Kevin Myers listens to the debate about debt relief for the third world, he observes the numerous concerts around the world in which rock musicians call for governments to do more for Africa, and he feels as if he has been inhaling best Moroccan gold.
Because as far as I can see, there is no connection whatsoever between what the do-gooders in the West proclaim to be the reasons for the hunger, disease and premature death in Africa, and the actual reasons.
Instead we get self-serving sermonising which flatters egos, eases consciences and makes the participants feel infinitely better about themselves. But concerts, and assembling multitudes in Edinburgh, and bawling that constantly reiterated and witless refrain "Make Poverty History" will make no difference whatever to Africans' lives.
What happens to people who say such things, such as the admirable John O'Shea of Goal, who has been pointing out the futility of pouring money into Africa for over a decade? Well, if they're lucky, they're simply ignored. If they're unlucky, they'll probably be treated to some foam-flecked denunciations of their imperialism, colonialism, racism, capitalism, fascism, or whatever fashionable crime the bien-pensant witch-burners feel like accusing dissenters of.
This Western fever about Doing Something For Africa is not actually about Africa. It is about moral self-indulgence, about making people feel better about themselves: simply, it is a form of voodoo. For the credulous in our post-Christian world accept as a matter of faith that concerts in Hyde Park and elsewhere can change things in Africa - and this is no more or less ridiculous than the belief by the gangs of Sierra Leone that juju will make them immune to bullets.
For this is the new and godless religion, in which the priests are pop stars, the liturgy is rock music, and the object of reverence is an abstract and imagined entity called Africa. The witch doctors of this religion tell us that if Africa is forgiven its debts, then in essence all will be well. These debts are seen to be the responsibility of evil things called banks, and if only the banks could be persuaded to lift the debts, Africa could rise from the misery and the torpor which is overwhelming it.
This is not logic, but simply the reinvention of the medieval miracle and mystery play.
The simplified view of the world which this play offers is possible only if the ordinary intellectual faculties of scepticism and doubt are suspended - and suspended they must have been for people to believe the kind of rubbish which is routinely recycled about Africa. Take, for example, the figures for HIV/Aids in Uganda, which are said to have been more than halved by the government of Africa's latest president-for-life, Yoweri Museveni. Now how can anyone actually believe any figures about Aids from a country for which not one single reliable statistic exists? After decades of conflict, Uganda is still racked by an insane civil war and no government institution functions nationwide. Only a pious devotion to the mumbo-jumbo of pop voodoo could cause observers to accept that Ugandan rates of HIV/Aids are far lower than those of its neighbours; that's right, and the Irish Sea is far lower off the Dublin coast than off Wicklow.
The most obvious actuarial laws are suspended when discussing Africa, especially if the name of the Catholic Church is invoked. Take, for example, the church's hostility to condoms, and its policy that the only way to halt the Aids epidemic is through fidelity and sexual continence. Critics of the church reply that condoms work 90 per cent of the time - and incredibly, they actually think that's an argument.
If you were told that crossing the road was safe nine times out of 10, how would you feel on the 10th trip? Okay, you might not be hit for sure on that occasion, but you know, actuarially, you inevitably will be.
Similarly, since young people will have sex perhaps several times a day, what use your 90 per cent safety then? And does it matter which sexual deed transmits the disease to you - the first, the 10th or the 20th? Because, with a 10 per cent margin of infection, you will, with reasonable certainty, sooner or later contract it.
And only with the religion that is called Africa are the ordinary mathematics of life utterly abandoned. Through the voodoo of that religion, the condom which is known to be unsafe 10 per cent of the time - and all accept this - somehow achieves the 100 per cent magical protection conferred by the bullet-proofing waters with which the warriors of Sierra Leone anoint themselves.
An extraordinary intellectual and moral inconsistency lies at the heart of this religion called Africa. Bono preaches at governments to spend more on aid to Africa, but admits to availing of the tax exemption schemes available to artists. Notwithstanding the charitable donations U2 members make, he personally could afford to eradicate malaria from an entire country - yet he chooses not to spend his vast wealth on such a project. He would, apparently, rather spend his money chasing a hat through the Dublin courts.
Yet this imbecilic and degrading conduct doesn't prevent him lecturing, posing and preaching. Nor does it prevent him from being accepted at his own estimate of himself. And in its way, this confirms that this new world-wide movement that has filled our airwaves in the past few days is a religion - for in matters of faith, we do not seek intellectual consistency. Bishops preach charity but practise self-indulgence; a Rome steeped in gold and opulence praises self-denial; the Poor Clares are certainly not poor - and nor, by God, are Sir Bob and St Bono.