Band Aid at 40: Why Bob Geldof’s Anniversary Celebration Is Profoundly Racist and Reductive…

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The man behind it all. Image via Twitter.

My late father was an avid music collector.

The man had Bob Marley, Elvis Presley, Jim Reeves, Don Williams, Michael Jackson, Third World, Quincy Jones, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Jimmy Cliff, John Lennon, Hurricane Smith, Johnny Nash, The Commodores, Kenny Rogers, Bee Gees and The Police albums in his collection.

And there was also this song which we — my siblings and me —enjoyed listening to—I don’t like Mondays — by a ragtag Irish band called Boomtown Rats.

Watching those young blokes at the time, we had no idea that one of them would become extremely famous for something else entirely.

And what was the name of the young man in question?

Bob Geldof.

The front man of the one-hit band, found a very clever way of reinventing himself and this entailed poor desperate Africans.

A concatenation of events —civil war, famine, locust infestations, poor governance and high food inflation —led to mass starvation and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

And led to a gift which keeps on giving to our protagonist.