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  An Interview with Henning Mankell: "Western Apathy Towards Africa Keeps Me Awake at Night"

An Interview with Henning Mankell "Western Apathy Towards Africa Keeps Me Awake at Night"

Part 2: Part Two: In the West, people lead fairly normal lives with HIV, but in Africa they just die. I can't imagine a more cynical injustice.

SPIEGEL: AIDS is the biggest plague of our time. 40 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, and 25 million live in Africa. Have leading politicians, even Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela, failed to recognize or even played down the problem for too long?

Mankell: Yes. When Mandela was president of South Africa, it wasn't an issue he talked about very often. But I don't blame Mandela. He had a tough job on his hands and other problems to worry about. Besides, much of that has changed since he left office.

SPIEGEL: Well, the name is really just symbolic. African leaders are notorious for their lack of concern and ignorance when it comes to AIDS, for their preposterous claims that it's little more than an infectious cold that can be cured with obscure tribal medicines. Is Africa unwilling to face the truth?

Mankell: It certainly has a lot to do with African traditions, with Africans' reluctance to speak publicly about sexual habits and practices. But that way of thinking is beginning to change, even though this comes about ten or fifteen years too late. Uganda is a good example. Everyone, from simple peasants all the way up to the president, has begun to realize that the problem must be faced head on, that people have to change their habits and that funding needs to be devoted to prevention programs. This change in direction has already saved lives.

SPIEGEL: The situation is similar in Botswana, where people infected with HIV are given free drugs. But Botswana, with its diamonds, is a relatively affluent country. Elsewhere on the continent, influential Africans such as Wangari Maathai, the winner of this year's Noble Peace Prize, are spreading the erroneous notion that AIDS was imported by the west to wipe out Africa's poor.

Mankell: It's sad and terrible, and if she were to walk through that door, I would tell her how wrong she is. But it also shows how closely intertwined AIDS and poverty are. How can you expect to educate an illiterate young person about HIV and prevention, a person who has no money, lives in a slum, and lacks even the most elementary tools to educate himself? That's why the most important weapon in the fight against AIDS, in Mozambique and elsewhere in Africa, is still the most rudimentary. Knowledge and education, access to information, and communication are the most important elements of prevention. But poor countries need money to fund education and prevention programs.

SPIEGEL: But you have also emphatically supported the notion that the West, especially Europe, has lost interest in AIDS and in the fate of Africa.

Mankell: Just thinking about the extent of the West's apathy often keeps me up half the night. In our wealthy European enclaves, new drugs have almost turned AIDS into a chronic disease. Nowadays, an HIV-positive European can expect to live a relatively normal life. In Africa, people just die. I can't imagine a more cynical image of injustice, and it's one that our society controls. We just stubbornly refuse to admit it.

SPIEGEL: But hasn't the international community, partly with UN backing, been paying more attention to assistance programs, educational campaigns, medical care and research?

Mankell: We have the economic and logistical means to do a lot more. Just recently, we immunized 80 million children against polio within a few days. This shows that everything is possible. And no one, especially not the Europeans, should be wrapping themselves in their security blankets and perpetuating notions of "us" and "them." AIDS is a time bomb, and it's been ticking in Germany's backyard for years. Take the former Warsaw Pact countries, for example. Eastern Europe currently has the world's highest rate of new HIV infections, even higher than in Africa.

SPIEGEL: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has complained that while the global community has plenty of money to spend fighting terrorism, it spends almost nothing to combat a tiny virus ...

Mankell: ... that doesn't even have its own religious or political agenda. That was the best thing Annan has said in a long time. The time of excuses and apologies for this untenable situation is over. Our world today, in the year 2004, should be ashamed of the current situation in the fight against AIDS.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Mankell, thank you for this conversation.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan