strong aftershocks a week after a magnitude seven point five earthquake struck the same area killing at least fifty five people on the mountain the southern highlands of worst affected six hundred kilometers northwest of the capital port moresby one hundred fifty thousand people remain in urgent need of emergency supplies but damaged roads and landslides and making it difficult to get aid delivered south korean envoys have traveled to pyongyang for two days of talks for the first time in over a decade the delegation hopes to discuss denuclearization and arrange for talks between north korea and the united states. the shape of water has won best picture of hollywood's biggest night of the year the academy awards frances mcdormand won best actress for her role in three billboards outside having missouri and gary oldman took best actor for his portrayal of britain's world war two leader winston churchill and darkest hour yet modelled toto also picked up best director for the shape of water incidents of sexual harassment have dominated hollywood over the

past year coming up next it's up front. you stand the differences. and the similarities of cultures across the world. al-jazeera. it's coming up to nearly six months since puerto rico was battered by hurricane maria nearly half a million americans there are still without power and reported suicides have jumped more than fifty percent has president donald trump abandon the island one of his biggest critics mayor of san juan come and cruz also on the show jacob zuma was forced to stand down as president of south africa last month i'll talk to his nemesis the anti corruption czar. about his fall from power and the future of the a.n.c. . common

union crew thanks for joining me on front it's been five months since hurricane maria devastated the u.s. territory of puerto rico where you are the mayor of the capital city san juan right now what in your view is the single biggest challenge for people living on the island how bad is the situation there still. first of all mary thank you very much for the opportunity to continue to other viewers in the united states and around the world right now the aftermath of medea has if that had to summarize it has contributed to our social melt them so aside rates have gone up crime is at the same level that it was before madiao which is was at

a high level still about thirty percent of the population does not have any electricity we have towns in the inner side of the aisle that have no electricity whatsoever and the reconstruction and transformation of puerto rico does not seem to get off the ground we have been granted four point nine billion dollars in a loan by the government of the united states we haven't gotten one single cent of that loan so we are looking at in the next months a deepening of a social crisis that was there before madiao vote but that definitely was a widened and much more aggressive after an idea you said you said at the start thank you for the opportunity to update the world and us view is do you feel in puerto rico that you've been abandoned by the world abandoned by the u.s.

because you're not a u.s. state but you are unincorporated u.s. territory the three point five million people who live there all u.s. citizens do you feel abandoned by the u.s. government how would you judge the current u.s. government response to this social meltdown in puerto rico. of the u.s. government response has been inadequate has been in efficient and has been inappropriate and there has been some people in the trump administration that have been. but i would say honest enough that they have admitted to that but the american people have been very upfront have been very open hearted and the world so you we have to make a very big differentiation it in the trump administration which will now say that they are dumping millions of dollars in puerto rico and what we want to make sure the american people know is that we haven't received that money that transformation has not taken place as u.s.

government agencies and institutions were widely criticized for their handling of puerto rico's crisis a un rights experts even said quote we can't fail to know the dissimilar urgency and priority given to the emergency response in puerto rico compared to the u.s. states affected by hurricanes in recent months do you believe puerto rico was treated differently unfairly and if so why. almost half of the and it's not only my believe but it's a widespread belief of the people of puerto rico i think probably it had to do a lot of it off because of ignorance it was also an issue of putting standard operating procedures into a different circumstance and not being able to and and overcome that that was one thing to when that happened there was a stubborn streak in the trial by ministration lead of by president trump himself that everything was ok this was a good news story and they continued to do everything they could in order to ensure

that this was a good news story there were even some e-mails written by the pentagon stating that we continue to have a lot of difficulty making sure that this story is perceived as a good news story and they even name me as one of the reasons why they weren't able to produce that just sticking with the to relief effort do you think texas louisiana florida got more help from the u.s. government from the federal government more attention. from the u.s. media in the why do u.s. public than the people of puerto rico because puerto ricans a lot in there in the caribbean the residents of a former colony didn't prejudice played a role racism even when we are a colony of the united states when there are all the decisions that are important to you are made by the congress of the united states. i wish i didn't have to say this because it is a very strong one we are a colony of the united states i wonder about motivations are you saying the president trumpet his colleagues look at puerto rico all they look at puerto ricans

as a different type of people to the people who live in florida texas louisiana that's what i'm wondering is your view. most definitely and the botched effort and their continued strategy of saying we're doing a great shock is there look right now. and i'll use the municipality of san juan we use twenty one million dollars of the minutes of san juan in order to ensure that we were prepared for both hurricanes burma and we still have not gotten eleven point two million dollars reimbursement back from philly this is the largest municipality in puerto rico this is repeating itself throughout the entire island nation of puerto rico and what that does is that it hinders the municipality the city's ability to provide essential services like medicine providing medicine

to people just to be clear that and to clarify you're saying that the u.s. government's botched response what you call botched response to hurricane maria in the situation where rico was affected by racism on the part of the trumpet of inspiration towards puerto rico but it could be affected by raising it could be affected by ignorance it could be effective by the inability to adapt the standard operating procedures because there was no sense of urgency and there still seems to be. no sense of urgency if you approve a four point nine billion. loan in november and you still haven't given a one cent for the recovery there's no sense of urgency that after you publicly criticize the u.s. government relief effort president donald trump attacked you on twitter and suggested you were a politically motivated in great with poor leadership you responded by calling him unfit to lead why do you think he came off to you personally or that we surprised to see those tweets now but you know that that's the way the president deals with

people that tell the truth and this is not about mean this is not about the president of the united states we happen to have the cameras in front of us so we had an opportunity and he had an opportunity to leave he had an opportunity to say look we haven't done what is right we haven't done enough but then he decided to grade himself in a given self a ten out of a ten i've said this and i will continue to say it if you are only leader and you grade yourself in a humanitarian crises and you are utterly satisfied while five months into it thirty percent of the puerto rican population still does not have electricity and i mean you need to regrade so clearly president trump has issues with honesty and ego but you produced some pretty inflammatory language in the aftermath of the hurrican you suggested that the federal government's failure to provide food water in the rest could amount to quote genocide looking back now that was an absurd thing to

say was it not and now it was not if your reporter really think that you think the problem is that he was deliberately trying to kill the going to puerto rico and utero. that's what a genocide is the deliberate killing of i think that what they did. believe me i know what a genocide is and to hold myself properly what i said that it would amount to almost something similar to genocide and i would still say that five hundred thousand people have left for the recall thirty percent of our population we don't want electricity to have air conditioning we want elaters city to be able to operate in hospitals without having to use the lights in our cellphones we want to electricity to be able to have our children guns for on a normal day and not on a part time basis as we're doing right that we want our tricity to be able to jumpstart our economy to depend less on what we are given and to do more on to ourselves even before the hurricane hit puerto rico was in the midst of

a major financial crisis the hoff the population lived under the poverty line the unemployment rate tripled out of the u.s. the island was seventy three billion dollars in debt it declared bankruptcy last summer before becoming mayor of san juan yourself served in puerto rico as house of representatives for four years how much responsibility should be ireland's political class yourself included take for the dire economic situation in puerto rico even before the hurricane that we need to own up to our own mistakes and i have said that over an hour that's why i say we need to just use this opportunity to transform the way that we look at things to transform the way that we do things to depend less than what it sent in a matter of help from outside and to do more for onto itself this is why i continue to ask anyone that would listen. we need to be able to build for example solar panels and puerto rico so anyone out there listening come to san juan will make it

worth your while a but we also need to ensure that the monies that are coming are not moneys be used only to hire companies from the u.s. that come to puerto. but to hire local so that the money stays in locally and that we can revamp our economy we need to be able to plug in into the world economy you've been a very outspoken critic of the governor and the puerto rican government's plans to privatized power companies and infrastructure in the wake of the hurrican what's your alternative to privatization overall saying let's not privatized but given the dire economic situation where to revisit what would you be doing instead if you were governor i'm on the governor on the mayor of the city of san juan but you don't have to be the governor to be able to have an opinion right so there's two areas that have to do with electricity generation and the transmission the transmission areas is now being rebuilt completely and it's been updated but it's

been updated to fossil fuel so we need to continue to have very specific targets and goals to transform and generate a lot more of our energy from solar energy from the wind and from the else desalinization plants in order to get our water ok one final question many crews do you have plans to run for pretty rica's governorship yourself in twenty twenty to make some of the stuff they were talking about happen some of your critics say that's why you've been so outspoken in recent months to boost your political profile i have said that this is not the time for political calculations this is a time for his you know really get out which we have a real issue in puerto rico with crime and we have to have some very difficult conversations about the future of the status of puerto rico but about how we transform and how do we make sure that we move forward from this humanitarian and economic crisis come in union cruz thank you very much for joining me on up front.

thank you for the opportunity. despite being illegal across the world what's being called modern slavery is more widespread than ever before but why in this week's reality check up from produce to curate all the investigates disturbing reports out of libya in two thousand and seventeen exposed horrible images of a modern day slave trade with captured migrants and refugees being auctioned off for labor people around the world were stunned but the reality is this exists beyond libya from the u.k. in the gulf countries to india and china today there are actually over forty million modern day slaves victims of forced labor human trafficking and debt bondage and we're more complicit than the might be across italian farmlands where sun kissed tomatoes are harvested each season thousands of migrant farm workers from across europe africa and as far away as india are working in conditions of absolute exploitation with wages withheld and workers' documents confiscated to

keep them from fleeing migrants are often forced to work twelve hours a day seven days a week without breaks and even subject to repeated rape and sexual assault these conditions help italy remain one of the world's largest tomato producers in brazil slave labor is rampant in cattle farms with a grand chance of working under the threat of being killed wages are regularly withheld as debts to the employer sometimes for years and workers are often forbid him from leaving the ranches where they're treated like animals even sometimes sleeping in the same corral as the cattle for many a slavery has become the grim trademark of brazilian beef which includes china and the e.u. as clients and its multibillion dollar export industry and take thailand the world's third largest seafood exporter is also one of the world's most notoriously dangerous work environments reports have found men and women from cambodia and myanmar being tricked kidnapped or sold into fishing. operations enduring for

starvation sleep deprivation and even change a behavior that we're going overboard for making mistakes we're talking about the seven billion dollar global export industry over two hundred million of which is just for pet food in the u.s. yes market slavery should stunned the world but it needs to go beyond that if we as consumers and companies don't pay attention to supply chains behind the things we buy the world's most vulnerable will continue to be exploited for cheaper goods because to many it's not personal it's just business. after facing countless corruption scandals and surviving eight attempts to unseat him south africa's controversial president jacob zuma resigned from office last month his deputy cyril rama posed since taking over the presidency on an interim basis and pledged to clean up south african politics so zoomers departure really marked the start of a new political era for the country or is corruption too entrenched in the ruling

african national congress party joining me to discuss this is to be madam seller south africa's so-called corruptions are who is the country's public protector for seven years and is also a former member of the a n c she's been credited with exposing zoomers abuse of public funds and she joins me now from cape town. thanks for joining me up front given you investigated former president jacob zuma when you were public protector of south africa up until twenty sixteen and given you wrote to incriminating reports about him how much credit should south africans give to you for hastening his departure from office last month well i think if. i don't expect any credit because i was paid to do my and i did the best we could and i was working with a team every member of the team should get some of the credit south africans to so it gets the credit because if it wasn't for the. people enforcing some of the

decisions i made those decisions would not have been made and they traditionally in the media also played their roles in making sure that the truth came out south africa's national prosecuting authority has plans to announce in the coming weeks whether they're going to pursue the eighteen charges for over seven hundred counts of corruption money laundering fraud and racketeering against zuma that date back to an illicit arms deal from over a decade ago it's a case that's been dismissed and reinstated in the court in the past do you think those charges against him still need to be pursued now he's out of office well he has charges have to because you would with a person is out of his you must recall that those charges that nothing to do with president zuma being in of his they relate to the still period but having seen it i think the most important issues that the president would have to answer to would be

the issues relating to state care in what is seen is. of surrendering his power to one member of his family in the cooper family to run the offices of this government it's in the interest of the nation that he is unsellable for any wrongdoing he is alleged to have committed in the thin d.d.e. he is guilty of that wrongdoing he should face the same consequences as other people how is it of such a dark cloud of controversy spawning over a decade never prevented zuma from advancing to the highest office in the land to lead the party of nelson mandela with considerable support for you. yes it does say that the ain see all the african national congress which is the governing party in south africa needs to look back and say what is that but allowed president to rise to the presidency given the fact that he had no commitment to the. and that

also applies to the current members of the highest decision making body is of the in seeing the in see has to ask should these people end up becoming president do they have the right values which is the highest level of professional ethics is required by six and ninety five of our constitution but didn't mandela himself nelson mandela who you were understandably a great admirer of many of those were did he lay the groundwork in a way for all of the political dysfunction and corruption that we're seeing in fact africa today he laid the groundwork for president for controversial successes like tarboro mbeki and jacob zuma is it time to maybe also reassess the mandela political legacy in south africa. well you could but i wouldn't really necessarily say it's mandela's fault he himself said that even the most been overland of governments have within them persons with propensities for human failings nobody

could have foreseen what happened but you're right that there has to be some introspection and looking at what is it within the governing party and within our own ethical framework that allowed what happened to happen but mandela did praise zoomers leadership just over a decade ago when some of these allegations already being made against him he called him inclusive he called him a unifier he urged the a.n.c. to rally behind him when i first missed met president he was inclusive he was a unifying and of course you take people at face value nobody prepared south africa for the vice of presidency of president zuma in the use of. racial divide the use of social injustice is that in to

him. yes occasions on corruption i don't think president could have predicted ok i certainly didn't predict it well let's look at some of your predictions or recent statements cyril rama pose as zoomers former deputy president who is now the interim president of south africa until elections are held next year you expressed support for him online last month thanking him for putting your quote beautiful country on the pedestal of hope again but he's already facing a harsh criticism for appointing a lot of scandal ridden controversial and c figures to keep positions for example david the scandal ridden deputy head of the a.n.c. is now his deputy president he reappoint to the minister of home affairs he was found to have lied under oath so are you giving rahm a poser a pass given he doesn't seem to be as worried about appointing officials who are accused of wrongdoing and corruption as maybe he should be. i have given him a pass and i still give him a pass he says in the has placed us on the. but i have been speaking about this for

a month now and even in my column on this it's a president report indicated that he's not a saint and that where they he gravitates to the dark side or to the light side will depend on whether or not people stand up if the people do not behave in such a way that the governing party if it is them then you will find that president puts a fee is the dark side of the in c. and then he gets thrown to that corner too early you were part of the team led by nelson mandela the draft of the final post apartheid constitution of south africa ninety ninety six how worried are you that the a n c's recent time in office plagued with corruption scandals cronyism mishandling of crises will end up tainting the legacy of not just the a.n.c. and the way in which you created this new stage but the memory of the party's entire apartheid struggle. i am concerned about in c. losing its direction and until

a few days. there was an indication that it had lost its direction and there was the possibility that it would lose its direction together with the country but i'm very hopeful right now that under armor points there we do have a balance of forces within the governing party and we have those who would like to continue covering for the plundering and looting of state resources in those who really wanted this country to be covered with integrity with in iowa to social justice so that it what doesn't only leave to its potential but it also reclaim its position is a model of democracy in the world what about the argument it is time another party governed south africa or the a.n.c. has been in power too long it keeps winning elections since ninety ninety four since apartheid ended it's the only party that governs our love and maybe that's part of the problem. well if there was another party to govern maybe it would be the what people are right is that more noble or whether it's in business or

politics perpetuates corruption if you don't feel losing power then you have no reason to do your best and that's what was happening eventually but by the last year the a.n.c. is the governing party realize that it could not just. continue to allow lapses in terms of ethics and and depending of corruption one final question you've been encouraged to run for office in the past yourself have no political ambitions at all you're not tempted to run for office yourself to try and fix clean up south african politics from the inside certainly i don't have any political ambitions but i do have a patience to clean up the system that's why i've gone back to civil society is the chill social justice. stellenbosch university to make sure that we deal with laws and policies around social justice i've also been part of starting

a foundation which is called the toobin foundation the foundation is seeking to boat democracy literacy within civil society and to activate civil society to be the only parade. thanks for joining me on up front it's been a pleasure in the privilege thank you but our show up front will be back next week . march on al-jazeera. with all potential challengers out of the way egypt's president abdel fattah el-sisi is poised for a second term in power. a series of short personal stories that highlight the human triumph against the odds as president putin dominates the russian political scene his real action becomes more apparent we'll see what direction russia might take.

with media trends constantly changing listening post analyzes how the news is being covered. and as more people around the world struggle to find clean drinking water leaders and researchers gather in brazil to address a critical issue in march on al-jazeera. a survivor of the genocide there are people who beg me to kill them when they're suffering but i didn't have the heart to has dedicated his life to searching the woods for bones of the victims of the srebrenica massacre. in the curious to draw. you know hope of finally laying the past to rest and giving peace to the victims' families because you need to if i could just find a think about i could bury him bone hunter at this time on al-jazeera. the scene for us where there online what is american sign in yemen that peace is always possible but it never happens not because the situation is complicated but

because no one cares or if you join us on sat there people that there are choosing between buying medication and eating this is a dialogue i want to get in one more comment because this is someone who's an activist just posted a story join the global conversation at this time on al-jazeera. it really is populist and rightwing passes celebrate our president it electoral success but now the country faces political gridlock.