I was determined that my father should not get away with his action and I gradually turned my younger brothers and sisters against him and his second wife.

Lagu was rushed to the local shop where he was provided with a shirt and a pair of shorts, but no shoes, and sent off on the four-day journey towards his first regular education. It was nine months before he came home for the holidays.

Two days after the wedding they sat and looked at each other in an empty room: `Why have we got married? There is nothing to make a life with.'

My wife and I come from a background of privilege and Protestantism - and are grateful for our heritage. But we have to face the fact that many react quite differently to that tradition.

A lively and determined group, born since independence, they presented a quite different picture of Africa to the stereotype of despair often portrayed.

The office is that of a typical academic at a `red brick' university, sparsely furnished, shelves with files and books.

'No one comes here except the army-, it's too dangerous,' the driver told his passenger, a tiny but determined woman agricultural student. The area, in the mountains of Northern Thailand, had been devastated and depopulated by guerrilla warfare.

South Africa is in a state of deep unrest. Recently there has been a hardening polarization of the extremes of both right and left.