Somehow, when nobody was looking, it became a shameful thing to be “nice”. Benevolence became a dirty word.
Philanthropy and selflessness have become so despised that Mother Teresa probably did herself a favour by dying when she did. OtherÂwise she too could have been a victim of the New Age mentality that demands that we lampoon those who dare to show that they care.
Binyavanga Wainaina’s otherwise entertaining piece “The power of love” (July 14), on the need for Africans to stop hoping that the industrialised world will sort out all of Africa’s problems, falls into the same trap.
The argument by those who find pleasure in dissing altruistic efforts is that the do-gooders are more likely doing it for their own benefit rather than the cause they allege to be fighting for.
The benefit, the cynical tell us, is for these “good people” to receive some favourable media coverage or assuage one or other feeling of historic guilt. Or to win the Nobel Prize. This they say disparagingly, as though acting out of self-interest is inimical to having a social conscience.
The likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the efforts of religious missionaries; the works of white South Africans (liberals, communists or humanists) — all come under the same hateful scrutiny as those of Bob Geldof and Bono and Jackie Maarohanye of Ithuteng Trust in Soweto.
As with the rest of the list above, each time Maarohanye’s school unleashes its graduates — who truly were the lost generation until they encountered her — she has to contend with accusations that she loves hogging the limelight.
Consensus among the cynical is that anyone going out their comfort zone to ensure the relief of others is a closet egotist, hence their pleasure in vilifying these “nice people” and “unmasking” them for what they really are.
It is not beyond the realm of possibility that those who do good for others have a vested self-interest. Acting out of self-interest and doing those things that bring us the greatest pleasure is a normal human trait. That is one of the reasons we pay taxes when we’d rather be spending our money on more personal pleasures.
We have to stop the political claptrap that conveniently circumvents the truth that our beloved continent has benefited from the works of Geldof and Bono. Just as the efforts of Sheena Duncan and the Black Sash made life more bearable for a few more black people.
How do we explain to those malnourished children, whatever their number, that they staved off death not because Geldof was “kind” but because he wanted some column space for himself in newspapers?
Those who hold the view that the Live8 concerts or the USA for Africa’s efforts in the 1980s were ineffective or worsened the situation must say so, instead of the snide remarks we are bombarded with, usually by people who would never lift a finger to ease someone else’s sorry plight.
Tell anyone living with HIV/Aids, and who otherwise would have died, that the drugs that Gates Foundation is providing are not really meant for the ill to feel better, but for Gates to atone for his part in capitalism’s sins.
There are many who see no virtue in selflessness. But until it affects them, how Gates chooses to spend his money, or how a member of Doctors Without Borders spends her time, they can continue doing whatever they do when Geldof is kissing malnourished African babies.
I gather from those who have taken time to listen that there are, however, good reasons to be done with Geldof: his bad verse. Now that is a different story altogether.
Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya is an M&G reporter