[Mb-civic] The Man Who Betrayed the Poor

Sat Oct 1 14:55:25 PDT 2005

Today's commentary:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-09/25monbiot.cfm

==================================

ZNet Commentary
The Man Who Betrayed the Poor September 27, 2005
By George  Monbiot

Two months have not elapsed since the G8 summit, and
already almost
everything has turned to ashes. Even the crustiest
sceptics have been
shocked by the speed with which its promises have been
broken.

It is true that they didn't amount to much. The World
Development Movement
described the agreement as "a disaster for the world's
poor."(1) ActionAid
complained that "the G8 have completely failed to
deliver trade
justice."(2) Christian Aid called July 8th as "a sad
day for poor people
in Africa and all over the world."(3) Oxfam lamented
that "neither the
necessary sense of urgency nor the historic potential
of Gleneagles was
grasped by the G8."(4) But one man had a different
view. Bob Geldof, who
organised the Live8 events, announced that "a great
justice has been done.
.. On aid, 10 out of 10; on debt, eight out of 10 ...
Mission accomplished
frankly."(5)

Had he not signed off like this, had he not gone on to
describe a South
African campaigner who had criticised the deal as "a
disgrace"(6), Geldof
could have walked away from the summit unencumbered by
further
responsibility. He could have spent the rest of his
life on holiday, and
no one would have minded. But it was because he gave
the G8 his seal of
approval, because he told us, in effect, that we could
all go home and
stop worrying about Africa that he now has a
responsibility to speak out.

The uses to which a Geldof can be put are limited.
Before the summit he
was seen by campaigners as naïve, ill-informed and
unaccountable. But he
can make public statements with the potential to
embarrass politicians.
While they don't usually rise above the "give us your
focking money"
level, they do have the effect of capturing the
attention of the press.
But though almost everything he said he was fighting
for has fallen apart,
he has yet to tell the public.

Immediately after the summit, as the world's attention
shifted to the
London bombs, Germany and Italy announced that they
might not be able to
meet the commitments they had just made, due to
"budgetary
constraints"(7). A week later, on July 15th, the World
Development
Movement obtained leaked documents showing that four
of the IMF's European
directors were trying to overturn the G8's debt
deal(8). Four days after
that, Gordon Brown dropped a bomb. He admitted that
the aid package the G8
leaders had promised "includes the numbers for debt
relief."(9) The extra
money they had promised for aid and the extra money
they had promised for
debt relief were in fact one and the same.

Nine days after that, on July 28th, the United States,
which had appeared
to give some ground at Gleneagles, announced a pact
with Australia, China
and India to undermine the Kyoto protocol on climate
change(10). On August
2nd, leaked documents from the World Bank showed that
the G8 had not in
fact granted 100% debt relief to 18 countries, but had
promised enough
money only to write off their repayments for the next
three years(11). On
August 3rd, the United Nations revealed that only one
third of the money
needed for famine relief in Niger, and 14% of the
money needed by Mali had
been pledged by the rich nations(12). Some 5 million
people in the western
Sahel remained at risk of starvation.

Two weeks ago, we discovered that John Bolton, the new
US ambassador to
the United Nations, had proposed 750 amendments to the
agreement which is
meant to be concluded at next week's UN summit. He
was, in effect,
striking out the Millennium Development Goals on
health, education and
poverty relief, which the United Nations set in
2000(13). Yesterday,
ActionAid released a report showing that the first of
these goals - equal
access to schooling for boys and girls by 2005 - has
been missed in over
70 countries(14). "Africa", it found, "is currently
projected to miss
every goal." There is so little resolve at the UN to
do anything about it
that the summit could deliver "a worse outcome than
the situation before
the G8." Yet Geldof remains silent.

"We are very critical of what Bob Geldof did during
the G8 Summit", Demba
Moussa Dembele of the African Forum on Alternatives
tells me. "He did it
for his self-promotion. This is why he marginalized
African singers,
putting the limelight on himself and Bono, rather than
on the issues. .
The objectives of the whole Live8 campaign had little
to do with poverty
reduction in Africa. It was a scheme intended to
project Geldof and Blair
as humanitarian figures coming to the rescue of "poor
and helpless"
Africans."(15)

"Right from the beginning," says Kofi Mawuli Klu of
the Forum of African
Human Rights Defenders, "he has acted in his own
selfish interests. It was
all about self-promotion, about usurping the place of
Africans. His
message was "shut up and watch me". Without even
understanding the root
causes of the problems, he used his role to drown the
voices of the
African people and replace them with his own. There
are many knowledgeable
people - African and non-African - who could have
advised him, but he has
been on his own, ego-tripping."(16)

I have heard similar sentiments from every African
campaigner I have
spoken to. Bob Geldof is beginning to look like Mother
Teresa or Joy
Adamson. To the corporate press, and therefore to most
of the public, he
is a saint. Among those who know something about the
issues, he is
detested. Those other tabloid saints appeared to
recognise that if they
rattled the cages of the powerful, the newspapers upon
which their public
regard depended would turn against them. When there
was a conflict between
their public image and their cause, the image won. It
seems to me that
Geldof has played the same game.

He seized a campaign which commanded great public
enthusiasm, which had
the potential gravely to embarrass Tony Blair and
George Bush. He asked us
to focus not on the harm the G8 leaders were doing,
but on the help they
might give. When they failed to deliver, he praised
them anyway. His
endorsement and the public forgetfulness it prompted
helped license them
to start reversing their commitments. When they did
so, he said nothing.
This looks to me like more than just political
naivity. It looks as if he
is working for the other side.

I don't mean that this is what he intended - or
intends - to do. I mean
that he came to identify with the people he was
supposed to be lobbying.
By ensuring that the campaign was as much about him as
about Africa, he
ensured that if they failed, he failed. He needed a
story with a happy
ending.

There is just one thing that Geldof can now do for
Africa. This is to
announce that his optimism was misplaced, that the
mission was not
accomplished, that the struggle for justice is as
urgent as ever. But
while he holds his tongue, he will remain the man who
betrayed the poor.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. World Development Movement, 8th July 2005. G8
condemn Africa to miss
Millennium Development Goals. Press Release.

2. ActionAid, 8th July 2005. ActionAid's reaction to
the G8 outcome. Press
Release.

3. Christian Aid, 12th July 2005. The G8 - in terms of
build-ups it
couldn't have been bigger. Press release.

4. Oxfam, 29th July 2005. Gleneagles: what really
happened at the G8
summit?
http://www.oxfam.org/eng/pdfs/bn050729_G8_final.pdf

5. DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa), 8th July 2005. Bono,
Geldof Reaction to
G8 Africa Communique. Press release; Ewen MacAskill,
Patrick Wintour and
Larry Elliott, 9th July 2005. G8: hope for Africa but
gloom over climate.
The Guardian; Mark Townsend, 10th July 2005. Geldof
delighted at G8 action
on aid. The Observer.

6. Matthew Tempest, 8th July 2005. G8 leaders agree
$50bn Africa package.
The Guardian.

7. Oxfam, 29th July 2005, ibid.

8. WDM, 15th July 2005. Leaks reveal IMF threat to
already weak G8 debt
deal. Press release.

9. Minutes of Evidence Taken before Treasury
Committee, 19th July 2005. To
be published as HC 399-i. House of Commons.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmtreasy/uc399-
i/uc39902.htm

10. Eg ABC online, 27th July 27 2005. Australia, US
form climate change
pact: report.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1423298.htm

11. World Development Movement and Jubilee Debt
Campaign, 2nd August 2005.
Leaks reveal G8 debt deal faces funding shortfall.
Press release.

12. BBC Online, 3rd August 2005. Hunger in Mali is
being 'ignored'.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4741877.stm

13. Eg Julian Borger, 26th August 2005. Bolton throws
UN summit into
chaos. The Guardian.

14. Patrick Watt, 5th September 2005. Development
Under Attack: will the
2005 poverty agenda unravel at the UN World Summit?
ActionAid.

15. Demba Moussa Dembele, 3rd September 2005. By
email.

16. Kofi Mawuli Klu, 4th September 2005. By phone.

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