And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time…

Sorry for returning to Christmas musings so soon, but I have been hearing that Live Aid/Band Aid song far too often recently. You know the one with George Michael, Boy George, Bono, etc., from the 1980s? Bono’s line in it is: “Well, tonight thank god it’s them, instead of you…”

I don’t know the whole story of this Band Aid effort but I know that it went on during the famine in Ethiopia. I also know that the singers were motivated by decent intentions, as people like Bono have been since.

And yet, there is something wrong with that song, isn’t there?

Sorry for returning to Christmas musings so soon, but I have been hearing that Live Aid/Band Aid song far too often recently. You know the one with George Michael, Boy George, Bono, etc., from the 1980s? Bono’s line in it is: “Well, tonight thank god it’s them, instead of you…”

I don’t know the whole story of this Band Aid effort but I know that it went on during the famine in Ethiopia. I also know that the singers were motivated by decent intentions, as people like Bono have been since.

And yet, there is something wrong with that song, isn’t there?

“Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow, do they know it’s Christmas time at all?”

Well, there was a famine going on at the time, but it wasn’t the case that nothing ever grows in Ethiopia. Famines have complex causes and are usually correlated with war and displacement. Hunger, which kills more people than dramatic famines, is also correlated with IMF structural adjustment programs. And, as Bono has pointed out since, the debt ‘owed’ by African countries is a major cause of hunger and starvation and preventable disease.

“The only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears”?

It seems a bit distasteful to analyze a song that was designed as a charity benefit 20 years ago. But the song subtly deprives its starving subjects of their dignity, by implying that all of this tragedy stems from the fact that they are living on barren land “underneath that burning sun”. What a tragedy, give them a hand while you’re celebrating and “thank god it’s them instead of you”, will you?

I’m not saying that I want a song that takes the listener through the depredations of the slave trade, through the period of 19th century colonialism, to the era of direct military interference and intervention, into the times of structural adjustment, to the modern proxy wars and humanitarian finger-pointing. But if you’re going to pull people’s strings to make them feel something for Africa at Christmas, don’t write a song that makes them sad about the weather. Write one that makes us rage at the fact that we are extorting money from people to whom we have never given a break. Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time? Throw your arms around an executive of a drug company instead, squeeze very hard, and don’t let go until he lets the Africans make their own generic AIDS drugs and stop the senseless mass death that is happening there while he lines his pocket.

That’s pretty inelegant lyrics, but I suspect Bono could do far better.

Author: Justin Podur

Author of Siegebreakers. Ecology. Environmental Science. Political Science. Anti-imperialism. Political fiction. View all posts by Justin Podur