So there I am restless on a Friday night catching up on the political looney toons of the past week in the local press, when down the SMS pipeline comes the invite for a date with Live 8.
Now I’m always up for the rare inner city freebie, which might possibly entertain my two hormonally challenged pre-teens and their equally cynical band of friends. What could be a better snub to the mall crawl experience than a dose of downtown outdoor living it up for a “good cause”. I couch it in youth speak: “it’ll be cool, with kwaito and hip hop and yes you can wear the hipsters and the bling.”My son wants clarification on the G8 – he thinks it’s a gun, like the one that got pressed to his head in exchange for his cell phone and small change the other day. I assure him it will be a gun-free affair, leaving a discussion on the web of illicit arms deals and highway robbery that help put the capital G in G8 for later.

So it’s a date and soon we’re sunning it in front of the big screen at Mary Fitzgerald Square. The cringe factor sets in early. Celeb MC Latoya is desperately trying to rouse the crowd with her vacant take on the scandal at hand, but it’s obvious she’s more interested in getting Zola to pay her some serious centre stage attention. She cuts a lonely figure, snapping her fingers to the “every three second” rhythm of death and destruction in Africa – the celebrity click song that’s all the rage via satellite from London to Tokyo, from Paris to Toronto.

And it just gets worse. There’s Bonehead Bono and Sir Slob Bob Geldoff imploring me and my impressionable charges to join the Live 8 junket, do the right thing and keep poverty on the agenda. Swallow this, belch along with Bob and to be sure masses of Africans will wake up to a brighter day. Because Bono and Bob and their band of merry music makers are beating the talking drum and those G8 suits will hear the cry of millions and get in touch with their compassionate sides. They will take time to meditate on starvation, while quietly chanting the mantra of the IMF rules of relief and washing down tender Botswana beef medallions with Gleneagles triple distilled.

For now, Lucky “Dubai” Dube is onstage in Jozi, making a rare local appearance, flicking those bathroom dreads and singing in support of those who he says are (still?) born to suffer. Zola whips the crowd into a kwaito frenzy and manages to put some politics in the mix. Alas, his efforts are deflated by the ultimate faux pas from Jabu Kanyile, who confuses his G’s and his L’s and asks us all to support the G8. Down in the crowd the disease of political poverty is spreading. There’s a guy running around with a poster that reads: Sir Bob Geldoff 4 President. And Lotoya is still trying to get us all to click our fingers in helpless victim rhythm. All together now Africa!

I’m fighting the urge to read it as just another brand parade, another Slob Bob bonanza, a re-release of We are the World in Bflat. I’m looking at Bono on the big screen in his diamond studded eyewear and trying my best take him seriously while recalling the strains of Sunday Bloody Sunday and the photo ops of him holding hands in Big Up ( but the slogan is Thumbs Down?) triumph with the man of the neoliberal British military moment, that Prime Minister of pulling the wool, Bah Bah Blair.

But hey, let me not lose my sense of humour. I gotta get with the new thinking, shed my tired revolutionary garb. There is power in numbers, say Bono and Bob and this groundswell of demand for a debt free continent is really gonna wake George W from his comfortable coma, give him a sudden conscience and make him a more compassionate capitalist. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to make poverty history they assure me (until the next time Slob Bob’s bandaid peels off and his festering philanthropic wound weeps again).

Meanwhile the outdoor experience is alive with possibility and the youngsters are getting down to the real issues in the cool and oh so sexy Mzansi. Those Euros have to risk the hazards of sunburn and the possibility that Slob Bob might strike up the choir of Annie Lennox wannabees in an early singalong of “Do they know it’s Christmas”. But here on the southern tip, we R Africa, in touch with the masses, helping to keep their poverty in place and pulling at the heartstrings of the champions of development.

We will of course keep up with the trends while we’re at it: gentrify the inner cities under the guise of mixed income housing to impress the 2010 tourists – there shall be no povos on our pavements; prosecute Jacob “he asked for it” Zuma for taking more than his share of a better life, but Trumpet Tokyo’s screen debut as a boost for black economic empowerment and reality TV at its best; give Douglas Gibson more prime airtime and whinging parliamentary privilege than any other disaffected white politician, but please shut those ultraleftist renegades up. They are drowning out our public service announcements!

I’m reminded again that I’ve lost my sense of humour. Instead I jostle with a sense of the ridiculous, party on down for poverty relief and get in touch with a new kind of thinking. It goes something like this: Isn’t struggle in the new millennium just the best choma? I mean you can … like … get an upgrade on your political education, do the toyi toyi to kwasa kwasa ringtones and check out the face of Africa on the latest Nokia all on per second billing! And you don’t have to wear those tired old slogans in cheap cotton across your chest to prove you were part of making poverty history. I mean pleeeeze, Africa knows fashion. Just draw a few hundred from the latest branded bank that is all things to all people (even the previously unbankable), and drop it for a tighter fitting, more fashionable cut at your favourite boutique. They may even donate a percentage to charity. Cool broer! Let aluta continua I say!