Spotlight on…G8
Article published: Wednesday, October 1st 2008
The G8 prepare to meet in Japan this summer, as MULE looks back to the 2005 Scotland meeting asking: Did we make poverty history? Did Bono and Bob Geldof save Africa, or did they just save face for New Labour and the G8?
Most of these millionaire celebrities like Geldof are crocodile-tear-shedding poverty pimps trading in the distorted images of our impoverished African masses Kofi Mawuli Klu, African Activist.
This has been the most important summit there ever has been for Africa. There are no equivocations. Africa and the poor of that continent have got more from the last three days than they have ever got at any previous
summit. Bob Geldof speaking about the Gleneagles summit.
When a dishevelled but defi ant Bob Geldof, flanked by U2 frontman Bono, delivered this ringing endorsement of the G8s deal for Africa at Julys post-summit press conference in Gleneagles, representatives from African civil society and the Make Poverty History (MPH) coalition could be seen shaking their heads in angry disbelief.
People must not be fooled by the celebrities, complained Senegalese economist Demba Moussa Dembele of the African Forum on Alternatives. Africa got nothing. British development NGOs were also furious, some
immediately distancing themselves from the Live 8 stars. By offering such unwarranted praise for the dismal deal signed by world leaders [Geldof] has done a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of people who
marched in Edinburgh, said the World Development Movements Peter Hardstaff.
Their anger was understandable. The previous night, members of MPHs co-ordinating team
had successfully faced down a desperate last-ditch effort led by Oxfam, Britains most powerful development NGO and key ally of the Labour Government, to secure a positive reaction to the G8 communiqué. Kumi Naidoo, the veteran South African anti-apartheid campaigner and now chair of MPHs international umbrella, the Global Call to Action against Poverty (G-CAP), summed up the coalitions offi cial verdict. The people have roared but the G8 has whispered, he told the assembled international journalists,
The promise to deliver [more aid] by 2010 is like waiting fi ve years before responding to the tsunami. Coming from a campaign whose mega-star celebrity backers had made it the darling of the British media, such criticism was potentially devastating to New Labours attempts to spin Blairs G8 chairmanship as an historic result for Africa. But in Blair and the G8s moment of crisis, it was Geldof who came to their rescue. Casting off his MPH hat in favour of his offi cial role in Blairs Commission for Africa and Live
8, the former rock star branded his fellow anti-poverty campaigners disillusionment a disgrace, before gushing euphorically about the G8s offerings, On aid, ten out of ten. On debt, eight out of ten. On trade it is quite clear that this summit, uniquely, decided that enforced liberalization must no longer take place, he said, concluding that this is an excellent result on trade.
His intervention ensured that the next days media coverage was dominated by an unwarranted, job done, spin that let the G8 off the hook and left campaigners with an uphill struggle to regain popular interest in the issue. In the final analysis, MPH was too dependent on corridor-lobbying, celebrity-backing and the media; it proved little more than a convenient distraction from angry protests which disrupted the opening day of the G8 meetings and an election-time diversion from the Iraq war for many of Labours alienated voters. Geldofs comments helped to pull off a media coup, and the Gleneagles summit was portrayed as a victory for Africa instigated by a G8 concerned with making poverty history.
More: Manchester
Comments
No comments found
The comments are closed.
