Comment
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
President Thabo Mbeki’s speech at Fort Hare will lay nothing to rest. The president’s latest conspiracy theory on the Aids issue that Aids statistics have more to do with derogatory views (that “we” are “promiscuous carriers of germs” with an “unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust”) than sexual behaviour comes at a time when the nation may be approaching the darkest hour in the Aids crisis. South Africans and the world have grown weary of the dangerous rhetoric of our leaders. A generation of young South Africans is looking up to a president who has freely and publicly expressed his views about the state of Aids in the country. What are they learning?
Mbeki’s comments at Fort Hare came on the heels of the controversy surrounding his blocking of the Medical Research Council report on Aids. What is disturbing about all this “dithering” is that it has prevented real dialogue on the Aids issue in the country. For instance, how can we have public debate on men’s sexual behaviour, which, with only a few exceptions, is notoriously promiscuous throughout most of Africa, if the president of the country chooses to use political rhetoric to avoid confronting some of the most critical issues about the spread of Aids in South Africa?
Great strides have been made by community organisations working on Aids awareness programmes. The government has tried to lend its support in some areas. But one gets the feeling that there is an overwhelming sense of paralysis at government level, and politicians have simply decided to deny that there is a crisis.
Perhaps we shall hear no greater truth than the one revealed by Parks Mankahlana before he died. The straight-talking Parks cut through the government denials of the causal relationship between HIV and Aids, which were repeated recently by the Mpumalanga health minister, and said plainly: if we provide medication to save the babies of pregnant mothers with Aids, the government will be faced with a new problem; the problem of orphans.
If the government can’t save the country’s unborn, it could at least save the living. Exactly six months since the pharmaceutical industry dropped a suit trying to prevent the government from importing cheaper anti-Aids drugs, rape victims still can’t get anti-retroviral drugs to protect them from contracting Aids. Instead, doctors who have done so have been accused, by the Mpumalanga health minister of trying to overthrow the government. The picture of our minister of health in the New York Times, jubilant after the decision by the pharmaceutical companies on April 19, gave one hope. But for all that jubilation, Aids patients have no advocates among elected officials.
One could say without exaggeration that the state’s failure to face the facts about Aids at the expense of human life is approaching criminal levels. In its failure to respond effectively, the government ignores principles that lie not only at the heart of leadership, but also at the heart of all humanity.
The first step towards a healthier path would be for leaders to publicly announce that there is a crisis, and so attitudes towards sex and sexual practices must change. Gone are the 1960s and 1970s when sex was equal to adventure. Among other things, the practice of multiple sexual partners should be actively discouraged, and monogamous relationships encouraged. Who better to do this than political leaders themselves? “We,” Mr President, do have a problem of sexual promiscuity among our men. Ask any woman.
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a visiting scholar at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge and is adjunct professor at both Harvard University and Wellesley College. Her book, Have I Ever Killed Any of Your Friends and Family? will be published next year