West 'dehumanising' Africans
2006-05-19 14:10
Nyamata - Irish rock star and activist Bono on Thursday decried western portrayals of Africans as "dehumanising" and urged greater efforts to battle poverty and disease on the continent.
On his first visit to genocide-scarred Rwanda, the U2 front-man was visibly disturbed after visiting a memorial to the 800 000 victims of the 1994 mass killings.
The mega-celebrity had launched a global campaign to boost world awareness of the dire poverty and sickness that ravaged the African continent.
Church-turned-genocide memorial
Bono listened somberly, head bowed, as Eugenia Nyirakiruzamye, a 42-year-old survivor of the slaughters with deep scars on her face and neck, recounted her ordeal in almost unbearable detail at a church-turned-genocide memorial.
He later silently laid an arrangement of white lilies on a vault, housed the remains of mainly minority Tutsis, who were killed while seeking shelter in the church as Hutu extremists rampaged through the country.
However, Bono's spirits brightened a short time later after he visited a nearby village targeted for UN development aid. Students from a local school greeted him with singing, drumming and dancing.
Bono to visit Tanzania, Nigeria
He said: "The thing I'm learning is breaking with cliches. We see this pattern of Africans displayed as supplicants. We need to start portraying Africans as noble, entrepreneurial, very handsome, beautiful, smart.
"Break the cliches. As people dehumanise African people it's very easy to turn away from them."
His comments came on the second leg of a six-nation tour of Africa that had already taken him to Lesotho, and would see him visit Tanzania, Nigeria, Mali and Ghana in the next eight days.
On his arrival in Kigali from Maseru, Bono visited a hospital, where he was shocked to see patients sharing beds and decrepit facilities.
He said struggling health care workers, and not celebrities, were the world's real heroes.
He said: "I come from a culture, where people think that pop stars and rock stars are heroes, which is preposterous. The hospital workers here should be the heroes."