Even those African women living in France who want to see the back of polygamy think that the government is going about it in an unacceptably ham-fisted way.Gundu Sagouna was one of the first to voluntarily obey the law. She wanted to keep her work permit, so she moved herself and her eight children out of the family home into temporary accommodation. Six months later she is still there, squatting in a now abandoned building. She has been turned back from dozens of better apartments because the residents just do not want her to live there.Not surprisingly, Mrs Sagouna feels bitter about the way she has been treated. “We accept the French for how they are,” she says, “and I would like them to accept the way we live. It wouldn’t be any skin off their necks if they did.”After two years of shuttling backwards and forwards to the Pr?cture with a growing mountain of paperwork, Toumani Diarra has finally had his residency papers replaced with a three-month temporary permit.

Forced to obey the law and split up his family, he has stretched his budget and the housing authorities have found him another flat. The weekly groceries are scrupulously divided between the two households. So are the wives and 11 children.The problem is that the two flats are next to each other on the same floor. So despite the evidence of two rent bills, the government feels he has cheated by having his two wives so close together. The pr?cture tells him that the only option now is to divorce.It is a demand that Mr Diarra rejects defiantly. “I will never divorce,” he says, “even if they had a knife and cut off my head. Never.”* Adrian Pennink is producer of tonight’s edition of ‘Correspondent’, ‘Europe ­ Family Affairs’ (7.20pm, BBC2)..

The Swiss army may have been used to sell penknives and macho watches, but nobody would ever ask it to endorse a bicycle. The Swiss army may have been used to sell penknives and macho watches, but nobody would ever ask it to endorse a bicycle.
On a typical Sunday, 19-year-old Matthias Weiss enjoys whizzing through the Swiss Alps on his own hi-tech bike. Today, though, he is puffing up a small incline on an outmoded seven-gear model in military camouflage uniform and heavy boots, carrying a machine gun, a bazooka and other tools of war. He is one of the proud few: the Swiss bicycle corps.The equipment is pretty outdated ­ until 1995 the unit’s bikes had no gears or headlight ­ but in Switzerland, where all able-bodied males must do military service, competition to get in is strong Of the 1,000 who apply each year, only 200 are accepted. Some of the nation’s top athletes do their service in the bicycle troops, where among other tests recruits must be show that they are able to run two miles in 12 minutes.”You can say you are one of the bikers, and people are impressed. It is something special,” said Christian Sailer, 20, who plans to start university when he completes his military service.

Nor do they see anything amusing about the idea of cycling into battle “We are proud to be in the bicycle troops. We can be the first to arrive on the field, we can go anywhere and we’re quiet,” said Julien Voeffray, another 20-year-old.The Swiss army began using cyclists in 1891 to deliver messages in the field. They have developed into a fit, ?te fighting unit with bazookas, mortars, mines and grenades. Their role in a conflict is to fortify a flank, hold a position or watch over strategic posts.

The only unusual feature is how they get to the front line.The 15 weeks of basic training begin slowly, with recruits riding less than 20 miles a day with only a few items of equipment. Each day a few more items and a few more miles are added, until the men are capable of riding 125 miles with full gear weighing just over 50lbs. The bike itself weighs another 50lbs, about three times heavier than the typical race machines Matthias Weiss and his friends ride as civilians, but as he wiped the sweat from his brow he claimed: “We are never tired.”A fully equipped man can fly down the mountainside at speeds up to 50mph, and up to a distance of about 30 miles the entire troop can reach a potential battle zone faster than mechanised troops. “We can go through the woods, we can take short-cuts,” said Jean-Pierre Leuenberger, commander of the training school near Romont. But the important point, he added, was the his men were able to fight when they got there.The bicycle corps is the only one in the world fully integrated into the military order of battle, but not for much longer. As part of plans to modernise the Swiss army and cut down the length of military service, the two-wheeled soldiers will be phased out by 2003.Commander Leuenberger, one of Switzerland’s few career soldiers, has spent 18 years in the bicycle unit.