|
Bono has a huge international reach, and unlike many of today's
superstars, he doesn't take the enormous social
responsibility that
comes with it lightly. Along with the rest of U2, Bono has a long
history of campaigning for human
rights and in the battle against
global poverty and suffering. From the rallying cry of "Sunday Bloody
Sunday" to
the moment he phoned Bill Clinton live on stage as images of
a besieged Sarajevo flashed across giant screens - politics
and
rock 'n' roll have rarely been fused so effectively. It's a policy he
took one step further with the Jubilee 2000
Drop the Debt campaign,
lobbying G8 leaders to reduce and ultimately cancel the crippling debt
repayments that burden
third world countries. Famous for having his
sunglasses snatched by the Pope, Bono is rarely side-tracked from being
a
rock solid fighter for Africa's escape from poverty.
Dazed & Confused: You have been to South Africa on several
occasions
and witnessed how AIDS affects people's lives, which African stories
have left the biggest impression on
you...
Bono: Two of the most inspiring stories of the last 50 years to have
come out of South Africa, one has been
well recorded, that's Nelson
Mandela. But the second story is the Truth and Reconciliation campaign.
Archbishop Tutu
has created a model that you could apply to the Middle
East, to Northern Island, to Bosnia. It's the most extraordinary
thing
to see relatives of murdered protestors standing in front of the people
who shot their wife and ask them questions
like: "Do you remember a
woman wearing a green dress, she was waving at the time when you shot
her." And then with
tears rolling down their face, both of them often,
the victims and the perpetrators, and talking. Just to get to the
truth,
not to get to a result that puts people behind bars. I think
that it is the most extraordinary jump in human consciousness
that I've
heard about in a very long time. We visited the headquarters of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
and we met with Desmond Tutu. So we
all walked into the room, just completely honoured to meet him. We were
exchanging
pleasantries and then he just turned around and said, "Can
we bow our heads now please?" We all had to bow our heads and
he made
this prayer, which just changed the molecular structure of the room and
everyone in it, and suddenly we weren't
tourists any more; suddenly he
was reminding us of what was really going on here. I asked him a rather
stupid question
afterwards. I said, "Do you get time with all this work
for prayer and meditation yourself?" And he just looked at me,
threw a
scowl at me, a real rebuke. He just stopped in his tracks and said,
"How do you think we would do this if
we didn't take time out for
prayer?" I was scolded by the great man! And of course he's all laughs
normally. Then
afterwards he brought us upstairs and said, "Look, I have a few people who would like to meet the band," and we said okay,
great. So we went upstairs. There were six hundred people sitting
there. He brought us out and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have for
you, to sing a song, U2!" and we had no instruments, nothing! We just
looked at each other, just like rabbits
in the headlights. The only
thing I could think of singing was "Amazing Grace," which turns out was
appropriate; it
is a story of grace interrupting karma. If Nelson
Mandela's story is the most inspirational for their liberty, this is
for our liberty.
D&C: People have to put the issues from the past behind them, but the
issues from the
past have to be dealt with...
B: This is probably the best compromise I can imagine. I don't know I'd
have the
grace to accept it myself if I had suffered such mistreatment.
But when it happens it's remarkable.
D&C: One
of the things Desmond Tutu says is that humanity is capable of
great harm and great destruction, but that humanity's also
capable of
doing great things. We focus on the bad news to the extent that good
news, the "ordinary great news" is
often overlooked.
B: I am seeing this in South Africa, as I have all over Africa, the
nurses and carers and AIDS
activists. It's amazing what they do. People
like Zackie Achmat from TAC.
D&C: Tell me about when you met him.
B:
He's the third inspiring story. He went on drug strike and refused
to take ARVs whilst his fellow AIDS activists were
not getting them.
They took the South African government to court and won on the issue of
generics. But he put his
life on the line. That's the extraordinary
thing, to be sitting, as I have, and hearing committees of activists,
the
heroes sitting around in their canteens discussing who is going to
go on the drug treatment and who isn't. There's this
woman, Prudence,
who works for TAC telling me that she had just lost her sister to AIDS,
just yesterday. And I was
saying, "What are you doing here with me?
Shouldn't you be with your family at this time?" She said, "No, no,
this
is the more important work, I've got to do this work" and I said,
"Is it heartbreaking for you to lose your sister, to
HIV/AIDS, when the
drugs are available, to have kept her alive?" "No," she said, "If I'd
had the drugs to give to
my sister, I wouldn't have given them to her."
And I was stopped in my tracks. I said, "If you had the drugs surely
you
would give them to your sister?" But she said, "I loved my sister
more than life, but we have to give the drugs to the
people who are
keeping our effort going here. And there are people in the organisation
who are more effective at going
out into the field than my sister was,
so they would have to get the drugs."
D&C: That's incredible.
B:
I felt like I had gone into the Mad Hatters tea party. I felt like
somebody had dropped acid into my tea and I had woken
up into this
horrible nightmare that was the everyday life of these people, making
choices, that no human being should
have to make. To me this is like
some Kafka novel where you can't actually believe what is happening.
These drugs
cost fucking nothing to make after research. At a time when
people do not think that we are such a benign force in the
world, we
are letting people die for the stupidest of reasons. Money. It is so
fucked up! And this girl, Prudence,
her story is repeated everywhere.
D&C: Do you think governments who take us to war really care about
increasing
aid and getting pharmaceutical companies to give drugs to
countries like South Africa?
B: That's what's happening
now, everyday we are lobbying them to create
a power shift. They are just rolling over the pharmaceutical industry
and
intellectual copyright laws and putting out these cheap generic
drugs. The pharmaceutical industry needs to get faster
at dealing with
this emergency. I don't think we should expect the pharmaceutical
industry to behave like a charity.
That's not what they are in. We
shouldn't be shocked when commerce refuses to offer philanthropy. I
think it's up
to the governments to put pressure on companies.
D&C: Can governments be trusted to keep up the pressure?
B:
They haven't been acting fast enough. In the United States this
intellectual copyright was such a deal. When we were bringing
this up
they said, "You know we can't change this for anything. Once you do,
the flood gates will be opened and intellectual
copyright, including
your music, pal, will be over," and then something happened. There was
an Anthrax scare and suddenly
in Congress they passed a bill saying no
intellectual copyright on the treatment for diseases.
D&C: We are
supporting a campaign for an international AIDS/HIV vaccine
initiative. The amount money the put into Anthrax vaccine
research
compared to AIDS/HIV vaccine research is absolutely disproportionate.
B: The AIDS emergency is such a
serious thing to grapple with. We need
the pharmaceutical industry for its research and development, and we
need their
scientists. They have some of the best and the brightest.
Rock stars and student activists are reaching out to the most
extraordinary people. Like churches, and corporations and the
pharmaceutical companies. We need everybody involved.
D&C:
There are a lot of rich people in South Africa, there are a lot of
rich people in India and in China. Isn't there enough
money
domestically to tackle AIDS?
B: Well, the truth of it is, yes, there is a lot of money in South
Africa,
it's an important economy, but I'm not sure the scale of this
problem has sunk in. The amounts required to seriously tackle
the
problem are very large. Bill Gates is doing incredible things on
immunisation and TB related illness, but even
his pockets are not deep
enough to get to grips with this. It takes governments and it takes
multilateral initiatives.
D&C:
Isn't it also about unity, not just money, but an international
understanding that we just can't allow these things to
exist in our
world?
B: Yes. And this is the inspiring bit for me; there is a chance for us
in the west, or
the north, as they would see it in South Africa, to
redescribe ourselves, to rebrand ourselves over this emergency. We
can
actually change the world for a lot of people. For millions and
millions and millions of people. That is a privilege
and an honour and
this generation, and your magazine and your mindset and our band and
the various people who are
responding to this issue. I know this
congressman called Tom Lantos, who I've got to know him on my trips to
D.C.,
who was in Auschwitz. He told me an extraordinary story. The thing
that haunted him was not the memories of Auschwitz,
but being put on
the trains. The blank stares in the crowd as they were being put on the
train. And no one asking,
"Where are these people going?" because
everybody knew the answer. Well with this virus and with this everyday
holocaust
that is happening in Africa, we know where these people are
going. I knew that this was hard to ask an older Jewish gentleman,
"Can
I make an analogy with something so cataclysmic in your life as that?"
And he wrote me a letter and he said,
"You ought to make this an
analogy." I said to him, we see the kids, mothers, fathers being put on
this train now,
and what I am trying to do is to lie across the tracks.
I can't think of anything more inspiring than being part of the
generation that says, "no, fuck off!" and what that's going to do for
us, for our own spiritual well-being.
D&C:
Is there anything else you wanted to say?
B: I think the people of South Africa are incredible and I think their
country
is Eden, we need to do the right thing.
|
