CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA: In many ways my own life seems to be recycling; it is deja vu — all over again. Thirty-seven years after my first visit to South Africa as a college kid — and there were many subsequently — I am back in Cape Town, the mother city of the “beloved country,” a city whose history mirrors New York’s as a showcase of “discovery” by Dutchmen.

Both of our countries experienced colonization, the massacre of native peoples, indentured servitude and forms of slavery. Both have known waves of immigration, intermarriage, and resistance to colonial rule. apartheid itself was modeled on US Indian reservations. We are linked by elements of a common heritage and history.

THE AGE OF AIDS

I was here in the dark days of Apartheid, and later in the first heady light of freedom, and now again, in a time in which the plague of AIDS is compared to the black plague. The super-articulate and talented singer Annie Lennox showed me a T-shirt she designed that says 17 MILLION DEAD.

That is a number that is hard to wrap your head around because it is a death toll bigger than the toll of all our recent wars. She actually UNDERSTATES THE PROBLEM. According to an AIDS Barometer published in the Mail&Guardian, HIV infections claimed 54,816,417 victims as of 12:30 PM on Thursday November 27, the day we Americans celebrated Thanksgiving.

WHAT IS IN A NUMBER?

I have not returned to catalogue the numbers because their very size is so intimidating and so distancing. I have come instead in service to one number that hopes to spark a new campaign to do something about the others. That number is 46664, the designation that prison authorities gave to Nelson Mandela when he was incarcerated for life for his resistance to apartheid. Now that number has become the rallying cry for the next stage in the war on HIV-AIDS. It is also the telephone number that people in 17 countries can call to become active. Dave Stewart, Bono and Paul McCartney have also turned it into a song you can hear when you make that call.

ROCK AND ROLL IS HERE TO SAY

I have come to do a documentary on a major rock show. It’s a response to Mandela’s call for help in sounding the alarm. I was invited down by South Africa’s leading film producer Anant Singh and the Mandela Foundation. I feel privileged to be in such heady company and have been thrilled to interview the artists and document one of the most electric events since Live Aid and the Mandela concerts in London.

A traveling tribe of musical nomads armed with guitars, distinctive sounds and soulful messages descended with planeloads of gear Fedexed in for free to pull off a major show that has been twice organized, twice canceled and twice rescheduled.

Now the show is on again, kicking off this year’s World AIDS Day and signaling a new phase in the fight against the pandemic. Some of those responding are well-known, cause-promoting artists who have spent their lives fusing art and conscience. Others are newbies, no less concerned. They have come from across the globe and represent many genres of music and cultural sensibility. South African stars have been invited to join their higher profile international counterparts.

COMMITMENT NOT CHARITY

This is not about charity but commitment. It is not a concert but a campaign launch to force the nations of the world to declare a global state of emergency in the war on AIDS. It seeks to get the issue reframed as a human rights issue, not a medical problem. This is the next stage in the fight against HIV-AIDS.

Naturally, most of the media have focused on the stars but not on the strategy they have embraced. There were pictures galore but little analysis of the reason they came. It is as if we are told to enjoy what comes out of their mouths, not what’s in their heads. This is so predictable.

Mandela also is embraced as an icon and role model of forgiveness, charm and grace. He is a poster boy — no insult intended — for reconciliation and charge. He is always portrayed as the exceptional individual. His principles, commitment to struggle, belief in collective leadership and strong organization are always downplayed. Sadly, his personality trumps his politics in the same way that Martin Luther King is now mostly remembered for saying “I have a dream,” not for his larger vision.

Today the corporations that fueled apartheid embrace him. The new Sheraton hotel in Cape Town has plastered its walls with his sayings. He is in danger of being considered more a commodity than a fighter for transformation and justice.

A MEDIA EVENT TO SEDUCE THE MEDIA

46664 is one big media event. It is as if those in the know decided that our degraded news media are not up to the task of sounding the alarm in this holocaust. AIDS coverage is episodic, surfacing around World AIDS Day, then buried on the back pages — just as thousands are buried in anonymity and stigma.

In our entertainment-über-alles culture, musicians with charisma and visibility are often the ones to get media attention. It has been said that culture leads politics, and that is the hope of Mandela and the movement he is now launching. He is probably the only world leader with the integrity and respect to make an event like this happen on such a big scale.

The 46664 number is being invoked in the name of the millions of AIDS sufferers who also are only a number in hospitals, clinics, and health stations across Africa and other parts of the world. They are the lucky ones.

HOW GRIM IT IS

Visit an AIDS clinic in an impoverished township as I did and you will see the pain and suffering. You cannot mistake that AIDS is a disease of poverty. I was so impressed with the doctors, AIDS counselors and especially the patients brave enough to acknowledge their status.

I met one woman who was pleased to show me the medication that has improved her health and added years to her life. She told me that when she learned she was HIV positive, she was ready to end her life. Her family rejected her. Her immune system began to go. Only her children and her determination saved her. Happily the drug has lowered her viral load.

There are unknown thousands undiagnosed and untreated in country after country. Many die of the diseases of poverty. Their lives are cut short by immune systems weakened by hunger, TB, malaria and HIV long before their bodies erupt with full-blown AIDS.

And that’s only the beginning. UNICEF reported that we may soon see tens of millions of AIDS orphans cast off as their parents die. Some have been infected, but so many more are affected. They too go uncounted and all too often unhelped. Some have been treated like lepers in traditional societies — victims of stigma and denial.

“Who will feed them? Who will raise them.” These have long been the concerns of Albina du Boisrouvray, the French countess and crusader for AIDS orphans. She and her FXB Association and Foundation (FXB.org) have been rousing the conscience of the AIDS world and the world at large on this issue for years.

REMEMBERING NKOSI

It was with Albina that I made an earlier film on AIDS orphan Nkosi Johnson, whom I befriended and still miss. I was happy to see that Nkosi’s memory is being invoked by heath departments, gospel choirs and by a song at the concert. I also heard that Nkosi’s Haven, the AIDS orphans center he helped create with his stepmom Gail Johnson, is struggling to survive at the very time it should be well funded and expanding.

It was Albina, unacknowledged at this event, who lobbied Mandela and so many other world leaders on the orphans issue and on the imperative of treating AIDS as a human rights issue. This goes back to the work of the late Dr. Jonathan Mann, who led the Health and Human Rights Institute at Harvard with Albina’s patronage. People such as Mann and Albina and many of the front-line warriors against AIDS should have been given more prominence at the concert.

At least one AIDS activist, Zackie Achmad, who runs the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa, was recognized at a Thanksgiving dinner held by Mandela to salute the artists. Achmad has run a militant but nonviolent fight against the pricing policies of the drug companies, which have placed the anti-retroviral drugs out of reach for most of South Africa’s people. When that fight was won, he turned his troops against his own government’s confusing stand on AIDS. (His troops include many people like “Mike,” who wears an “HIV POSITIVE” T-shirt. I met him the other day in a township. “I was a playboy,” he told me.)

YEBO THABO?

Two weeks ago, President Thabo Mbeki’s South African government surrendered to pressures from the TAC and others and agreed that every South African who needs the pricey drugs will get them by 2005. This is a major change of policy and is a pioneering practice. Some ANC insiders believe that Mbeki could have lost re-election this spring if he had not reversed himself on the issue.

Please note that this change of policy has yet to be fully funded. Also, AIDS patients are reportedly being tossed out of hospitals. Michael McCarthy writes to the Sunday Times (November 30) that the government has not fully abandoned its “denialist stand.” He condemns “the current policy of discharging AIDS patients from hospitals before they die to save on paperwork, mortuary space and medications.” As if to make his point, another letter is from AIDS-denier David Rasnick, a member of Mbeki’s advisory group that questions the number of people who really need drugs and insists that the AIDS threat is overblown.

MANDELA v MBEKI?

Mandela has been pressing his successor and his successor’s administration. It has been reported that these two long-time ANC stalwarts are not even talking anymore — perhaps because Mandela’s stand has won global approval while Mbeki, who is doing many good things for South Africa, has been widely denounced. He and members of his government snubbed the show. Their absence was widely noted.Bizarre!

None of these political intrigues are visible on the stage at the Greenpont Stadium where the concert was staged. This event was put together by unlikely bands of brothers. There’s QUEEN and their organization. When I was helping musician Little Steven organize the Sun City project against apartheid in l985, we were furious that QUEEN had played in South Africa in violation of the UN’s cultural boycott. But now in this land of peace and reconciliation, all is forgiven. When they lost lead singer Freddy Mercury to AIDS, they turned around. Band members Brian May and Roger Taylor are playing a key role in the event. They told me they regret having played back then but thought at the time they were doing the right thing. I believe them.

Also here are Sun City alumni like Bono, Peter Gabriel and Bob Geldof, who of course is better known as the sparkplug of LIVE AID that put Ethiopia’s famine on the map of world attention back in the l980’s.

VIVA DAVE STEWART

If one person was the driver of this event it is Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame, an amazing artist who produced the song and got most of the artists to come. I was very impressed with his dedication and soft-spoken humility.

And ditto for his partner Annie Lennox. She told a local newspaper, “We were against apartheid then and we still are.” Still are? Think about that insight in a world where the gap between haves and have-nots has become a chasm reported only episodically. South Africa was once considered the land of apartheid. Now it is clear that apartheid is a global phenomenon.

THE BEAUTIFUL BYONCE

Beyoncé Knowles, at age 22 was new to all this. She practically broke into tears when she shared her reactions to visiting an AIDS clinic in a nearby township. She has pledged to bring the message home to her fans and was awed to be in the presence Mandela, a bigger superstar than herself. I was amused by her entourage, which included a giant bodyguard, AKA Big Daddy, and separate aides for hair and make-up. Yes, she is gorgeous, garrulous and gets it. She started the show with an explosion of singing and hyperactive dancing by a supercharged squadron of pelvic thrusting byonce-ettes, I was not sure that such blatant sexuality was the right message for an AIDS show, but what I do I know? Her fans were ecstatic.

So were U2 acolytes in the presence of Bono and the Edge. Bono connected some dots in his interview with me, noting the connection between the African debt that he has been crusading against and AIDS. “These people are in a new prison,” he told me, “a prison of poverty. Can they really afford to fight AIDS?” After the two met Archbishop Tutu some years ago, his staffers joked about the EDGE and the ARCH. South Africans have a great sense of humor and irony.

WOZA AFRIKA

If the big rockers got most of the media attention, the African stars were catalytic and effervescent. Angelique Kidjo from Benin, Senegal’s Yossou N’Dour and Mali’s Baaba Maal joined South Africa’s Lady Smith Black Mbazo, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Soweto’s new gospel choir and Johnny Clegg whose command of the Zulu language and deep insights into the culture of his country have won him the respect of all racial groups.

At the last minute I urged the addition of Mzwakhe Mbuli, the people’s poet just released from prison for a crime he swears he did not commit, but the Foundation couldn’t find him.

If you don’t know these artists, make sure to discover them. Radio shows like Afropop can help. See the 46664.com website for a list of everyone on the bill, a bill that was mixed musically, racially and culturally. There was rock and reggae, pop gospel and rap, and Italy’s Zucchero singing the blues.

Gabriel belted out his great anti-apartheid anthem “Biko” for the first time in the land of that liberation leader’s birth and untimely death. The song paints the picture beginning “September ‘77, Port Elizabeth, weather fine.. ” Biko’s face, long banned in South Africa, was projected onto the screen as those that knew the long banned song lifted their fists. Gabriel was visibly moved as were some prominent South Africans, who commented to me about it later. Peter is not an emotional man but this was an emotional moment.

“Biko, oh Biko. The man is dead. The man is dead. …I only dream in red.” Wow.

A TV EVENT

The show was carried by South African Broadcasting and MTV and shown in 150 countries, with a possible audience of two billion. Apparently it was not considered commercially viable, so it was given free to any broadcasters who would run it. Major ISPs were webcasting thanks to Italy’s Tiscali, and hundreds of radio stations carried it too.

Not all media were here. ITN News in London told a friend of mine who wanted to cover it that they were not interested because it is not news! Huh? The excuse was that England had a 20% spike in AIDS cases and so that were focusing there. But that may be an exception. Celebrities rate media attention. You know it’s a big deal when a media royal such as Oprah turns up. But events can be both exciting and forgettable. Just a moment in time.

ITS POLITICS, SAYS BOB

Bob Geldof told me that concerts like this won’t do much about AIDS. “It’s politics, politics, politics,” he said, blasting the West’s indifference towards Africa and the world’s poor. He also condemned the South African government. Mandela spoke later with an eloquence that had music fans shouting “Nelson, Nelson, Nelson…”

Activist Achmed agrees that the AIDS fight has to get political. When I spoke to him, he lit into President Bush for not funding his own AIDS commitments. This political aspect was downplayed at the concert, which had many corporate sponsors and a do-good mission, but the political subtext was evident to all who looked for it.

Obviously politics is part of the solution and so is money and medicines and social policies. But consciousness is part of it. MTV released a study showing that even as awareness of AIDS has risen, condom use has not — at least not enough. In many countries, the infection rate has not come down. Politicians cannot reach young people and others most at risk. The challenge is deeper.

Nelson Mandela understands that. He is the consummate politician, and so much more than that. He stood in the sunshine of the prison yard at Robben Island the other day, in front of cell #5 that housed him for 18 years. He spoke to the press and to the artists about applying the South African model of struggle to the AIDS battle. “Amandla Ngwethu” (”Power to the People”), he proclaimed. The people, he argued, must be united and mobilized to defeat AIDS the way apartheid was defeated. That may be a harder battle

MORPHING STRUGGLES

And so one struggle morphs into another. They have built a Robben Island museum since I was here. It’s not on the island but on the revamped waterfront. Tickets are sold to tourists who flock to see one of the most infamous prisons in the world, now a world heritage site. When I was last here, the prison was still in business. Now it is a business.

We have to learn from that struggle against apartheid. AIDS is an enemy, but its causes are deeper than they first appear. Let us not forget AIDS sufferers. Let us not forget. Forgetting the past and perhaps our own place on this earth, as fellow specks in a sea of humanity that deserves our compassion, is also an offense against morality.

“Give One Minute for Aids” demands the 46664 campaign. Is that too much to ask — or too little? Surely, many of us can do so much more.

And in so doing, we mustn’t forget the long walk for freedom that Mandela took. He can barely walk any more, but we can. At the Robben Island curio shop, amidst the Mandela memorabilia that include my film PRISONERS OF HOPE which shows a reunion of ex-prisoners there in l995, I picked up a small book of poems by a Communist activist and writer named Jeremy Cronin.

There is what he calls a “jeremiad” in it, a stunning denunciation of amnesia:
“CNN is globalized amnesia.
The Gulf War — lobotomized amnesia.
Amnesia embraces the global reality of 23 million per annum dead of hunger and hunger related diseases.
That’s a daily equivalent in fatalities of one Hiroshima
buried each day
under the cloud of amnesia.”

IN CLOSING . . .

It is World AIDS Day. I am in Berlin, not far from the old Checkpoint Charlie. (Note: Change happens.) I am here to speak to a conference as the Dissector’s world tour tours on.

I was working too hard last week to track all my email, but I will try to catch up. You can write to me at dissector@MediaChannel.org.