Africa's tragedy - a benefit circus?
Updated on 01 July 2005
"Africa's imperial plunder and tragedy have been turned into a circus for the benefit of the so called G8 leaders due in Scotland this week" - John Pilger
John Pilger writes on why he thinks people action, not pop concernts, are the only things that can affect the G8.
"280 million Africans will wake up for the first time in their lives without owing you or me a penny" - Bob Geldof
Africa's imperial plunder and tragedy have been turned into a circus for the benefit of the so called G8 leaders due in Scotland this week. The illusion of an anti-establishment crusade led by pop stars - a cultivated, controlling image of rebellion - serves to dilute a great political movement of anger.
In summit after summit, not a single significant 'promise' of the G8 has been kept. Entirely conditional on vicious, discredited economic programmes imposed by the World Bank and the IMF, the G8 'package' will ensure that the 'chosen' countries slip deeper into poverty.
Having effused about Tony Blair, Bob Geldof describes George Bush as "passionate and sincere" about ending poverty. Bono has called Blair and Brown "the John and Paul of the global development stage". Behind this front, rapacious power can "re-order" the lives of millions in favour of totalitarian corporations and their control of the world's resources.
The G8 communique is unequivocal. Under a section headed "G8 proposals for HIPC debt cancellation", it says that debt relief to poor countries will be granted only if they are shown "adjusting their gross assistance flows by the amount given". In other words, their aid will be reduced by the same amount as the debt relief. So they gain nothing.
At present, for every 1 dollar of 'aid' to Africa, 3 dollars are taken out by western banks, institutions and governments. Take the Congo. Thirty two corporations, all of them based in G8 countries, dominate the exploitation of this deeply impoverished, minerals-rich country, where millions have died in the 'cause' of 200 years of imperialism.
In the Cote d'Ivoire, three G8 companies control 95 per cent of the processing and export of cocoa: the main resource. The profits of Unilever, a British company long in Africa, are a third larger than Mozambique's GDP. One American company, Monsanto, of genetic engineering notoriety, controls 52 per cent of the maize seed in South Africa, that country's staple food.
Blair could not give two flying faeces for the people of Africa. While he was declaiming his desire to "make poverty history", he was secretly cutting the Government's Africa desk officers and staff as well forcing privatisation of water supply in Ghana for the benefit of British investors.
British arms sales to Africa have passed 1 billion. One British arms client is Malawi, which pays out more on the interest on its debt than its entire health budget, despite the fact that 15 per cent of its population has HIV. Gordon Brown likes to use Malawi as example of why "we should make poverty history", yet Malawi will not receive a penny of relief.
Tony Blair's "vision for Africa" is as patronising and exploitative as a stage full of white pop stars (with black tokens now added). His messianic references to "shaking the kaleidoscope" of societies about which he understands little and "watching the pieces fall" has translated into seven violent interventions abroad, more than any British prime minister for half a century. Bob Geldof, an Irishman at his court, duly knighted, says nothing about this.
The protesters going to the G8 summit at Gleneagles ought not to allow themselves to be distracted by these games. If inspiration is needed, along with evidence that direct action can work, they should look to Latin America's mighty popular movements against total locura capitalista (total capitalist folly).
They should look to Bolivia, the poorest country in Latin America, where an indigenous movement has Blair's and Bush's corporate friends on the run, and Venezuela, the only country in the world where oil revenue has been diverted for the benefit of the majority. Across the continent, ordinary people are standing up to Washington-sponsored order.
