This
article is run courtesy of Daily Maverick. To
visit their site, please click here.
Kony who?
It was less a case of Invisible
Children and more a case of Invisible Activists on
Friday night. That date, 20 April, was the
occasion of Kony 2012's Cover the Night campaign.
Reports suggest it flopped worldwide but that Cape
Town put in a good effort. They also suggest that
Internet causes don't necessarily translate into
concrete action. By REBECCA DAVIS.
Since the release of its viral Kony 2012
video in March, Invisible Children has been taking
flak from all directions. The campaign, to make
Lord's Resistance Army-leader Joseph Kony famous in
order to keep international
attention focused on attempts to bring him to
justice, was accused of being simplistic, naive
and culturally insensitive. In the resulting
maelstrom of media scrutiny and criticism, founder
Jason Russell was captured on camera suffering a
public breakdown, beating the ground while naked
and ranting about the devil.
This was a PR
nightmare for the organisation, and the
media-savvy group took swift action. On 5 April,
Invisible Children released Kony 2012: Part II:
Beyond Famous, to address the concerns of their
detractors. This 20-minute sequel to the original
viral video was much more balanced and
informative, and consequently much less
compelling. It has garnered just under 2 million
views on YouTube at the time of writing, as
compared with the original's over 100 million
views.
Presumably as a result of Jason
Russell's meltdown, the follow-up video stars the
organisation's far less telegenic CEO Ben Keesey.
In response to criticisms that the group was out
of touch with the realities of ordinary Ugandans,
the video features a lot of behind-the-scenes
footage of the group interacting with locals. It
also attributes much of the thinking behind the
Kony 2012 campaign to Invisible Children's Ugandan
country director, Jolly Okot. Ugandan and
Congolese politicians are filmed expressing
support for the campaign.
The video claims
Invisible Children has "hardly been able to keep
up" with the worldwide activity around the Stop
Kony campaign, saying that after the first film
went viral they received 200 calls every two
minutes from people wanting to be involved. They
are also at pains to stress the material successes
achieved by the campaign. A fortnight after the
first video launched, two bi-partisan resolutions
condemning Kony and the LRA were introduced to the
US Senate and have been signed by 100 members of
Congress.
The African Union also
subsequently authorised a 5,000-strong force to
join the hunt for Kony. Other concrete action
taken includes the fact that the UN approached
Invisible Children to design and distribute flyers
giving LRA combatants advice on how to escape.
The second video also pays tribute to
previous efforts by religious groups and
politicians to find Kony and negotiate with the
LRA, something the first video was accused of
omitting. They explicitly note that Invisible
Children was not the first organisation to work on
the issue.
The video concludes with
instructions for the next step in the campaign:
the Cover the Night event. "Join us on April 20th
when we cover the night," says the video. "Get
ready. On April 20th we will turn this digital
revolution into something more, and show the world
who we really are".
The campaign was
highly ambitious: to wait until nightfall on 20
April and then cover "every city, on every block"
around the world with posters and flyers
publicising the Kony 2012 campaign.
The
campaign came under harsh criticism in the country
concerned beforehand. The Ugandan director of the
African Youth Initiative Network, Victor Ochen,
was quoted criticising the choice of date for the
event, saying: "Why 20 April? Don't they know or
care that this is the anniversary of one of the
worst LRA massacres, when over 300 people were
killed at Atiak in 2005?"
It also happens
to be the birth date of Adolf Hitler, with some
critics denouncing this fact as showing
insensitivity. (Hitler's face features on some of
the Kony 2012 posters, the intimation being that
Joseph Kony joins a pantheon of evil men, like
Hitler, in history.)
The mood around Kony
2012 in Uganda was particularly tense because of
events a week previously. Ugandan media reported
that on Friday 13 April, about 10,000 people
flocked to the Pece stadium in Gulu, northern
Uganda, to watch a public screening of the first
and second Kony videos. The crowd rapidly turned
rowdy, however, and began hurling stones at the
screens. They had been brought there by misleading
radio ads suggesting they were about to see films
which explained the full history of Joseph Kony
and the LRA.
Police used teargas at the
scene to disperse the protestors and then locked a
side entrance, causing a stampede through the main
gate which killed one person. Uganda's Acholi
Times quoted one woman as saying "I don't know if
this is the kind of peace they (Invisible
Children) think we should enjoy".
There
were initial suggestions that protests might be
organised on 20 April to register disapproval of
the Cover the Night campaign, but those apparently
failed to materialise. However, if dissenting
Ugandans feared the world would unite in large
numbers for Cover the Night events, their concerns
were unnecessary. Reports from around the world
suggested cities remained resolutely un-Covered by
Saturday morning.
Across the USA, it
seemed only a handful of people took part in
events in major cities, though the Invisible
Children website featured pictures of stunts like
a huge picture of Kony beamed on the side of a New
York building. In Seattle it was reported that
police officers tore down posters as soon as they
were stuck up. Some media outlets suggested the
organisers may have done themselves a disservice
by selecting 20 April, celebrated as National
Marijuana Day by weed aficionados.
In
Canada, in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, 4,800
people had RSVPd to the event on Facebook in
advance, with an actual turnout of about 20
people.
This disconnect between Facebook
support and real-life participation was evident
worldwide. In London, it was reported that about
50 of the 6,000 expected met at Trafalgar Square,
intending to paper the famous square with posters.
Unfortunately, organisers hadn't realised that St
George's Day celebrations were being held in
Trafalgar Square the day after, so there was no
access to the square itself.
In Australia,
about 50 people turned up to a Cover the Night
event in Brisbane, and about 25 people
participated in Sydney, according to local media
reports.
About 100 people pitched up in
Amsterdam for a screening of the film, with Radio
Netherlands reporting that, "While many initially
had been appalled by the atrocities shown in the
film, it seemed to have lost its impact. Taking
pictures with smartphones, filming the event and
posting it immediately on Facebook and Twitter
seemed to be more important".
Social media, the conduit for the Kony
campaign's initial success, now became the vehicle
for its condemnation, with Twitter users
branding the event an "epic fail". In the
mainstream media, where criticism of the campaign had been
loud and sustained, there were suggestions
that Invisible Children's credibility was now
fatally damaged. Yet the group itself seemed determined
to spin Cover the Night as a success, tweeting
links to pictures and videos and
announcing: "Cleanups, food drives & gardening were just a few
of the creative service projects people did leading
up
to#coverthenight".search.twitter.com/search?q=&tag=coverthenight&lang=all
But the organisation seemed particularly
impressed by one city's participation. Invisible
Children tweeted: "Cape Town, South Africa might
need to open up an IC office #honoraryemployees
#coverthenight #amazing", with a link to a video
made by Shane Vermooten. The video captures about
30 young Capetonians pasting Kony 2012 posters and
distributing flyers around the CBD, and explaining
their motivations for doing so. It's shot in a
funky, choppy style and set to the K'naan World
Cup hit Waving the Flag. As such, it fits
perfectly with the Invisible Children aesthetic.
In fact, it could easily have been produced by the
San Diego-based HQ.
The Daily Maverick
tracked down Vermooten, 22, a freelance film
editor and director. He explained that his
involvement with the campaign had been limited to
shooting the video. Cape Town's Cover the Night
activities were co-ordinated by an 18-year-old
called Michel Comitis, who matriculated from
Bishops last year and will start studying at Brown
University in the US in August.
Comitis
was at pains to stress that he had no affiliation
with Invisible Children and was only interested in
the cause: "I know there's a lot of speculation
about the organisation, but I found the cause
noble." Comitis used his personal networks and
social media to disseminate information about the
20 April plans. He then had 5,000 posters and
flyers printed at his own expense. About 3,000
ended up being distributed.
A group
assembled on the allotted evening near the Cape
Town Station and proceeded to paper the centre of
town with their material. Comitis estimated the
total number of people involved as amounting to
around 200, though he said it was difficult to say
with precision because people came through in
dribs and drabs. Posters were also dropped off for
distribution in other areas of Cape Town.
Invisible Children had been in touch,
Comitis said, to give thanks and advice, although
he again stressed his distance from the group.
"Because there's been doubts about where the money
is going, we didn't want to raise money for them,"
he explained. He said he found negativity about
the cause in South Africa to be "sad" given the
country's history of oppression.
"There's
someone who's doing harm close to home, and I
can't see how any decent person can object to
raising awareness about that issue. Why not try to
get involved? When people every day are saying
'What are you doing, it's stupid', it can be hard
to keep going, but at the end of the day I feel
good about what we did."
Vermooten
explained that he deliberately shot the video in
the style of the other Invisible Children films.
"I had watched their videos and knew how
they shoot: guerrilla-style." He said he had
emailed the organisation his film after producing
it, and hoped to have further contact with them.
Reports from social media suggested that
Cover the Night activities had also taken place in
other South African cities, but at the time of
writing there didn't seem to be any other snappy
videos circulating other than the one from Cape
Town.
It remains to be seen how long the
posters will last on the city streets. The Daily
Maverick received a report that some Kony 2012
posters stuck up around Cape Town's Varsity
College had already been papered over by a
concerned individual with an explanation of why
the cause was problematic, including facts about
Invisible Children, and concluding with the words:
"Let's stop buying into glamour causes. Let's
start making a difference in meaningful,
measurable and mature ways. Instant outrage is
easy. Actual critical engagement is much harder
and, therefore, much more valuable."
As
for Invisible Children, they have already released
their next video, titled What's Next. It announces
the organisation's plans to descend on the UN in
June to deliver Kony 2012 pledges, but says the
next big thing will happen on 3 November. On that
day, they promise, "This movement will unite like
never before". There are no further details. DM
This
article is run courtesy of Daily Maverick. To
visit their site, please click here.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
