The Hindu Business Line : The slogans on Africa

IT IS wonderful to spend time and energy on humanitarian causes, but to be totally preoccupied with the "presentation" of the cause — to an extent which diverts attention away from implementation issues — is, to the say the least, a trifle unwise.

The effort becomes somewhat insincere and selfish when the objective of the organisers of events, willy-nilly, turns imperceptibly into self-propaganda and publicity, something that appears to be happening all the time when concerts in aid of causes are held in capitals across the world, involving celebrities. The dividing line between an entertainment show as a show and the cause in aid of which the show is being staged is so thin and almost invisible that, more often than not, the performance takes precedence over the cause, a process which is greatly facilitated by the media's projection of the performers on the world's stage.

One is, referring to the ten "Live 8" concerts held across the world in the run-up to the Group of Eight summit held in Edinburgh, where one of the two principal issues for discussion was aid for Africa.

No sensible person can argue against the usefulness of such a campaign because, at the end of the implementation process, a huge section of mankind, impoverished and adrift, would stand to benefit. This is the prayer, but the problem is that very often the prayer loses its intent, , especially when it is chanted by international entertainment icons.

Perhaps the most important thing to recognise and accept is that the entertainers themselves are helpless on this score because of the very nature of their vocation and the response it generates among the people.

Those who do not agree will cite Bob Geldof's presentation at the London concert of 24-year-old Birhan Woldu, who was just four years old when she was shown in live footage at the 1985 "Live Aid" concert in London, dying from the effects of famine. Geldof brought her on to the stage and said: "She had 10 minutes to live 20 years ago. Because of Live Aid 20 years ago, because we did a concert in this city and in Philadelphia, last week she did her agricultural exams in the school she goes to in the northern Ethiopian highlands. She is here. Don't let them tell you that this doesn't work. Look at this beautiful woman".

The world should be grateful to Geldof and those who were behind the Live Aid concerts in the mid-1980s for saving the lives of people like Woldu. Even if one life is saved (and there must have been hundreds if not thousands who were equally fortunate), it should not be taken for granted because by doing so one will be denigrating the humanitarian work of people on whom, essentially, the very spirit of the world — forever based on optimism — survives.

But having said this, the point must also be made that, despite the story of Birhan Woldu and others like her, there has not been much improvement on the aid front during the past 20 years, since the Live Aid concerts were held.

Twenty years later, in London, Madonna exhorted the world thus from her swinging perch on the stage: "Are you ready? Are you ready to start a revolution? Are you ready to change history?" One does not require strong powers of imagination to say that the crowd before her wildly chanted "yes, yes, yes", but that probably was the end of the bit on "aid for Africa" before the singer went on to mesmerise the huge gathering in her own very distinctive way.

Geldof, said to be the prime mover behind the "Live 8" concerts, is reported to have said: "Not to get poverty stopped would be a terrible, terrible human failure".

Very true indeed, but can you "stop" poverty" - and, especially, poverty in the expanse of Africa? People have been arguing about this ever since David Livingstone put the Dark Continent on the world map in the mid-nineteenth century. But the plight of Africa still remains abysmally dismal. The question is: why?

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

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