ANYONE who has spent time with Bob Geldof will know he's a sweary old git. Effing blinding this and that, and so on. So I wasn't surprised at his acerbic response this week to critics of the Band Aid song, Do They Know It's Christmas?

This charity chestnut, now targeting the Ebola virus, was first released in 1984 to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia, then reprised in 2004 to tackle debt relief. Risible as it may seem - and here at the Mahogany Ridge we don't do "holiday" tunes as they remind us of crowded malls - the latest version has become the fastest-selling single in the UK of 2014. 

But not everyone over there likes it. For example, William Pooley, the Sierra Leone-based nurse who became the first confirmed Briton to contract the virus, told Radio Times: "It's Africa, not another planet. That sort of cultural ignorance is a bit cringeworthy. There's a lyric about ‘death in every tear'. It's a bit much." And singer Emili Sande, who performed on the song, felt the lyrics needed changing.

"It's a pop song, it's not a doctoral thesis," Geldof responded. "They can f••• off. They're more than welcome to be offended by me. I couldn't give a toss. Seriously, I'm the wrong guy. The reality behind the pop song - Christmassy, corny, whatever you think about it - the reality behind it is stark. If it's a pop song that can help ease the pain, the agony, if they can die with a little more dignity then, yeah, I'm there. It's pretty simple."

And, he added, somewhat disingenuously, he was "thrilled" by the backlash. "You forget that I came along in 1976 and we were part of the punk thing. I love disruption. And when it's politically focused, it's very powerful. You focus the noise to your political end. If the conversation is taking place in kitchens, cafes, bars and pubs - whereas it was maybe a news item before, now it's the common currency of conversation in the UK. And it's because of this record." 

However, for critics like author Richard Poplak, the song has done more harm than good, and "a generation of Westerners" have come to view Africa as a place of no hope. Writing in the Daily Maverick, Poplak suggested that such perceptions came at great cost. "I would like to know how much real money - not unreal aid money - has Band Aid robbed from the continent in lost tourism and investment? I'd wager it's more than half a billion."

Well, yes, and then Cape Town was voted - for the third year running - the world's best city to visit in the 2014 Telegraph Travel Awards. South Africa was voted the third best country to visit, with Botswana, Tanzania and Namibia also featuring in the top 20. Mauritius and the Seychelles were also there, but that's by the by. So, I guess some tourist money has come to Africa.

But Poplak is correct to lament the "intellectual indolence" of the "celebrity benevolence industrial complex". The song, as Geldof suggests, needn't be a doctoral thesis, but it should at least offer something for the grey matter. 

Which is why I believe it should be rejigged to benefit Blade Nzimande, the general secretary of the SA Communist Party, because he definitely doesn't know that it's Christmas.

This is a shame. The rest of us are aware that now is that kind, forgiving, charitable time when, as Charles Dickens put it, "men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

But such sentiment was wholly absent from Nzimande's address, over in Bellville, to the historic fourth national congress of the Young Communist League of SA. 

Not a single mention of "joy", "peace", "love" or "goodwill" or any of the other themes in the more popular carols. Instead, there came babble about anti-majoritarianism, scary white men, hooligans in Parliament, greedy banks, shameless reporters, the neo-fascist regime-change agenda, and so on. 

Comrade Grinch is certainly tireless when it comes to wheeling out the class war cliches and dressing them up in old jargon and phlegm. Some of his exhortations could be seen as parody, but imagine them in song: 

Deepen the capacity for historical and dialectical materialism! Steel yourselves in the scientific outlook of society and nature! Contest an academia which is currently hegemonised by the (neo) liberal agenda at the direct expense of the presence of the intellectual and ideological perspectives of the liberation movement!

Put that to music, Band Aid. 

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.

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