Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - November 7, 2004

IF YOU'RE one of those people who confuses Hollywood make-believe with the real lives of the actors who oil the hype-machine's cogs, then you too would have experienced anxiety at the idea of having to interview Danny Glover at Rosebank's haute hotel, Park Hyatt.

Why?

Here's the low-down: since the mid-1980s - long before Denzil Washington played Malcolm X and Will Smith rapped his way to a role as Mohammed Ali (the prettiest and most politically combative pugilist of all time) - Danny Glover has, through films such as Bopha and the HBO mini-series Mandela, been Hollywood's bona fide radical.

Now, common perception has it that revolutionaries sleep in roach-filled boho-chic lodges, conduct interviews at coffee shops, look terribly unkempt - a terrific fashion statement, I'm told - and, of course, revolutionaries keep a million metres away from marble-gleaming hotels such as the Park Hyatt, the Ritz, the Sheraton ...

But I soon learn there's either something wrong with Glover - or the stereotype of radicals.

Even before I get a chance to check out his struggle cred in person, the six-foot tall Glover radiates me with the kind of energy that says: "What radical chic? Not for sale. Can't fake funk".

The more you talk to him, the more his aura (he calls it "chi"), his passion for life and his humanitarianism gel into one thing: the essence of Danny Glover.

For a start, Glover's acting bona fides cannot be queried.

Time-defying classics such as Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple, have placed him alongside great talents such as Morgan Freeman and Washington.

He is a major force in a school of rare black actors regarded as bankable by major studios, critically acclaimed by the agitative left-leaning black culture critics, as well as adored by millions of ordinary movie goers whose buying-power makes or breaks films and, by extension, stars.

But unlike fellow rabble-rousers Tim Robbins and his squeeze Susan Sarandon, and the veteran Ossie Davies, Glover is either brilliant, foolish or risky enough to successfully project opposing screen personas - especially in an industry notorious for typecasting actors, particularly black actors.

On the one hand you have this truly committed actor steeped in black consciousness, artsy, liberatory stories such as The Color Purple, Beloved and the South African struggle-classic Bopha; and on the other, someone who provides the Hollywood machine with the lubricant it so desperately needs to maintain the box office: cops 'n thugs shoot-'em ups!

To gazillions of his fans, Glover will remain the whimsical Robert Murtaugh - the black fella "buffooning it up", whipping baddies alongside Mel Gibson's Martin Riggs in Hollywood's most successful black and white, cops 'n thugs franchise - the Lethal Weapon series.

Not only did this buddy flick of the century popularise Hollywood's version of Simunye - blurring the racial divide on screen long before Arch Tutu and his SABC congregants patented the local TV version - the film earned Glover the sort of star-gloss that allows him to articulate his left-field beliefs without risking Hollywood's ire.

And boy - I learn soon after meeting him - does he have them!

In my mind, Monday, October 25 at the Park Hyatt was scheduled to be the moment when Hollywood's bling would be tossed out and revolution ushered in.

Tossed? Nah. It turns out to be one of those moments when a seasoned actor and campaigner like Glover uses Hollywood - or the star power that it accords him - to wage his personal revolution.

Also, I learn 'tis quite a demanding revolution, this. And much like George Bush's call, it demands of an interviewer to choose: "Whose side are you on?"

So, where did it begin - I mean the South African leg of his intifada?

Glover is here to open a Noah (Nurturing Orphans of Aids for Humanity) centre in Olievenhoutbosch, north of Jozi.

As a United Nations Ambassador for Human Rights, the veteran actor has decided to throw his heavyweight celebrity status behind "worthy development, liberatory, educational and struggle issues".

And it is to universal human rights - "more specifically African people's pain," he emphasises - that he dedicates his life.

"I mean, uhm, maan, I am the child of the Civil Rights, ba-y-bee. Yeah, y'know how it rolls, maaan. Can't pretend sh*t - I mean mishaps, rape of people's identities, poverty, child and women abuse - ain't 'appenin' in this world.

"The world," he says, ignoring the risk of using a phrase we've all heard a little too often, "is at war".

"Against the children, against African people, brown people, women, all that. What, do they expect me to keep silent, just because I work in Hollywood? Jeee-zus Christ!" he lets rip, the last part of his exasperation sounding like "Jay-sous Cries".

And Christ stays with us a while longer. But not in that "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth," way. Nix! To Glover, Christ "was a true revolutionary".

But the metamorphosis of Glover from internationally known actor, into radical spokesman for the dispossessed is actually no metamorphosis at all. "I've been political all my life. I mean, y'know all blacks are political by fate. That's the deal, maaan. You can't escape it."

Though a committed anti-Aids fighter and activist against pharmaceutical multinationals, Glover's affair with South Africa did not start with the Noah project, his UN human rights ambassadorship nor, contrary to popular belief, with his 1980s introduction to Athol Fugard's work and their subsequent collaboration on the critically acclaimed, Master Harold ... and the Boys.

"Of course Fugard's work left a profound imprint on my mind - how I look at and engage with the world. That's the thing: good theatre should inspire you, great theatre moves you and sublime theatre possesses you, stirs up your spirits, haunts you . . . that's what working with Fugard did for me.

"But me and South Africa?" he cackles again. "I've been one in spirit with this country since the late 1960s, maaan. It all began when I was in college and active in student politics. I remember we used to invite acts such as Hugh Masekela and Letta Mbuli to gig at our campus," he says in his Southern-meets West Coast drawl.

"Back in the late 1960s ... no flower power for us: black power was where it was at.

"As I said, the South African story and the story of African-Americans was always intertwined, maaan - Brotha Malcolm said so and so did Dr King."

Just as I am about to urge him, "ride on brotha, ride on," - in the banshee-shrieking, Afro-gospel way it dawns on me that we might have become mired in the thick lefty fog that hangs between the 1960s and the 1980s.

"'Xcuse me, Mr Glover," I venture, aiming to sell out, "aren't we blacks caught in an age-old-aria of complaining about whitey? Whitey this, whitey that? Is whitey responsible for Africa's wars? Aren't African-Americans supposed to have been long enfranchised, eligible to run for the American presidency?

"Aren't people like P Diddy, Russell Simons, Mary J Blige and Bill Clinton's buddy, Vernon Jordan, as well as black America's (un)holy trinity Cornel West, con reverend Al Sharpton and Spike Lee living it up in the Hamptons... throwing swanky barbecues down at their Martha's Vineyard villas?"

Of course, I can't resist the urge to mau-mau a brother: "And while we are at it, say, Mr Glover, don't you own a 40-acre vineyard in California?

"How does all this black achievement tally with the revolution me and you are about to hatch, Mr G?"

Satisfied with the spot my dagger has found, I sink back into what seems like an acre of couch, smirk firmly in place.

"What? Hoooaaaar," he lets out a huge cackle, "you putting me on or what, man? Tell me you're joking. Sure you know, the picture of rappers dressed in tuxedos declaring America to be the land of dreams is manufactured fizz, innit?"

Of course I know what he's on about - that P Diddy's motivations are political is as likely as a merger between the Herstigte Nasionale Party and Azapo - but there's nothing funnier than seeing a black revolutionary reacting to another black person doing what's known as "Uncle Tomming".

It's an old trick - the black ultra-anything despises an Uncle Tom more than Uncles Bush snr, Verwoerd, PW and Dubya put together. Still, as any stand-up comedian, especially the sublime Chris Rock, will tell you, there's no funnier way to get a black radical worked up than by wearing an Uncle Tom mask.

But the really tricky thing is that Glover is way too witty and way, way too smart to ever be waylaid.

"You know quite well that in the US, 45-million people are without healthcare. There's no way you can cite P Diddy or Sharpton as a sign of true, free America. Just no way, brotha."

There are issues that rile him more than being told to call it a day, pack your bags buddy, da revolution is over. NEVER call him a liberal.

And woe unto you, should you cite the California governorship by Austrian beefcake Arnold Schwarzenegger as proof that the American dream is not a mirage.

"Look maaan," he told The Independent, UK, shortly before his visit to South Africa, "never ever refer to me as a liberal. I am quite progressive. I question war in Iraq, question globalisation. Liberals don't. The world is just sooo fine by them. Call me an obnoxious radical if you will. But never a liberal."

The discussion veers from one revolution to another: human rights and black internationalism to pop revolution (to which, it seems, he is not terribly averse). "Actually," he puts it, "you need to know how to play the game, otherwise the game will play you big time."

For him, playing the game means working with a collective of African artists such as Youssou N'dour, Alpha Blondy and Miriam Makeba, among other pop heavy hitters, to influence the world in a way that none of them would've dreamt possible, were they not superstars.

Is Glover the new Bono?

"I look at it this way," he says, a clear twenty minutes after the scheduled interview time has lapsed, "this is not my fame. It might sound corny, but I stand on the shoulders of spokesmen and women for the race; Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone, ol' man Mandela and Dr Martin Luther King. Folks who offered their lives for me and you."

For a moment I think he is going to name-drop Jesus Christ as one of the fellas "who passed the baton and died for us."

But the maaan is either too smart or too mean to follow the script and drag Jay-sous into it.

For denying me a chuckle and the headline of a lifetime (Brotha Jay-sous, Me and Da Revolution), I will never forgive him.

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