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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Jul 23 2010 - 07:28:23 EDT
23 July 2010, 13:24:41 (South Africa)
LiveAid - the kind of help that ultimately harms
As LiveAid marks 25 years comes news that a movie will be made about Sir Bob
Geldof, the man who made “kwashiorkor kid” the poster child for Africa,
reducing a diverse continent into a terrifyingly simple cliché. It’s touted
as a film about a man who could “think the unthinkable and achieve the
seemingly impossible".
“Dawn. And as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the
plain outside Korem it lights up a biblical famine, now in the 20th century.
This place, say workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth.” It was
this television news report by BBC journalist Michael Buerk that galvanised
Bob Geldof into saving Africa.
Bob came home to find girlfriend Paula Yates sobbing over Buerk’s piece on
feeding camps in Eritrea and decided to rescue Africa, or Ethiopia to begin
with. Buerk would later say his report was "one of the most influential
pieces of television ever broadcast”. It was influential enough to transform
Buerk into a celebrity journalist and to rescue Geldof from what would later
become a miserable solo career. What LiveAid did for Africa though is
another story.
*Watch: Michael Buerk’s original report on famine in Ethiopia.*
The BBC movie of Geldof’s life will undoubtedly set the man up as some sort
of messianic saviour battling unspeakable odds to deliver charitable
redemption to skeletal children with flies in the corner of their eyes. The
film makers describe the television movie as "humorous, warm, tension-filled
and ultimately deeply moving." Called “When Harvey met Bob” it will tell of
how Geldof and music promoter Harvey Goldsmith gathered 70 of the world’s
top acts to perform simultaneously at the John F Kennedy stadium in
Philadelphia and Wembley Stadium in London. Watched by 2 billion people in
60 countries, the broadcasts would help raise £150 million for Ethiopian
famine relief. (And don't forget Phil Collins's Concorde flight across the
pond so he could perform at both concerts.)
Geldof is still deeply sentimental about the event. Writing for UK tabloid
The Sun Geldof told the people of England to be proud because they had led
the fight to help the world’s poorest for more than 25 years. In the piece
Geldof says the UK can claim credit for cancelling the debt borne by the
“poorest of the poor”; for sending 42 million children to school for the
first time and for ensuring 3.8 million “of the poorest, most ill people in
the world get free medicine”.
“This country's word is its bond. See, we can change things if we put our
mind to it. At least for some people. At least for the most vulnerable and
hurt in our world. We can do that. We proved it. Well done us,” he opined.
Geldof obviously didn’t read CIA documents or see a BBC investigation that
showed LiveAid money had been channelled to buy arms for anti-government
rebel forces and that this further fuelled the very humanitarian crisis the
charity was supposed to stem.
*Watch: Bob Geldof about his war on poverty.*
While Sir Bob was slapping himself and everyone in the UK on the back for
fighting the good fight, Simon Anholt, a leading expert on national identity
and nations’ brands spoke out about the damage Geldof had done to Africa.
Creator of the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index said Geldof’s relentless
depiction of Africa as a single, hopeless basket case had harmed the
long-term development prospects of the entire continent.
“I have often commented about the unintended damage done to the
international standing and, consequently, the long-term prospects of poorer
countries by well-intentioned charity promotion, and in particular the
negative ‘branding’ of Africa by aid celebrities like Geldof and Bono,” said
Anholt. “In order to continue to assist poorer countries, donors feel it
necessary to paint as distressed a picture as they can of the recipient:
Donor governments need to maintain the support of domestic taxpayers by
persuading them the cause is worthy, while charities and other NGOs need to
keep up the level of voluntary donations. The more desperate they make the
country appear, the more successful their programmes will become.”
*Watch: Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo about what’s wrong with aid.*
Anholt believes that in this way rich countries have exacted a high price
for charitable support that is often manifest in the hijacking and degrading
of a recipient country’s international image. “Using their vast credibility,
resources and media influence, donors project onto the public imagination an
unbroken stream of corrosively negative information, images and emotions
about the recipient country and its population, to prove that no cause is
more heart-rending, more urgent, and more (nearly) hopeless. By the time
their programme has moved on to the next deserving cause, the country’s
image may have been blighted for generations, leaving a powerful
psychological and emotional disincentive to trade, investment, tourism and
growth.”
Anholt maintains that foreign aid mechanisms corrode the economies of
recipient countries making it impossible for local producers to compete
equally and fairly against a steady stream of free food, goods and money.
“What we have failed to notice is how it also makes pariahs of those
countries in international public opinion, stealing their dignity as proper
states with history, culture, nature, wisdom, language, learning and human
endeavour by branding them as nothing more than victims and beggars for
decades to come. Instead of images of natural and human beauty and variety,
the ‘outside world’ is fed an unvarying diet of conflict, starvation,
disease and despair; a world of dust and misery. Nothing could be more
unhelpful for a country that needs to build an economy through the
stimulation of trade, tourism, investment and productive cultural and
political relations with other states.”
Geldof has played the Pied Piper in popularising this image of pathetic
Africa with begging bowl in hand. Hopefully at some stage he’ll pause long
enough to heed the call to stop hurting Africa. Maybe then he would wake up
one morning and do what needs to be done: work on making Africa a partner of
the world.
*By Mandy de Waal*
Read “Free trade - not aid - is path to prosperity for developing world” in
the Mail Online, “The Failure of the Live Aid Model” in the Wall Street
Journal and “Live Aid donations were diverted to arm Ethiopian rebels”in The
Times.
*Photo: Sir Bob Geldof addresses the crowd at the Live 8 concert in Hyde
Park in London, July 2, 2005. Reuters.*
Friday 23 July, 2010
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