BOB GELDOF INTERVIEW - Wednesday 5th April, 2006
GEORGE NEGUS: Bob, it's good to see you again. What do we call
you
these days, 'Sir Bob' or 'Bob'? Are you the knight that you have when
you're not really having a knight.
SIR BOB GELDOF: Supreme lord of the known universe and
anything beyond
is normally what I expect, George, but good to see you again, but for
the purposes of this evening, plain old, down-home 'Bob' will do.
GEORGE NEGUS: That's great. It was some sort of reverse Irish
joke that
the British gave you a knighthood that you couldn't use
SIR BOB GELDOF: Well, I expect you to, of course, as a
colonial, you
know.
GEORGE NEGUS:Yes, sir, indeed. Could we put what you've been
doing for
the last 20 years of your life in some sort of perspective because
you've been running around the world, holding concerts, raising money,
going to Africa non-stop, haranguing politicians and world leaders of
every colour and variety, but the latest UN Development
Report still says that half the world lives on less than $2 a day and
half of that half on less than $1 a day. Are we trying to push a
gigantic rock uphill here? Are we getting anywhere in our attempts, and
your attempts in particular, to make poverty history?
SIR BOB GELDOF: Well, empirically we're getting somewhere
where, as
opposed to 20 years ago when I first met you, just at the Band Aid
time, we couldn't do anything other than help the symptoms. We couldn't
do, really, anything much else, except put our hand in our pocket and
try and immediately... ..try and keep alive those who were dying
unnecessarily, because the world was locked into a, sort of, political
stasis - the deadlock of the Cold War. Nobody expected that to end and
when it did almost overnight a new political flux came into the world,
a new fluidity, and we could begin to deal with the structures of
poverty.
Poverty is political, it's a function of the economy, and politics is
only the economy articulated, so that's why in, I think, 2003 I asked
Blair to put together the Commission for Africa, which was
representatives of the G8 and Africa to try and look at those
structures.
You can empirically deal with the problem of poverty. You'll never
eliminate inequalities of income but you can deal with the problem of
poverty.
GEORGE NEGUS: You say we can't deal with inequality of income
but when
we live in a world, as we do, where, as I understand it, the world's
richest 500 individuals have a combined income greater than the poorest
416 million people. That's, again, according to the UN.
Now, how do you break that cycle of, it seems to be, perpetual
inequality? I mean, what is it in the human mentality that thinks
that's OK?
SIR BOB GELDOF: That is the big one, I mean, that is a
brilliant
question. I'm not flattering you, it's never been put to me quite as
simply but it's exactly what everybody thinks and it's more or less
what I think. There's the human aspect, which you and I and everyone
watching this bothers about when they see this on the news - they feel
sickened and they want to do something - and that impulse we call
charity. It's a very devalued word now but it's absolutely critical
that one human being reaches out over the impotent roar of political
discourse to get to human beings on the other side. That is
really...not only is it absolutely vital to... ..or else our spirits
curdle, but it's also a political gesture that they require change.
The business we're engaged in is trying to get that political change
because if we do not, George, then you see what happens in your neck of
the wood in Asia, you see rampant fundamentalism.
Now, if you offer no hope to 450 million children under 16, if they
have no future, literally, because they're all gonna die by the time
they're 24, 25, what is left for those people to do? Africa is eight
miles from Europe. They're going to come to us, that's what happens.
I'm an immigrant - I went to Britain to get a better life. I got it,
I'm not going back.
They're coming to us. It is in our vital national interests, our
self-interests, that we try and deal with this, so politically there is
a lot at stake here, so never mind the moral injustice of 400 or 500
individuals having more than the poorest millions - it's an absurdity
and it's probably a function of the way we run our economies but the
political consequences of us all not dealing with this are properly
profound.
GEORGE NEGUS: What about, I mean - you've got your critics and
the
sceptics, of course, who would say that over the years that you've been
trying to raise awareness about the need to eradicate the worst of
poverty in the world, that it is symptomatic. You're not looking at the
cause, or you don't seem to have had any effect upon the causes of
poverty, that all the, sort of, celebrity rabblerousing that's gone on,
as admirable as it might be, right, is just that. That the causes of
poverty are still there.
SIR BOB GELDOF: They are still there but it's not because a
couple of
people with guitars have done concerts. Let me turn off my phone,
George. That would be helpful.
GEORGE NEGUS: It might be a million or two, Bob, you never
know.
SIR BOB GELDOF: It actually was my accountant! Things are bad,
George!
GEORGE NEGUS: You owe him a million or two!
SIR BOB GELDOF: Do I get paid? Do I get paid for talking to
him? No?
OK.
GEORGE NEGUS: Where were we?
SIR BOB GELDOF: In the 20 years all we could deal with at that
time was
the grotesque famine in Africa - 30 million people dying of want.
GEORGE NEGUS: So you do think that you're getting somewhere,
so far as
the causes are concerned?
SIR BOB GELDOF: I do but it's got to come from our end and
it's got to
come from their end or else it won't work at all, so what Live Aid was
about was driving through the Commission for Africa and its radical
recommendations through the G8, so kind of had these politics workers -
you come up with the proposal and the philosophy and people sign off on
it, then you have to drive it through the political process and get a
commitment.
Now, they were not committing themselves, the world's richest
countries, so it required this coalition of people, the Make Poverty
History coalition, which was very effective in Australia, amongst
others, and Live 8 coalesced that coalition to a fine political point
to get whatever it was - X billion people - in a massive lobby to drive
this through the G8. Now, they did commit to the debt and aid package.
GEORGE NEGUS: Bob, if I could interrupt you there. Still, a
lot of
those countries that you said should have their debt wiped away,
haven't had their debt wiped away and there are still Africans dying on
a daily basis as a result of that.
SIR BOB GELDOF: Yeah, but, I mean, it's not a year yet but
we've had 19
countries have their debt completely cancelled. That's 290 million
people, George, who, a year-and-a-half ago, were still paying debt and
they would have been paying debt for five generations, so since Live 8,
290 million people are free of debt forever. That's the first point,
and the others will come on stream within the next year-and-a-half and
two years.
It's pathetic that it requires these people, maybe, with pianos and
guitars and the masses of people - they're just the Pied Piper. It's
not significant that Bono or I do this - that's not significant - or
that, you know, Elton or Mick or Coldplay or whoever the hell it is
gets up - that's not significant. They're simply Pied Pipers around the
electronic hearth of the television.
But, unfortunately, with the ubiquitous media, for which you are partly
responsible, the way to address people is through the medium they're
used to and so you have someone talking about something politicians
will not talk about so when your news media shows you someone dying of
starvation, the natural reaction is to help and the second thing is,
"Why is that happening?" Well, the news media, by its own agenda, moves
onto the next story, and people are left feeling impotent, so you get
some Herbert with a guitar coming along and saying, "I'd like to change
it." By definition of - unfortunate - this world of celebrity, they are
able to gather people around an issue that otherwise would be laid
aside and can move the international political agenda and that's what's
tragic and pathetic.
We've now, today, because of Live Aid and the Make Poverty History
campaigns, by 2010 we'll have doubled aid to Africa. Let me put that in
human terms. 5 million people alive by 2010, every year, who would
otherwise be dead. 21 million children in school. 5 million orphans in
care who otherwise would be abandoned. 290 million people today out of
debt slavery. The universal treatment of AIDS throughout the continent
of Africa. The eradication of polio and a 50% reduction in malaria
mortality. Not bad for playing a guitar, George.
GEORGE NEGUS: No, not bad at all. But Jeffrey Sacks, who
advised you
and Bono, had this to say - I'd just like to get your reaction to it -
that ‘the world summit and the feast of concerts, television
shows, books and articles around the world that raised public awareness
and interest, but these words have yet to make a discernible difference
for the hungry, destitute and dying in Africa or anywhere
else.’ I mean, Sacks was your advisor, he's upset. Gordon
Brown's upset that there's been, if you like, a fairly lethargic
response since all that went on last year.
SIR BOB GELDOF: Jeffrey, obviously, is, you know, our fellow
traveller,
if you like, and we share exactly that dismay. The point about it is
you write the policy, you get the commitment then you have to get the
implementation. What we're all engaged, now, is in pushing the
implementation, so the final part of the initial debt piece was
completed last week.
In the spring meetings, the IMF passed the first part of the debt piece
and then the World Bank passed it last week, so now we've got the
global paymasters paying off on the US$50 billion debt piece - that's
done. So Jeff is right with regard to the aid piece.
GEORGE NEGUS: Bob, you mentioned 2010 - I wonder if you have a
message
for John Howard, seeing you're more or less on your way here, because
most Western countries have committed to 0.7% of their GDP by 2015. At
the moment we're about 0.28%, 0.29% and we've only committed, by 2010,
to 0.36%. What does that say about us?
SIR BOB GELDOF: It's great that the Prime Minister did that,
that he
committed to doubling the aid. The point is that I don't see how
Australia can go from 0.36% to its international commitment of 0.7% -
that's doubling by 2015. 0.7% needs to be there because you've signed
up to the Millennium DevelopSir Bob Geldof started out as as Irish
rock'n'roller who hated Mondays but these days he's a global figure - a
so-called celebrity activist - who's convinced he can make world
poverty history. Next week he's on his way here with his guitar and his
band, to perform. But if he bumps into John Howard, you can be
guaranteed the Australian PM will get an earful about our substandard
commitment on aid to the world's 3 billion dirt poor. ment Goals at the
UN and everyone is really pushing hard to get there.
Let me just lobby you on one thing - the global fund for AIDS, TB and
malaria, which is really the only game in town, fighting this awful
thing, Holland is about the same size of economy as Australia and they
give four times as much to the global fund as you guys so your fair
share would be about $46.5 million OZ dollars this year. Right now
you're giving $15 million and that's sort of indicative of where
there's a lag between the rhetoric and the reality and that needs to be
bolstered.
GEORGE NEGUS: Bob, we're almost out of time but I've got to
ask you -
you're coming here to perform. How important is music to you these days
as almost monomaniacal as you've become about African poverty? I mean,
is music, for you these days, R&R, or rock'n'roll fantasy? What
is it?
SIR BOB GELDOF: The reality is I'm monomaniacal about music
but
nobody's bloody interested, George, that's the problem.
GEORGE NEGUS: But you do have a real job these days.
SIR BOB GELDOF: It works like this. Yeah, I do the politics
for my
head, I do business for my pocket, I do music for my soul and I do my
family for my heart. That's the way it works, it's all about peace, but
when I get out on stage it's such a catharsis I go back to that which
is absolutely instinctive and natural to me and at the end of night I'm
physically liberated but exhausted and I sleep the sleep of the just,
which I don't normally do, so I'm desperate to get out and play again -
it'll be fun.
GEORGE NEGUS: Bob, it's great to talk to you and we'll try to
get
together when you're in Australia.
SIR BOB GELDOF: OK. See you at Byron Bay. See you, George.