The Frontman

by Harry Browne

  Such words, according to Yrjölä, reflect ‘colonial rescue narratives cloaked with religious language of crusades and inscriptions of Western self-mastery’. In them, ‘ “Africa” becomes located … outside Western modernity, freedom and civilisation, rendering the continent as a central battleground between good and evil.’73 All of this is of course familiar from the history of colonial ‘civilising missions’ and the opposition to them. From the Crusades to the Iraq War, the West, as many writers have pointed out, is almost always portrayed as improving and assisting native peoples, even while it is killing them.

  Yrjölä notes that most discussions of celebrity humanitarianism display a ‘trained incapacity … or unwillingness to acknowledge the wider global exchanges of this activity, and the power relations embedded in the celebrity humanitarian representations and their aesthetic insights’74 – in other words, what other agendas, hierarchies and status quos are being reinforced under the flag of ‘humanitarianism’, whether in combating AIDS or invading Iraq.

  Humanitarianism, she writes, ‘has become the key way to frame contemporary world politics – an essential expression of what is meant by “international community” and the contemporary world order behind it’,75 rather than more social justice-oriented goals such as workers’ or women’s rights. Hence, this is not ‘a politically neutral change but rather a political project in its own right, a policing practice that advances some objectives while neglecting others … They signal a historic transition to a mode of world governance in which humanitarianism and development operate as key practices … As a consequence, all traces of the political become excised.’76 One side of such a ‘policing practice’ is that Western ‘humanitarians’ may claim to enforce, say, the political rights of the Libyan rebels while simultaneously neglecting, for example, those of the Bahrainis; they may privilege women’s rights in Afghanistan but ignore workers’ rights in Indonesia – and resource limitations are only part of the reason behind why some cases are selected over others. At the same time, humanitarianism and development are often treated as universal moral goods, somehow beyond the real and conflicted operation of politics in the societies where they operate.

  Celebrity humanitarianism is one component of this. Yrjölä and other scholars locate its rise within a wider shift in global governance in the neoliberal period, one ‘that brings northern governments, NGOs and global celebrities together’. Celebrity politics, other scholars conclude, are part of a new ‘expert–celebrity’ axis, and function ‘to convince electorates that they are being well governed’.77 This new mode of governance, in which celebrities act as ‘significant emotional proxies’,78 the caring face of the global technocracy, has already become so ingrained that most people have forgotten to question the fundamental legitimacy of the likes of Bono as a spokesperson for Africa or anywhere else. Indeed, Bono himself has often been the most likely to raise questions about who he is to talk; in a disarming reflex, he has, as researchers Philip Drake and Michael Higgins put it, ‘moments in which he seems to temporarily concede to doubts concerning his right to speak, which are then followed by transitions in which he reconciles his celebrity position with his holding the political stage’.79 We are repeatedly and reassuringly invited to conclude that nobody is more sceptical about Bono than Bono himself. The events of 2005 firmly established, however, that this was not in fact the case.

  MAKING HISTORY: THE SCOTTISH SUMMIT

  Disquiet about the elevation of Bono to more than merely the figurehead of a movement for Africa was bubbling under the surface of the global-justice community by the time the G8 summit meeting had convened at Gleneagles, near Edinburgh, in the summer of 2005.

  In the aftermath of that summit, that disquiet had crystallised into the most coherent critique yet seen of his brand of celebrity humanitarianism, which came to be seen even by some of his erstwhile allies as a form of PR for Western governments. Bono, it seemed, was less an advocate for the world’s poor than an apologist for leaders like Tony Blair, who used Bono and his campaign to legitimise their inaction, inadequate action and downright damaging action in relation to poverty. In the meantime, Bono had helped to reduce the question of global inequality and impoverishment to, simply, ‘Africa’.

  To understand how this set of realisations began to dawn, to the point where campaigners were openly accusing Bono of ‘hijacking’ their work, it is necessary to look in some detail at events in the run-up to July 2005 and at the summit itself, as well as at the central role Bono played in them. With Geldof – also involved with DATA – by his side, Bono was at the forefront of the Make Poverty History campaign and the Live 8 concerts designed to encourage a ‘better deal’ for Africa from the gathered heads of government at Gleneagles. After those statesmen emerged with an agreement of sorts on debt and aid, it was no exaggeration to say, as the New York Times did subsequently, that ‘Bono’s own embrace of the package was treated with a solemnity worthy of a Security Council resolution’.80

  To untangle what happened that July, it is important to recall the warm relationship between Bono and the Blair-and-Brown-led British government, which dated back to the Jubilee 2000 campaign. Alex de Waal, a respected human-rights activist and writer, argues that, at a London breakfast meeting in 2003, Bono and Geldof had shrewdly ‘bounced’ Blair all the way into their agenda on Africa, ‘frogmarching’ him into making a statement of support and a pledge to establish a ‘commission on Africa’ after the prime minister had ‘charmed’ various NGO leaders without making ‘a single concession on substance’.81 With due respect to de Waal, who paints a vivid picture of supine British charity bosses quietly ‘munch[ing] pastries’ while being rendered irrelevant by the more vigorous Irishmen, it seems unlikely that Blair regarded Geldof’s insistent demand for a ‘commission on Africa’ as requiring a major policy concession – it was more like a nice PR suggestion. As Blair himself later recalled with pride, he stocked the commission with ‘high-quality people’ who wouldn’t entertain any ‘rubbish about not being able to govern because of the wicked colonial past’.82 It’s hardly surprising that the ‘high-quality people’ didn’t bore him with postcolonial ‘rubbish’: that commission was described by Professor Paul Cammack, an analyst of global political economy, as a ‘web of bankers, industrialists and political leaders with connections to the IMF and the World Bank, all committed to spreading the gospel of free market capitalism’.83

  Blair, in any case, was well aware of the political benefits that both he and President Bush had already reaped by being seen to cooperate with Bono. In May of 2004 Blair paid a chummy visit to Bono at his home in Dublin. Four months later Bono spoke at the annual conference of Blair’s Labour Party, saying: ‘I’m fond of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They are kind of the John and Paul of the global development stage …’ He urged them to ‘finish what they started’ in ending global poverty.84 At the end of June 2005, a few days before the summit, Bono told ABC News: ‘Remember today that this president committed to try and get all African kids into school … Bill Clinton did an incredible thing on starting this debt cancellation. He deserves real credit. And now, President Bush deserves credit for finishing it out.’85 Then, a few days later, he joined Blair for a meeting in 10 Downing Street with the main negotiators from all the G8 countries. As Time magazine described it breathlessly, it was another West Wingy moment: ‘Bono asked them to “please go that bit further”, reminding them that “in 20 years, this week is one of the things you’ll be most proud of in your lives.” Says Blair: “These are all pretty hard-bitten people who have worked in international relations a long time, but they were very, very enthused by that spirit.” ’86 Bono was so close to the centres of power that it was his helpful suggestion that resulted in the summit ending, unusually, with a formal signing ceremony.87

  To read Blair’s memoirs – not, it must be noted, an entirely reliable source – is to understand clearly that he regarded Bono as a dependable ally, and Geldof as merely a rather more incendiary
one. Bono, he writes, ‘had an absolutely natural gift for politicking’, and ‘could have been a president or prime minister standing on his head’.88 When it came to bringing Bush on board with commitments on African debt in 2005, ‘I knew Bono would be an important person to see George’.89 Political scientist John Street summarises Blair’s account as putting ‘Geldof and Bono close to the centre of the story of the policy change, but significantly [it] assigns them the role of presenting that policy, rather than [of] crafting it …’90

  The alliance extended beyond lobbying the Americans and selling policy to the public, to include putting discontented activists in their place. Blair, who is quite open in his contempt for most campaigners, reveals how delighted he was to have the Irish duo aboard, in whatever capacity, when he comes to describe the first stirrings of NGO dissatisfaction with the proposals that emerged from the summit:

  I did the press conference in the garden of the hotel. There was the usual nonsense from some NGO bloke about how we had all let Africa down, and the usual riposte from Bob who basically tore the bloke’s head off for being so negative and followed him down the path from the press area, shouting abuse as only an irate Irishman can.91

  Bono, meanwhile, summed up emotionally at the end of the summit: ‘The world spoke, and the politicians listened.’ The assembled press broke into spontaneous applause.92

  Geldof and Bono would both be more cautious in assessing the outcome of the fateful 2005 G8 summit in subsequent years, but by that time the cameras were elsewhere. By declaring victory in the full glare of publicity, they had done their bit for Blair, Brown and Bush.

  Unfortunately, the Make Poverty History campaign as a whole had managed to get itself caught up in the Irishmen’s hatred of ‘negativity’ even before this capitulation: thus the main mass gathering in Edinburgh was billed officially as a ‘walk’ to ‘welcome’ the global politicians attending, rather than a protest. This was quite a ‘rebranding’ of the relationship between campaigners and the G8, whose encounters had previously been bracingly confrontational, and it was widely seen in retrospect as an ingenious manoeuvre by the British government to deflate protest and political debate. That summer Make Poverty History, with its millions of little white plastic bracelets distributed across Britain, was so mainstream that some critics were calling it ‘a PR exercise for the government’, with Britain presented as if ‘it were literally leading the world in ending poverty’.93 (This was scarcely surprising, since Bono himself had declared that to be the case.) Britain’s corporate newspapers rallied with their typical nationalism, treating Blair and Brown as the leaders of the campaign, and happily ‘made themselves into campaigning tools’;94 even the Financial Times gave a prize to the campaign’s online petition and ‘virtual rally’ (g8rally.com), which featured nice cartoon images of Geldof and Bono.

  A scholar who was broadly sympathetic to the goals of Make Poverty History, Kate Nash, nonetheless concluded:

  Although Make Poverty History was hugely successful in constructing a public space for its claims and in mobilizing popular sentiment for its aims, then, it is generally agreed that, ultimately, it was a terrible failure … it failed to achieve any of its concrete aims in changing global economic policy, and it surely also failed to achieve genuine cosmopolitan solidarity across state borders.95

  This should hardly come as a surprise given the campaign’s insistence, against all evidence to the contrary, on presenting heads of Western governments as essentially, or at least potentially, benevolent actors who could be persuaded by dint of morality to do the right thing. Nash concedes that the campaign descended into ‘narcissistic sentimentalism’, and acknowledges the absence of African voices.

  African intellectuals were critical of the campaign, in contrast to those Africans represented as the grateful recipients of ‘our’ help. Across the focal points of the campaign, criticism was virtually uniformly identified with cynicism and not permitted. In this respect, critics of Make Poverty History are the embodied Other of its apparently universally inclusive ‘we’, who are rightfully angry about the continuing existence of global poverty and who want to see it ended, excluded in order to make the universal ‘we’ possible.96

  The critic who got most publicity in Britain, because of the element of celebrity cat-fight, was Blur singer Damon Albarn, who had worked previously with musicians from Mali. He criticised the British Live 8 concert for its lack of black artists: ‘If you are holding a party on behalf of people, then surely you don’t shut the door on them.’ The BBC reported:

  Live 8 treated Africa like it was ‘a failing, ill, sick, tired place’, [Albarn] said.

  ‘My personal experience of Africa is that yes, I have witnessed all those things there.

  ‘But it’s incredibly sophisticated – the society and the structure of people’s lives is as sophisticated, if not more sophisticated in some ways, than in the West.’97

  However, once the summit was finished, and as Blair’s gleeful account of Geldof versus the ‘NGO bloke’ indicates, trenchant criticism of Bono, Geldof and the G8 outcome came from experienced workers in the development sector. Some representatives of charitable organisations, including the World Development Movement, Christian Aid and Action Aid, however compromised they may have been themselves by their relationships with states and with elite donors, were remarkably unstinting in their attacks on the whole fiasco (though Oxfam, which had been steering Make Poverty History alongside the celebrities, was notably tepid in its auto-critique). Before the end of 2005, the London Independent was running a headline that read, ‘Celebrities “Hijacked” Poverty Campaign, Say Furious Charities’. Dave Timms of the World Development Movement said, ‘some of the real issues became overshadowed by the hype’:

  There are celebrities who really didn’t seem to know what they were talking about and Bob Geldof’s comments after the G8 were very unhelpful, because they made people think everything had been achieved … There was some progress on debt but we have yet to see any of those pledges translated into a penny for the poorer countries and there was no progress on trade. The other problem we had was that the Labour Government managed to get into a position where they said that they were partners with the movement, when in fact there are many issues, for instance on trade deals, where we disagree strongly.98

  It was true that much of the Make Poverty History coalition had made clear its opposition to the sort of ‘free-trade’ conditions of trade deals that emerged at Gleneagles. Furthermore, Richard Miller of Action Aid pointed out that, from 2005 ‘up to 2008 almost all of the aid increase will be Iraqi and Nigerian debt relief, most of which wasn’t being serviced’ anyway.99

  It’s not clear how much Bono and Geldof had themselves actually been fooled by this sort of shifty accounting, including the jumbling-up of aid and debt relief; perhaps, invested so deeply in a ‘successful’ summit, they had simply chosen to ignore it. Campaigners said they had already briefed the two Irishmen based on leaks from negotiators that the numbers from the summit agreement were bogus, but the celebrities chose not to say any of this in their summary statements. Certainly it should have been clear enough to them even as the summit agreement was being announced, as Blair’s gleeful tale of Geldof’s excoriation of a disgruntled activist makes obvious. No sooner had the celebrities endorsed the summit statement than an NGO press officer was heard to shout down his phone, ‘They’ve shafted us!’100 South African activist Kumi Naidoo, who chaired the global umbrella group of which Make Poverty History was a part, responded quickly and directly to Bono’s assertion that ‘the world spoke, and the politicians listened’. Naidoo said: ‘The people have roared but the G8 has whispered.’101

  In the regret-filled autumn of 2005, Britain’s Red Pepper magazine featured another couple of thousand words of campaigners who seemed to curse themselves for ever having gone near Geldof and Bono. Charles Abugre of Christian Aid said: ‘The campaign has been too superficial … Numbers have been more important than politics and w
e have placed too much emphasis on celebrities with strong connections to those in power. Consequently, a serious occasion was turned into a celebration of celebrities.’ Senegalese economist Demba Moussa Dembele, of the African Forum on Alternatives, said: ‘People must not be fooled by the celebrities: Africa got nothing.’

  It might be more accurate to say that what little it got came at a very high price:

  [D]espite agreeing that ‘poor countries should be free to determine their own economic policies’, only Britain had announced [before the summit] it would no longer tie overseas aid to free market reforms – a promise it would instantly break in the G8 debt deal. The US, in contrast, had made it immediately clear at Gleneagles that aid increases would require ‘reciprocal liberalisation’ by developing countries. Worse, as Yifat Susskind, associate director of the US-based women’s human rights organisation, Madre, explains, Bush’s ‘millennium challenge account’, specifically praised by Bono and Geldof, ‘explicitly ties aid to cooperation in the US’s “war on terror” ’.102

  The deceptions and betrayals inherent in the 2005 G8 ‘deal’ for the global poor, and for Africa in particular, are too numerous to count here. Few people now seriously claim that it achieved anything of significance – unless you count creating brief and false popular expectations of the caring role of political elites as an achievement. But the controversy surrounding it played an important role in opening up the differences between rock-star philanthropists, on the one hand, and the genuine global-justice movement, on the other. In Britain, in particular, the attacks on Geldof and Bono by popular Guardian columnist George Monbiot – including one headlined ‘Bards of the Powerful’ – sowed unprecedented discontent, at least among an engaged minority, with the dominant celebrity-humanitarian discourse: