Refused Party Program
21-11-2004, 19:52
BAND AID AND 'SELF-OBSESSED, ANGST-DRIVEN WESTERN DO-GOODERS
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
The Band Aid Album, ‘Do they know its Christmas time’, which sold
millions of copies and directly raised even more millions of dollars
for the relief of famine in Ethiopia 20 years ago is again being
released in time for this Christmas. As in 1984 it is widely expected
that the album will be a runaway success.
Apart from the millions of dollars raised then and to be raised now,
what both the album and the Live Aid concert it inspired in July 1985
(which was watched reportedly by over 1.5 billion people across the
world) achieved was to raise awareness about hunger, starvation and
famine in Africa. The bloated tummies of underfed babies clutching at
emaciated breasts of a hunger-ravished mother or the multitudes of
flies and army of other insects holidaying on the mouths and bodies of
desperate children, women and men in refugee camps became the dominant
image of Africa in the global media. What we saw with our eyes on
televisions became engraved permanently on our minds. It was successful
in causing almost a stampede of humanitarian concern and focus on
Africa.
However it had its own unintended consequences then and twenty years
on these negative consequences have a greater impact in that they
perpetuate the popular perception that Africa is a basket case
continent and Africans are a hopeless and helpless people.
The fact that the same song could be re released without altering the
lyrics and with similar accompanying horrible pictures on televisions,
in newspapers and other more widely accessible multi media today than
then speaks volumes. It is either an admission of failure of previous
efforts or a confirmation that Africa is indeed a basket .
I am particularly irked about that dubious line: ‘Thank God tonight
its them instead of you’! The only variation on the theme is that
instead of targeting Ethiopia last time around it is Sudan that is
competing for the sympathy of the West as Africa's most hellish of
hells!
It is an indictment of Africa's leaders and also the powerful
countries, individuals and institutions within the international
community that despite all the awareness and pangs of conscience in the
last 20 years, fellow human beings can still be facing such penury,
humiliation and starvation in a world with ‘enough for our needs but
not enough for our greed’ as Mahatma Ghandi once put it.
However as Africans we can be disgusted, ashamed and rightly critical
of the deliberate use/abuse of those horrible images that strip us of
our dignity and humanity, but we should be more outraged that Africans
(through acts of both omission and commission) have been largely
responsible for such continuous misery inflicted on our own peoples.
Band Aid, Live Aid or any of the busy body Western NGOs raising huge
sums of money on these images did not create them, they are merely
exploiting them for their multi-million dollar humanitarian mega
business. Therefore the first responsibility and admission of guilt is
ours and ours alone. It is up to us to put an end to the brutalisation
and extreme pauperisation of our own peoples.
But the Humanitarian agencies also have to ask themselves whether
their chosen methods have worked or are working. Or if the end now
justifies the means and that end is about their unaccountable power to
play god with the destiny of poor people by merchandising our people’s
suffering. They often defend the use of the bad images as necessary to
raise awareness and prick the conscience of the world (most of the time
they mean, Europeans and Americans!). One is bound to ask of Live Aid
and Band Aid that after 20 years what the harvest of this conscience
safari has been if they have to use the same images and record two
decades later.
It has always intrigued me why the conscience of the West can only be
pricked by degradation of other peoples. The process of getting
westerners to part with their donations end up dehumanizing and
degrading Africa. Instead of creating the much needed understanding and
solidarity it creates an unequal power relation with psychological
hang-ups about superior and inferior peoples; one is a permanent donor
and the other is a permanent supplicant. That one-way street does not
lead to understanding, rather it institutionalizes a ‘we know best’
attitude on the part of the humanitarian industry. It also makes the
humanitarian agencies married to bad news from Africa, thereby becoming
professional merchants of our misery. It will seem that the worse the
situation is the better for their fund raising drives! Needless to say
that this breeds cynicism among those who are supposed to be grateful
for the kind help they are receiving.
The more important lesson of the 20 years of Band Aid must surely be
bringing into sharp relief the naiveté of those years that symbolic
acts of genuine human solidarity will somehow change the hearts and
minds of the powerful both in Africa and internationally. They can
throw a few coins at the problem to appease immediate pressure and gain
public mileage but the real change will only come from raising the
power questions that turn drought into famine. It is politics and power
that makes Africans seemingly more vulnerable to hunger and starvation
than other peoples. Africa is not a poor continent but our peoples are
poor because they are powerless over their resources. People are
powerless in their countries and our countries are impotent in global
power relations. That is why we get fleeced on all fronts.
Charity may offer an instant fire brigade service but it cannot be a
substitute for sustainable long-term solutions. Why is it that Ethiopia
that received massive humanitarian support twenty years ago is today
one of the least recipients of long-term development aid in Africa?
Even if it gets more help in aid, as long as it continues to get bad
terms of trade and returns for its coffee and other raw materials, like
other African countries, it will continue to run a deficit economy
needing aid. Many of our countries especially those beloved by
IMF/World Bank and Western Countries as ‘doing well’ have become aid
addicts while the humanitarian interventionists and NGOs have become
aid pushers.
The extreme poverty faced by many Africans in a majority of our
countries is structural and unless both the internal and external
dimensions of that unequal power relation are transformed I can assure
you that in another 20 years, when Bob Geldof and many of his original
collaborators would have become Old Age Pensioners (OAPs) they may
still be organizing Band Aid 3. I think Saint Bob and Bono in the past
few years have come to realize this and that's why they are talking
less about charity but more in terms of trade, equity, global justice,
debt cancellation, etc. Soon they will have to engage with reparation
for Africa for both historical and contemporary depletion and pillage
of the continent and her peoples and also the structural linkage
between the prosperity of the West and the poverty of global humanity.
This shift is necessary in order to build a global alliance (rather
than self -obsessed angst -driven Western do-gooders and their
selective conscience) that can truly make poverty history in this new
millennium.
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African
Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa.
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
The Band Aid Album, ‘Do they know its Christmas time’, which sold
millions of copies and directly raised even more millions of dollars
for the relief of famine in Ethiopia 20 years ago is again being
released in time for this Christmas. As in 1984 it is widely expected
that the album will be a runaway success.
Apart from the millions of dollars raised then and to be raised now,
what both the album and the Live Aid concert it inspired in July 1985
(which was watched reportedly by over 1.5 billion people across the
world) achieved was to raise awareness about hunger, starvation and
famine in Africa. The bloated tummies of underfed babies clutching at
emaciated breasts of a hunger-ravished mother or the multitudes of
flies and army of other insects holidaying on the mouths and bodies of
desperate children, women and men in refugee camps became the dominant
image of Africa in the global media. What we saw with our eyes on
televisions became engraved permanently on our minds. It was successful
in causing almost a stampede of humanitarian concern and focus on
Africa.
However it had its own unintended consequences then and twenty years
on these negative consequences have a greater impact in that they
perpetuate the popular perception that Africa is a basket case
continent and Africans are a hopeless and helpless people.
The fact that the same song could be re released without altering the
lyrics and with similar accompanying horrible pictures on televisions,
in newspapers and other more widely accessible multi media today than
then speaks volumes. It is either an admission of failure of previous
efforts or a confirmation that Africa is indeed a basket .
I am particularly irked about that dubious line: ‘Thank God tonight
its them instead of you’! The only variation on the theme is that
instead of targeting Ethiopia last time around it is Sudan that is
competing for the sympathy of the West as Africa's most hellish of
hells!
It is an indictment of Africa's leaders and also the powerful
countries, individuals and institutions within the international
community that despite all the awareness and pangs of conscience in the
last 20 years, fellow human beings can still be facing such penury,
humiliation and starvation in a world with ‘enough for our needs but
not enough for our greed’ as Mahatma Ghandi once put it.
However as Africans we can be disgusted, ashamed and rightly critical
of the deliberate use/abuse of those horrible images that strip us of
our dignity and humanity, but we should be more outraged that Africans
(through acts of both omission and commission) have been largely
responsible for such continuous misery inflicted on our own peoples.
Band Aid, Live Aid or any of the busy body Western NGOs raising huge
sums of money on these images did not create them, they are merely
exploiting them for their multi-million dollar humanitarian mega
business. Therefore the first responsibility and admission of guilt is
ours and ours alone. It is up to us to put an end to the brutalisation
and extreme pauperisation of our own peoples.
But the Humanitarian agencies also have to ask themselves whether
their chosen methods have worked or are working. Or if the end now
justifies the means and that end is about their unaccountable power to
play god with the destiny of poor people by merchandising our people’s
suffering. They often defend the use of the bad images as necessary to
raise awareness and prick the conscience of the world (most of the time
they mean, Europeans and Americans!). One is bound to ask of Live Aid
and Band Aid that after 20 years what the harvest of this conscience
safari has been if they have to use the same images and record two
decades later.
It has always intrigued me why the conscience of the West can only be
pricked by degradation of other peoples. The process of getting
westerners to part with their donations end up dehumanizing and
degrading Africa. Instead of creating the much needed understanding and
solidarity it creates an unequal power relation with psychological
hang-ups about superior and inferior peoples; one is a permanent donor
and the other is a permanent supplicant. That one-way street does not
lead to understanding, rather it institutionalizes a ‘we know best’
attitude on the part of the humanitarian industry. It also makes the
humanitarian agencies married to bad news from Africa, thereby becoming
professional merchants of our misery. It will seem that the worse the
situation is the better for their fund raising drives! Needless to say
that this breeds cynicism among those who are supposed to be grateful
for the kind help they are receiving.
The more important lesson of the 20 years of Band Aid must surely be
bringing into sharp relief the naiveté of those years that symbolic
acts of genuine human solidarity will somehow change the hearts and
minds of the powerful both in Africa and internationally. They can
throw a few coins at the problem to appease immediate pressure and gain
public mileage but the real change will only come from raising the
power questions that turn drought into famine. It is politics and power
that makes Africans seemingly more vulnerable to hunger and starvation
than other peoples. Africa is not a poor continent but our peoples are
poor because they are powerless over their resources. People are
powerless in their countries and our countries are impotent in global
power relations. That is why we get fleeced on all fronts.
Charity may offer an instant fire brigade service but it cannot be a
substitute for sustainable long-term solutions. Why is it that Ethiopia
that received massive humanitarian support twenty years ago is today
one of the least recipients of long-term development aid in Africa?
Even if it gets more help in aid, as long as it continues to get bad
terms of trade and returns for its coffee and other raw materials, like
other African countries, it will continue to run a deficit economy
needing aid. Many of our countries especially those beloved by
IMF/World Bank and Western Countries as ‘doing well’ have become aid
addicts while the humanitarian interventionists and NGOs have become
aid pushers.
The extreme poverty faced by many Africans in a majority of our
countries is structural and unless both the internal and external
dimensions of that unequal power relation are transformed I can assure
you that in another 20 years, when Bob Geldof and many of his original
collaborators would have become Old Age Pensioners (OAPs) they may
still be organizing Band Aid 3. I think Saint Bob and Bono in the past
few years have come to realize this and that's why they are talking
less about charity but more in terms of trade, equity, global justice,
debt cancellation, etc. Soon they will have to engage with reparation
for Africa for both historical and contemporary depletion and pillage
of the continent and her peoples and also the structural linkage
between the prosperity of the West and the poverty of global humanity.
This shift is necessary in order to build a global alliance (rather
than self -obsessed angst -driven Western do-gooders and their
selective conscience) that can truly make poverty history in this new
millennium.
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African
Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa.