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[From the July, 2004, issue of Dazed & Confused -- a special edition about African issues.]

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.



© Dazed & Confused, 2004.

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