[DEBATE] : Why is Madonna treating Africa like a little orphan that needs adopting?

[Russell]

The TimesOctober 13, 2006

Why is Madonna treating Africa like a little orphan that needs adopting?
Notebook by Mick Hume

IF MADONNA wants to show off how much she cares for African orphans, why can't 
she just wear a plastic wristband like every other moral poseur, instead of 
being photographed wearing a Malawian baby on her back in a native sling? An 
African baby seems to be the latest celebrity accessory.
Although Madonna's entourage has yet to confirm it, everybody in Malawi says 
that she has adopted that year-old boy. If so, she follows the trend set by 
Angelina Jolie, the actress who adopted an Ethiopian baby (and one from 
Cambodia) then went to Namibia with Brad Pitt to have her own child.


The couple known as "Brangelina" got the Namibian Government to use 
immigration rules to protect them from the media. Now Madonna, the "Queen of 
Pop", seems to think she is Queen Victoria, waiving the rules in Malawi - a 
former British colony - where foreign adoptions are supposed to be illegal.
But, the star's defenders say, people like me are just cynics. After all, 
Madonna has pledged to help to fund a day centre to feed and educate orphans 
in that Aids-ravaged country. Apparently this will offer "Spirituality for 
Kids", a programme based on the mumbo-jumbo of Kabbalah. She has also 
donated copies of her children's book, The English Roses.
OK, let's accept Madonna is sincere. But the attitude she embodies is 
condescending and slightly obscene. No doubt if she adopts the baby he will 
live in comfort. That is no excuse. Despite the headlines, this boy is not 
an orphan - his mother died and he lives in an orphanage because his father 
cannot afford to feed him. How is whisking him out of his village in front 
of the world media addressing that problem?
Campaigners point out that Aids has "destroyed many families" in Malawi. 
Solution? Let's break up another family by adopting their kid! Local child 
advocacy groups protest that foreign adoption is not in the best interests 
of the child or the community. But what do they know? They never had a No 1 
record.
When I was at school, there was a scheme called "Give a penny for a black 
baby", where we picked a smiley picture of the African child to whom our 
penny would supposedly be sent. Nobody thought that they would get to keep 
the black baby in return for their money.
Her supporters say that when somebody such as Madonna (literally) makes a 
song and dance in Africa, it helps to raise awareness. Is somebody still 
unaware that many African children live in grinding poverty? The problem is 
that few seem to think it is possible to do much about it, beyond giving 
them a cuddle and a hand-out.
Madonna's music has always been derivative trend-surfing. Now her African 
crusade is tail-ending not just Jolie, Bono and Bob Geldof, but the slightly 
less glamorous Gordon Brown. When she says with typical modesty that, since 
becoming a parent herself, she has "felt responsible for the children of the 
world", she is singing from Father Brown's song sheet.
They end up treating the whole of Africa as a helpless baby to be adopted by 
Western parents. Madonna's child charity is called "Raising Malawi", as if 
the country were a toddler to carry on her back. A century ago in The White 
Man's Burden, his ode to imperialism, Rudyard Kipling branded colonial 
subjects "half-devil and half-child". Is the vision of Africans offered in 
The White Madonna's Burden any more enlightened?