Photo by Julien Harneis

Will people please stop asking me to be the change I want to see in the world? Did Ghandi really say that? Really?

It seems so unlikely. A bit like Martin Luther King singing The Wind Beneath My Wings to the massed crowds in Washington.

Admittedly, it is very difficult to get people to actually hand over their cash (rather than endlessly raising awareness, which is easy). But there are surely more original ways to inspire action. A colleague of mine at GreaterGood SA called it ‘charity porn’ – gaunt children looking balefully at the camera out of fly-infested eyes. Is that supposed to make me believe I can change things with my R50?

These are my top five offenders in the charidee homily stakes. There are others (and we are all guilty – let she who casts the first stone etc) so if you find some, please share. Or own-up if they are yours.

1. Anything that quotes Nelson Mandela, unless it’s the actual Nelson Mandela Foundation or the man himself. Particularly if it calls him ‘Madiba’ or ‘Tata’. Get your own spokesperson and leave the poor man to a peaceful retirement.

2. Charity websites with soundtracks (any website with a soundtrack). If the track is Something Inside So Strong by Labi Siffre (now there’s a name), deduct extra points.

3. Shocking photographs of sick, dying, severely disabled or similarly at-risk beneficiaries. This is just wrong. And shock tactics rarely work . So it is wrong and a waste of time – a double-whammy of uselessness.

4. Brown logos. Why does development in Africa have to be brown? Is there some law against having a splash of happy colour in your logo? Really and truly. Brown is so 1975 – can we move on please?

5. We are the world. No, we are not. We are, in general, a massively disparate group of self-interested nosey parkers. Serious development problems are complex and will not be solved by us all reaching out to each other, being friends and sharing. Sadly, hard cash (and lots of it) is needed to solve the world’s problems. Where hard cash won’t help, revolution is usually the only viable solution.