Former South African president Nelson Mandela and a group of African musicians on Saturday added their voice to global calls on increased attention and actions on poverty relief in Africa.

A widely-respected statesman, Mandela, who turns 87 this month,urged leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) members of industrialized countries to act on poverty relief in Africa to prevent "a crime against humanity."

Addressing to a massive music gathering at Mary Fitzgerald Square in the heart of Johannesburg, the anti-apartheid hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner said poverty relief was not a gesture of charity but a matter of human justice.

"When poverty persists, there is no true freedom," said the octogenarian who has devoted all his life into fighting for freedom of the South fricans. Mandela said the G8 leaders will have a historical moment when they meet in Gleneagles, Scotland, next week to address issues on Africa's development and global climate change.

"History and the generations to come will judge our leaders by the decisions they make in the coming weeks," he said. "I say to all those leaders, do not look the other way, do not hesitate .. It is within your power to avoid a genocide of humanity."

"It is easy to make promises ... but we want action," he said, arousing waves of applause and cheers from the crowd.

"Not to do this, it will be a crime against humanity," said Mandela, a leading campaigner against poverty and injustice in Africa.

The Johannesburg concert, called Africa Standing Tall Against Poverty, was in concert with a series of Live 8 concerts in Tokyo,London, Rome, Berlin, Philadelphia and other northern-hemisphere cities, which was initiated by Irish rock star Bob Geldof.

The concerts days before the G8 summit are aimed at pressuring the summit to cancel Africa's foreign debts, double aid and promote fair trade. Unlike the concerts on the northern hemisphere which have excluded African artists, for which Geldof was criticized, the concert in Johannesburg was a real African musical feast with indigenous superstars like African reggae band Lucky Dube, Oumou Sangare from Mali, Lindiwe from Zambia and Kwaito boy Zola.

The six-hour concert was broadcast live across Africa and linked up to with Live 8 concerts around the world, which attracted millions of viewers via television and the Internet.

Music fans began to converge at the square at Newtown after the concert started at 13:00 (GMT 1100) and the organizers estimated that the crowd could reach some 40,000 at the peak time. The South African Press Association said some 20,000 turned out.

Many of them swung, jumped and waved arms with rhythms, while some staged a peaceful protest to cry out their demands.

Azwindini Sekoba, 7, held a placard reading "As a child I have a right to food. Let us come together and beat up poverty."

Her mother Ndivhu, a Johannesburg-based campaigner on violence against women, said the concert was a "wake-up call" to attract global attentions to problems in Africa, the world's poorest continent.

But Mieke Krynauw, a law student from the University of Cape Town, said she thought the Western countries have heard too much and they need to take real actions now.

Krynauw's friend Brian Killick said people in the developed world, like his countrymen in Canada, have been enjoying a lot of privileges and now they should shoulder more responsibilities.

"There must be some balance," Killick said when asked about his response to Africa's call for removal of trade barriers and greater access of African products to the western market.

The concert was organized by Global Call to Action Against Poverty, a coalition of dozens of non-governmental organizations in Africa, including Action Aid International (AAI).

"This is the first time that Africa shows the world its solidarity and send out the message to G8 leaders in one voice," said Njeri Mwangi-Kinyoho, a Nairobi-based AAI worker.

She said Saturday's concert would be staged in Nairobi and Accra, Ghana, in the next two months, "and this is just the beginning of African people's long engagement into the fight for their future."

"Africa must champion this campaign," she said.

Source: Xinhua