The.Economist.2007-02-10 (966424), страница 48

Просмтор этого файла доступен только зарегистрированным пользователям. Но у нас супер быстрая регистрация: достаточно только электронной почты!

Текст из файла (страница 48)

But he knew them all. He had lived withthem, read their journals, and had come to see the Anglo-Zulu war through their individual eyes andvoices. In 1989, after managing a game park for some years, he built a house at Fugitives' Drift thatoverlooked the river and the battlefield, and made the war his life.In the combatants' footsteps he would tramp across the rocky thorn-veld of KwaZulu-Natal, taking withhim a contingent of overweight tourists mopping their brows and collapsing on camping chairs.

To themhe would point out the white stone cairns where men had fallen, the caves where others had hidden, orthe lines at Rorke's Drift where the British, in an extraordinary stand the day after Isandlwana, haddefended themselves in a field hospital behind walls of mealie bags and biscuit tins. He would talk forhours in his soft, fast, urgent voice, waving his stick over the shimmering battlefield. He could imitate theorders barked to a Victorian rocket detachment (“Point the rocket at the advancing savages.

Aim theapparatus. Pull the string and stand back!”) and the rushing, hooting “Usuthu! Usuthu!” of 20,000warriors attacking. As his stories unfolded, battle-hardened generals would find themselves in tears.The day of the dead moonThe Zulu war ended, merely six months after it began, with the complete surrender of the Zulus andtheir forced incorporation into a federal South Africa. But Mr Rattray was no white triumphalist.

He caredequally, and knew as much, about the Zulu side. He would remind his listeners that January 22nd 1879was the “day of the dead moon”, an eclipse of the sun, on which Zulus were not meant to fight; that waswhy they had crouched in the ravine and waited. And when the young warriors disembowelled everyBritish body, this was not gratuitous mutilation: they were helping the spirit to escape.Brought up in segregated suburbs and schools, it was some years before he got to know Zulus. But hisfamily bought land around the battlefield, and as a student he began to wander there with a Zulu friend,talking to farmers about their ancestral memories of the war and picking up expertly their musical,clicking language. When he settled there, local people in KwaZulu-Natal called him a “white Zulu”: theirfriend, and the best exponent living of the native tradition of telling stories.

Although he invoked one ofthe bloodiest clashes between black and white, he did it with such sympathy that he became a symbol ofreconciliation in South Africa.All the more awful, then, that he was killed by Zulus. The details emerged in court from 23-year-oldFethe Nkwanyana, unmoving and unblinking before the cameras. Somebody had told him that Mr Rattrayhad money. He had therefore gone with five others to Fugitives' Drift on the evening of January 26th torob him. They were all armed with guns; he himself had a Norinco pistol. But it was Banozi Ndlovu whoshot Mr Rattray as he challenged them. They all ran away empty-handed.Mr Rattray had spent his life recovering the unheard voices of South Africa's past.

This one, a voice heardtoo often in modern South Africa, he did not live to hear.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipOverviewFeb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionOil prices rose in response to colder weather in America. The benchmark price for a barrel of WestTexas Intermediate climbed above $59 on February 7th.American companies, excluding farms, added 111,000 workers to their payrolls in January.

The figuresfor November and December were revised up by 81,000 in total. The unemployment rate edged up to4.6% in January.Labour productivity in America's non-farm businesses rose at an annual rate of 3.0% in the fourthquarter, according to preliminary estimates. In 2006 as a whole, the increase in output per hour was just2.1%, the weakest since 1997.In the euro area the volume of retail trade rose by 0.3% in December, a 2.1% increase on a yearearlier.

German industrial output fell by 0.5% in December, following a 2.0% rise in November.In Britain industrial production dropped by 0.1% in December, leaving it only 0.5% higher than a yearearlier.Indonesia's central bank cut its key interest rate to 9.25%, its eighth cut in as many months. Inflationwas 6.3% in the year to January, down from 17% a year earlier.The New York Stock Exchange set a record on February 7th, when the Dow Jones Industrial averagebriefly rose above 12,700 during trading. In London the FTSE 100 index reached its highest level for sixyears.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group.

All rights reserved.About sponsorshipOutput, prices and jobsFeb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionCopyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipThe Economist commodity-price indexFeb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionCopyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipThe Economist poll of forecastersFeb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionCopyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipTrade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest ratesFeb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionCopyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipMarketsFeb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionCopyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group.

All rights reserved.About sponsorshipTrade and outputFeb 8th 2007From The Economist print editionIndia's tariffs remain much higher than America's. The average duty it imposed on other members of theWorld Trade Organisation was over 18% in 2005, compared with the American average of less than 4%.But by another measure of global integration, India's economy is more open than America's. Its exportsand imports amounted to almost 50% of GDP in 2006, according to estimates by the EconomistIntelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist. America's were only 28%.

In stark contrast tothese continental giants, Singapore and Hong Kong, two entrepôt economies, exist for trade. Theirexports and imports amounted to over 400% of the size of their economies last year.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved..

Характеристики

Список файлов учебной работы