A disagreement between funders and organisers has led to a major AIDS benefit concert in South Africa to be called off.
As previously reported the event, first proposed by Nelson Mandela, was due to bring together the likes of Coldplay, Jimmy Cliff, Queen, Bono, Macy Gray, Shaggy, Nelly Furtado and Ms Dynamite for a concert held on Robben Island at the prison where Mandela was held for 18 years during the country’s apartheid regime, which has now been converted into a museum.
The concert, which would also have been screened in a stadium in Cape Town and on TV networks across the globe, aimed to promote awareness of the AIDS crisis in Africa, and to raise funds for those organisations attempting to battle the epidemic.
But the event will now not be staged after the Nelson Mandela Foundation, who were backrolling the concert, couldn’t come to an agreement with their producers.
"We were overwhelmed with the enthusiastic response to Madiba's [Mr Mandela's] call by the international artists who rose to the occasion to offer support for this proposed historic Human Rights Concert," John Samuel, chief executive of the Foundation, told reporters. "We have, however, concluded that the concert cannot take place since the proposed producers were not able to come to a satisfactory agreement with the foundation."