language used by the generals back then, President Bolsonaro claims he is saving his country from Communism and he has vowed to wipe the reds off the map. His critics say he is a threat to democracy.

In this sharply divided country, some say Brazil is reliving the Cold War. Through history, culture and the classroom, the BBC’s South America correspondent Katy Watson explores Brazil’s Cold War legacy.

Presenter: Katy Watson

(Photo: Brazilian army tanks arrive at Guanabara Palace, on 01 April 1964 in Rio de Janeiro during the military putsch. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

Thirty years ago, communism suddenly collapsed across central and eastern Europe. Soviet rule, that had seemed ruthless and permanent, was ended by people power. And nowhere did change seem more miraculous than in Czechoslovakia. A ‘velvet revolution’ replaced a stony faced politbureau with a beaming playwright, President Vaclav Havel. There was much talk of democracy, prosperity, and a full embrace of Western values.

Three decades on, Chris Bowlby, who knew Czechoslovakia before and after its revolution and split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, returns to see how that change looks now. How far have the hopes of the 1989 revolutionaries been fulfilled? What role has nationalism – which split Czechoslovakia in two – come to play? What do new generations of Czechs, now on the streets fighting their own political battles, feel about the future as well as the communist past? And as Russian and Chinese influence grows – while the West’s commitment seems more uncertain – how do places like this now fit into a world few could have imagined as the Cold War ended?

(Photo: Members of Diky, ze muzem (Thanks That We Can), celebrating 30 years since the fall of communism in Narodni Street, Prague, scene of pro-democracy protests in 1989. Credit: Lukáš Bíba /Reportér magazín)

Amidst birds passing over or nesting by the Solway Firth in southern Scotland, writer Kayo Chingonyi explores the role of poetry in bringing humans and non-human animals closer. He asks why we turn to poetry to fill the space between human and animal life and discovers ways in which poetry is a powerful human form for entering into the unstructured, more instinctive world of non –human animals. He walks through the wetlands with poet Isabel Galleymore and poetry scholar Sam Solnick. He also talks to newly appointed professor of poetry at Oxford University, Alice Oswald, along with Joshua Bennett and Onno Oerlemans.

The programme features full readings or extracts from the following poems:

Producer: Kate Bland

(Photo: Kayo Chingonyi with Isabel Galleymore, Sam Solnick and Brian Morrell at Caeverlokc Wetlands Centre. Credit: Kate Bland)

Environmental journalist Gayathri Vaidyanathan considers the impact of Philosophy and Religion on animals as food. In and around Chennai in India, she reveals how India is managing a terrible dilemma in the massive rise of buffalo meat production next to the catastrophe of animal welfare and environmental pollution. She talks to Jains, Hindus and Buddhists and visits fast food restaurants where young people associate eating burgers with independence and modernity. She also spends time at a pioneering dairy along with one of the many animal sanctuaries in the city.

Producer: Rose de Larrabeiti and Kate Bland

(Photo: Buffalo market in Chennai)

Zimbabwean author and essayist Panashe Chigumadzi asks what part Language plays in our regard for other animals. In wild animal reserves in the south of the country, she talks to ethologists to understand lions, rhinos and vultures. She asks if our greatest problem in entering the mind of another animal has been its inability to communicate as we do? She looks to her ancestral culture of animal totems and praise poems, and the relatively recent explosion of scientific interest in the animal’s point of view

Contributors include animal behaviourists Frans de Waal, Peter Mundy, Noxolo Mguni, Beks Ndlovo, Francoise Wemelsfelder, Ian Harmer and Anele Matshisela.

Producer: Kate Bland

(Photo: Panashe Chigumadzi and rhinos in Matopos Park, Zimbabwe)

Science writer Heidi Ledford travels to the Hague, centre of political power in the Netherlands and home to the Party for the Animals. She’s shown around the House of Representatives by Marianne Thieme, leader of the party, who describes the resistance to her work, and the terrible impact of factory farming on climate change. She is passionate to represent the voiceless in society: “Once you have them covered, everyone is protected.”

Along with exploring ways in which laws protect animals collectively, Heidi turns to the work of animal rights lawyers who are seeking ways for animals to be considered persons, at which point they stop being ‘things’. She considers Happy, the 48-year-old Asian elephant who lives alone in the Bronx Zoo, who is at the centre of an important case of legal personhood. The hard work has been in the hands of Steven Wise, a non-human animal rights lawyer, who has been working for the recognition of animals as persons for 30 years. Wise draws attention to the fact that many animals meet the criteria of personhood, and must be awarded certain rights and protections or the rest of law becomes a nonsense.

Producer: Kate Bland and Victoria Shepherd

Image: A baby Asian elephant walking with its herd at the Minneriya National Park in north central Sri Lanka (Credit: Alex Ogle/AFP/Getty Images)