Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-07-26 - 12:13 a.m.

Here's another extract from Michael Parkinson's South African diary. This is in fact his first day looking at the situation.

"Monday: guns and gangs - an initiation into youth culture

The approach to Cape Town takes in both the beauty of Table Mountain and the unending miles of tin shack townships. It is an ideal introduction to the extremes of South Africa. The Bay Hotel is on the Atlantic seaboard, overlooking a tempting beach.

Soon, we are in another land of tin lean-tos and shebeens where children play on the earth floors and their elders stand outside, smoking a mixture of marijuana and mandrax - a sedative. It is their escape from reality. Then, it becomes reality.

We have been brought here by two 15 year olds to see the kind of environment that is creating South Africa's appalling crime problem. There are 55 murders every day in the country and a rape every 30 seconds; in the Cape Flats, where we are filming, 30,000 young men are involved in crime. Without the prospect of work, and often missing a male role model in their lives, the gangs are their families. Prison is their school, ideal preparation for a future career.

Initiation ceremonies involve murder and rape. The gang members we talked to though nothing of describing how they shot someone, yet they are uneasy when I mentioned rape. I pointed out that, in the argot of gangster culture, women are referred to as "bitches and whores" and asked if that is what they thought of their mothers and sisters. The seemed shocked at the thought.

To film in one block of flats we needed permission from the local gangster chief. He was a tense 28 year old who had spent 14 years in jail. He showed us his gun wrapped in a duster. He had a crown tattooed on his forehead between his eyes and four of his front teeth were missing. I was told he had had them pulled to be replaced with gold teeth. We were informed on the quiet that the real reason was it made him a better kisser.

He was beyond saving, but the boys who took us to him are not. They are part of what is known as a "diversion" programme, using mentors - often former gangsters - lessons in survival skills, a period spent in the wilderness, avigorous schedule of sport and six months community service to demonstrate that there is another way. Any young person seeing the programme through has his criminal record wiped clean.

I asked on of the boys, who had completed the course, what his ambitions were. "To marry, have children and mow the lawn" he said. A mundane ambition until you realise this was someone who, only a year or so before, had taken an axe to school to settle an argument."

There's a point about enlightened self interest here which the Comic Relief producer made well in his film for BBC. If AIDS in South Africa generates a rapid increase in orphans and if these children grow up in severely deprived circumstances then there is an anarchic culture already there to welcome. In these circumstances the current "flurry" in the UK about recruiting nurses from Africa who are HIV positive might be as nothing to the impact on us.Think of the way that the organised crime syndicates that emerged from the end of Communism spread from Russia to the UK in a few years. Its possibilities like this, I expect, which make the UN say that the global impact of the epidemic will take years to work its way through.

I woke up this morning with a Paul Wheeler song on my mind - Shine On - off the first "Rain Over the Island" CD - all about seeing the positive in a apparently negative circumstances.

The traffic returns on www.kwase-kwaza.org continue to show how powerful the Nick Drake files are in bringing in traffic - the number of referrals from this site are double that of the next strongest site. Yesterday was the highest volume ever of data transmitted by the site. About 60% of that is audio - musicians and CDs are the most visited pages after the initial page. This is a decent platform to work from. The idea of "Music for the Highveld" is that people get involved with the serious issue via their interest in the music. The paths forward are continuing to boost awareness of the site, maybe focusing a bit more on the musical side but then thinking about how the interest in the whole offering can be deepened.

Meanwhile in the History Department we have been lookibg at Harry Shapiro's Mighty Shadow. Here's a quote of a quote:

Don Rendell says in the Jazz Monthly for 1961 "Graham's free spirit was good for me, he had this kick - he had this lick... he's one of the most positive player's I've ever met and there are times he scares me stiff.....I have this theory that most of the really great American players have this individuality in advance of instrumental mastert. Nowadays Coltrane can play absolutely anything he likes, technically, but at the outset he had the ideas if not the means to put the over. But he never allowed his lack of technique to stifle his ideas. Graham (Bond) is the same.

Alun Morgan of Jazz News wrote " I would rate him as one of the most exciting soloists in the country."

This is Graham Bond playing alto - he went on to extract Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce from the Alexis Korner band and to give John Maclaughlin his first serious R&B (as opposed to jazz) gig. By this time he had switched from alto to Hammond - the first person in the UK to use one for blues in April 1963 and also the first person to perform with a Mellotron in the UK0 .

Supper with Paul Bell - great fun - so many things to discuss - must do this more often.

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