Madonna and child

Meredith Vieira • Profile

NEW YORK CITY - She may only need to go by one name, but Madonna is a woman who comes with superlatives attached: “superstar,” “icon,” “the most successful female recording artist of all time.”

She’s a provocateur who’s held our attention over the course of three different decades.

But perhaps for the first time in a career of courting controversy, she appears to have been taken off guard by one she didn’t orchestrate and just didn’t see coming.

Meredith Vieira, NBC News: Could you have anticipated what would happen when you decided you were gonna adopt a child?

Madonna: Absolutely not. I mean I expected people to be cynical and say, “Oh she’s doing this to show attention. People accused me, when I had my daughter, that I did it as a publicity stunt. You know, so I expected that. But I didn’t expect to be accused of kidnapping, of doing something illegal But I didn’t expect to be demonized.”

She’s talking of course about the adoption heard round the world.

The pop icon’s attempts to bring back a baby boy named David from Malawi brought Madonna-bashing to a whole new level.

Vieira: You have been vilified.

Madonna: Uh-huh (affirms).

Vieira: Why do you think?

Madonna: Well, I have my theories.  And I’m sure you have them too.

Vieira: I honestly don’t know.

Madonna: With all the chaos, pain and suffering in the world, the fact that my adoption of a child from who was living in an orphanage, you know, was the number one story for a week in the world.  To me, that says more about our inability to focus on the real problems.

She means problems like poverty, hunger and the AIDS epidemic in Africa, which is what brought the 48-year-old to Malawi in the first place.

At the beginning of this year, she founded “Raising Malawi,” an orphan care initiative to help the African nation’s estimated one million orphans.

Madonna:  When I went to Africa, I was reduced to floods of tears every day.

Vieira: Did you even imagine what you would see?

Madonna: I knew about the horror.  The, you know, what was going on there. But you don’t know until you get there.  You don’t really know until you see, you know, a child laying listlessly on the pavement, you know, in a pool of urine with flies buzzing around their head.

Or children wandering around like in a comatose state with like really distended bellies.  And you know, women sitting on the fronts of porches of their little huts, you know, with Kaposi’s lesions all over their bodies.

Madonna’s interest in Africa would come at the same time that she was thinking about giving back to a child on a more personal level through adoption.  

Vieira: When did you and your husband, Guy, decide that you wanted to adopt a baby?

Madonna: We’ve been talking about it for two years.  And it wasn’t until about I’d say a year ago where I said, “Okay, let’s do it.”  And my whole thing was, I have an incredible life.  I’m blessed with so many things.  I want to give a child a life who wouldn’t be given a life. I want a child that nobody else wants.

When I started Raising Malawi, it was kind of a no-brainer.  Like, well, you know, there’s a million orphans in Malawi.  Why don’t I just go there?

Madonna’s husband Guy Ritchie traveled to Malawi in April to film a documentary and after seeing the footage, Madonna says she became transfixed with a little boy name David.

David Banda

Madonna:  And I kept saying, “Who’s that baby?  And who is that boy?”  I was drawn to his face and something about him, his eyes. And he seemed perfectly fine and healthy.  But when I went to finally meet him in the orphanage, he had 104 temperature.  He could barely breathe.

Vieira: He wasn’t as properly cared for as he could be, obviously.

Madonna: And I became completely fixated on, “I have to help him,” whether he is my child or not.

Vieira: And what did you learn about him?

Madonna: I heard that they didn’t know the whereabouts of the father.

Vieira: I wanna talk about the dad for a second.  Because you had been told the dad was out of the picture.

Madonna: Yeah.

Vieira: That was your understanding?

Madonna: Yeah.

Vieira: That he didn’t want—

Madonna: He didn’t want him, that he didn’t have anything to do with him. 

It turned that David’s father, a 32-year old farmer named Yohane Banda, had placed his son in this orphanage after his wife’s death.

FREE VIDEO David's father Web-extra: The biological father of Madonna’s adopted son, Yohane Banda, shows Dateline his typical day as a farmer. He lives in a village close to Malawi’s border with Zambia. Dateline NBC

Madonna: I said, “Well, does that mean that you can adopt a child if there’s a living parent?”  And they said as long as you get a written consent.  And even then, I was a little bit freaked out about it.  Like, “I don’t wanna take anybody’s child away from them,” you know. That was my feeling.

Vieira: In this whole process, did it ever cross your mind, did you ever think, “Well, you know, I have the resources to help David’s dad.  He’s a poor farmer.”   He’s David’s dad. Reunite David with his dad?

Madonna: You’re absolutely right.  And I offered that in court when I met him.  And he didn’t want that. When I met him, I said "I would be happy to facilitate with you to bring him back to your village and help you financially raise him." And he said no. I couldn’t really understand that decision. 

Madonna met David’s father in the Malawi high court where David’s adoption was challenged by local human rights groups. International adoptions from Malawi are extremely rare—and the law on adoption is ambiguous to say the least.

Vieira: Civil rights groups in Malawi have come down pretty hard on you.  There are civil rights groups there that do not want this adoption—

Madonna: If those civil rights groups are going into those orphanages and offering to look after those children, then they have every right to make a stink about it. But they’re not.  They’re not offering a solution.

Vieira: They talk a lot about violating the adoption laws in Malawi, that you circumvented them—through money or .....

Madonna: No.  All that’s simply not true.  I didn’t violate any laws. We went through a whole judicial system in the courts.

Madonna says she believes part of the reason she came under such heavy criticism was because of the color of David’s skin.

Madonna: I think a lot of people have a problem with the fact that I’ve adopted an African child, a child who has a different color skin than I do.

Vieira: You think that’s what got people riled up?

Madonna: I think there’s an aspect of that, yeah.  I think it’s still considered taboo.  You know, I have people say to me on the streets when I’m walking down the street, “Why did you adopt a black child?”

Vieira: They come out and say this to you?

Madonna: Oh yeah, definitely.  Yeah.

Vieira: And what do you say?

Madonna: I don’t say anything.  I don’t dignify their question with a reply.

Vieira: Do you think, Madonna, you did everything you could’ve done the right way?  Do you think any of the criticism is fair in retrospect?

Madonna: No.  Absolutely not.

Vieira: Yeah?

Madonna: All the criticism is ultimately a blessing in disguise. Because now people know about Malawi.  And now people know about the orphans there.  And hopefully it’s gonna turn around.  And I think, you know, a positive is gonna come out of the negative.

For the next 18 months, Madonna and her husband will be periodically visited by a social worker to ensure that they are properly taking care of David and are fit parents.

Vieira: Had you known what was gonna happen then, would you have still said I’m gonna take my chances and go to Malawi?

Madonna: That’s a good question.  I don’t know.  I mean, if you would have asked me a week ago when I was in, you know, the depths of my depression, and just feeling so sad about the state of the world and how negative everybody was, I probably would have said “no.” But if you ask me today, I would say “yes.”

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