World

victims without engendering a total sense of despair inthe audience about the problems of Africa and its future.Coverage of world debtThe strength of Comic Relief is that it can use comedyand the high profile of its performers to present issuessuch as the debt crisis to mainstream mass audience. Thedifficulty is that the need to sustain audience attentionmeans that there are limits to how much a complex issuecan be explained. An attendant problem is that the needto summarise and provide shorthand explanationsmight mean that an issue becomes distorted or unclearand that the audience ends up understanding little morethan when the programme started.In this context the programme Comic Relief’s Debt WishLive was examined, and the explanations given within itwere compared with those available from other sources.This is not to suggest that all these explanations couldhave been included. But it is important to identify thegap which exists between what an audience is givenand what it may need to know for an adequateunderstanding. In fact the audience study showed thatwhile people were generally in favour of resolving thedebt crisis, they had very little idea of what had caused itor what was involved in finding a solution.The style and content of Debt Wish Live differsdramatically from established Comic Relief formats. Theaudience is given a bird’s eye view of three worlds; thestage show, the back-stage action and clips of poverty inAfrica. Behind-the-scenes shots of the live show interjectwith paparazzi-style camera chases up corridors andperformers who exclaim, ‘Lenny Henry spoke to me, heknew who I was roughly, he knew my name.’ Thejuxtaposition of showbiz melodrama against the verydifferent drama of debt in Africa flashlight thedisparaging realities of life in the First World comparedto the Third. The show opens with a lengthy satiricalpiece by Rowan Atkinson in his character sketch, theVicar of Brixton, (five minutes forty-three seconds ofbanter). It is not until the show is substantially underwaythat its purpose is made clear. The reason is ‘debtreduction’, a point which is reiterated at the end:Tony Robinson: Ladies and gentlemen, before the lastnumber I just want to remind everyone here and athome, why we’ve all been doing this tonight, if thousandsof us called during the week, the government will knowthat debt reduction is something we all care passionatelyabout. Think about it, for every pound that we give in aid,the poorest people pay us back £13. It’s madness, it’s notfair and because of this burden of debt, seven million kidsdie every year. Please call, the number is on your screenor on the envelope you were given tonight. We don’t wanttheir money, we don’t want your money, we just wantyou to call and help us change the world. This is somethingfrom which you just can’t turn and walk away.But, as the Guardian noted investment more thandebt reduction is the core issue. Among the poorestcountries, 50% of the debt is not being repaid, so areduction in debt would only be a ‘paper transaction’which would contribute little to immediate developmentneeds (18.6.99). Countries need investment; to develop,and debt has to be cancelled not just reduced.The programme shows the consequences of debt:One of the reasons why countries are so poor is debt. Forthe last 20 years, the poor countries of the world have beentrying to pay back their debts to the west. As a resultthey’ve had very little money to spend at home on all thethings necessary to make a country work.It shows images of an old truck with no wheels, a manplacing a pane of glass in its door, men recycling slates forroofs, and images of a hospital with a rusty sink andscales. The graphic: ‘Debt keeps poor countries poor’appears and the visuals close in on a patient’s face.Another graphic states: ‘And every year they are gettingpoorer.’ The causes of African poverty are little exploredbeyond familiar images of hospital beds, sick childrenand dying babies. We are told that Africa is ‘poor’ becausefor 20 years they have ‘been trying to pay back their debtsto the west.’ But the graphics which accompany thevisuals of poverty cut to the effects of debt rather than itscauses. The causes of African poverty are few accordingto the show. They are attributed to African dictatorsdescribed as ‘mad despots...who trousered the money’and loans squandered on ‘armies...to suppresspopulations’. One sequence asks:Graphic: How did poor countries get into such debt?Graphic: Who lent them the money in the first place?Voice-over: The bank balance of the Third World is soseriously in the red. Why? Because of a lending andborrowing spree in the 1970s. Some of it was good, butmuch of it was bad, for example, the west lent money toAfrican dictators like Idi Amin who spent it on grandioseprojects and armies to suppress their populations. Theyare still paying these debts today.Graphic: Why should Africans today pay back the cost oftheir own suppression?In another programme, Stephen Fry points out thatit is African countries who are the donors and westernerswho are the recipients (Comic Relief’s Great BigDFID – July 2000 89