At best, humanitarian fundraisers are a sticking plaster over a festering wound. At worst, they are an active distraction from the real reasons behind global inequality and the need to radically transform society.
The UK charity Comic Relief was founded in 1985, in response to a terrible famine in Ethiopia. Every two years in March, its famous ‘Red Nose Day’ is held, raising millions of pounds. Earlier this month, on Friday 15th March, the country was treated to the latest such event.
Recently, Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, has been slammed for his criticism of the charity. On 27th February, Lammy tweeted that:
“The world does not need any more white saviours. As I’ve said before, this just perpetuates tired and unhelpful stereotypes. Let’s instead promote voices from across the continent of Africa and have serious debate.”
The result was a wave of outrage from the chattering classes.
The world does not need any more white saviours. As I’ve said before, this just perpetuates tired and unhelpful stereotypes. Let’s instead promote voices from across the continent of Africa and have serious debate.https://t.co/LySa0BXeyi
— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) February 27, 2019
Imperialism
But Lammy’s criticisms are absolutely correct. The truth is that Comic Relief, far from being a worthy exercise in humanitarianism, simply perpetuates racist stereotypes about Africa and fails to go into the structural reasons behind the poverty of that continent.
Celebrities like Ed Sheeran and Stacey Dooley are encouraged to visit African countries, take pictures of themselves with local children, and present themselves as heroic white saviours in the heart of darkness. The event has become a grand exercise in virtue-signalling and self-promotion.
Pictures of dire poverty and suffering, and even dead black children, are beamed onto our TV screens. The aim is to tug the heartstrings of the viewer and guilt him or her into donating. The donor is convinced that he or she is doing their bit to help fight the plight of the impoverished and starving in Africa and elsewhere.
The charitable event and its organisers, however, do nothing to question why such a state of poverty exists in the first place. They do nothing to expose the structures of oppression and exploitation which, for centuries, have helped reduce Africa and the rest of the ‘Third World’ to a state of utter devastation.
To do this would involve a discussion about the role played by imperialist countries in depopulating and pillaging Africa through the slave trade and colonisation. It would also involve mentioning the continuation of colonialism to this very day, in the form of Western (and now Chinese) multinationals which exploit the cheap labour and resources on offer in African countries, making huge profits and dodging regulations and taxes.
To add insult to injury, the goods they produce off the back of African labour are then sold back at a higher price, keeping the continent in a state of perpetual poverty. All this is aided and abetted by our own governments and their imperialist policies – a prominent example being the destruction of Libya at the hands of NATO forces during the 2011 civil war.
Revolution
Lammy’s office discovered some interesting statistics about how much Comic Relief actually helps Africa. According to the magazine Foreign Policy, Comic Relief gives around 20% of what Oxfam gives; 0.38% as much as UK government aid; and 1.3% as much as UK-to-Africa remittances. In other words, the impact of Comic Relief in actually tackling poverty in Africa is negligible.
Most people who donate to Comic Relief undoubtedly have good intentions. But a few million pounds every year in guilt money will not solve Africa’s problems. Only the abolition of the global capitalist system, which keeps Africa in poverty, will bring about the elimination of destitution and inequality. Only on the basis of a democratic, planned socialist economy, controlled by the African masses themselves, will real change be realised in that continent.
This has been attempted before. Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso launched a revolution from 1983-1987 which gave the people control over their own resources. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and other African leaders sought to bring about such a transformation, for which their governments were subject to sabotage and imperialist-backed coups.
Sankara was deposed and murdered in 1987, and Nkrumah was deposed by a US-backed coup in 1966. This nefarious history of colonial interference and the destruction of all left-wing African governments that have tried to control their own resources is behind Africa’s poverty.
As Marxists, we are not opposed to charity in and of itself. However, charity only seeks to relieve social issues that are structural in nature through the generosity of individuals. At best, therefore, it is a sticking plaster over a festering wound. At worst, it is an active distraction from giving ordinary people the confidence to organise and radically transform society.
Structural issues can only be resolved through structural transformation. Africa should not be dependent on the goodwill of wealthy Western celebrities. Rather, the workers and peasants of Africa should be encouraged to fight for their own emancipation, alongside the workers of the West and elsewhere. Together, we must fight and destroy the capitalist system which oppresses and exploits all of us.
