I agree with you, my president: say no to the United States war against Iraq. Say no to President George W Bush and his nemesis, Osama bin Laden. And to all the unholy gods in whose name innocent civilians and conscripted soldiers are killed. In whose name the bodies of women and children are desecrated.
In the first Gulf War the US denied, then admitted, that its bomber pilots were shown violent pornography before taking off over civilian areas in Iraq. The misogyny that used violent pornography in that war is today coated in US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. She shares the oil interests, speaks the language, and is the spokesperson of the misogynsts.
In times of war, violence against women and children increases. In the US in 1999 an average of four women were killed every day in ”domestic violence”. What would that statistic be today … in the US, in Iraq, in every war-torn country?
Say no to this war, my president,
Say no to this war,
But don’t stop there, my president,
Say no to the brutality of every war,
Military, political, economic or religious,
In homes, workplaces, in South Africa or in any part of our world
Say no to the war against those who are poor,
Say no to the war against those who are raped and beaten to death,
Say no to the war against those who die of HIV/Aids,
Say no to all these wars and you speak for all South Africa’s citizens.
Today US military spending exceeds a trillion dollars, while the number of poor in the world continues to grow. The priority of the US government is clear. The US Space Command talks of ”dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investments”.
Say no, my president, say no to protecting those interests when tens of thousands have lost their jobs because South Africa tried to be quicker than anyone else in implementing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Say no to protecting those interests through privatising even that most basic of rights: water. Say no when an estimated 10-million South Africans are cut off from their water supply because they are too poor and there is still no real social security system in our country. Stats SA’s latest statistics on unemployment, child labour and poverty are devastating.
Meanwhile, an estimated R60-billion is spent on war toys for the boys. In 1994 and 1995 former MK commander Joe Slovo and former intelligence minister Joe Nhlanhla provided a substantial argument against this spending, in favour of social expenditure. If anyone should have known what South Africa’s military needs were, it should surely have been them.
Say no, my president, to the war against those who die because they cannot afford private treatment for HIV/Aids and its related opportunistic infections. In 1998 you said: ”For too long we have closed our eyes as a nation hoping the truth was not so real. For many years we have allowed HIV to spread, and at a rate that is one of the fastest in the world.” It is 2003 and the government still has no treatment plan to help save those who are dying daily (approximately 600 people a day).
What does it take for those with the power to hear, to listen to those around them? How long will it take before those with the power to speak break their silence? How many more deaths does it take before rhetoric translates into the power of action?
What does it take, my president, to open the eyes of those who have the power of sight yet continue to keep their eyes shut tight? What stops the government implementing its own laws … its own Cabinet commitments? South Africa and the world rejoiced when our country won against the pharmaceutical industry. Why are we not using that law and other South African laws to make sure that there is affordable generic treatment? To make sure we are guided by the needs of South Africa’s citizens, not by the holy god of profit.
It is time, my president, to say no to so much unnecessary death, to so much grief, to so many wars. Aids affects all of us. But it affects women and girls in very specific ways. It brings together the factors of poverty and unemployment, women’s and men’s biological make-up, violence, gender inequality and the famous double standard (the man who sleeps around is a ”real man”, the woman who does the same is a ”slut”). It does this in a particularly horrifying way. Too many studies reiterate the horror when they verify women’s greater vulnerability to HIV infection and confirm HIV/Aids as the leading cause of death among females.
It is time for us to put an end to the vicious whispering, the damaging lies: ”She must have slept around. She has Aids … well she was a whore …”
The self-righteous judgements that do not hear the dissenting voice that points to the fact that most women get Aids from the man to whom they are faithful … from the man who would have beaten them to death if they dared ask that he use a condom … from the rapist who said she was a frigid ice-queen, a lesbian who needed a man … from a blood transfusion … from a dirty needle-prick at the clinic where she works. That she is a baby and she got it from her parents who conceived her jointly — not just her mother who was chastised by the nurse as irresponsible when she asked for treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission. That she is a child whose family was starving, because the breadwinner was retrenched and now she brings home money from prostitution. It is time to hear the dissenting voice within. We need no morally vacuous godsquads to reveal the glaring truth.
It is time for the women’s movement to stand by the young women who courageously refuse to die quietly in some obscure corner, so the politics — the immorality that parades as morality — can complacently continue its quibbling. These young women know their lives are valuable. They refuse to smile sweetly, to be diplomatic, loyal, strategic, tactical, dead. They know what it will take to save their lives and millions of others.
This epidemic forces us to examine the most difficult issues — the ones closest to home. We are challenged to refuse to play by the patriarch’s rules in the bedroom or the boardroom. We can see that this time it could cost us our lives. We can no longer buy the simplistic notion of sex as sin, women as a source of temptation and evil, and Aids as God’s judgement on all grievous sinners. We have to respond to the challenge of Aids. But as humans we cannot live only with horror. We will, instead, define our politics, our spirituality, our sexuality and our power in ways that celebrate the joy of life.
My president these young women are your African Renaissance,
They will not yield to this war against Africa’s soul,
They remind us of all that was noble about the struggle against apartheid, as they hold up high the flags of their courage and determination, displaying South Africa’s symbol of that struggle — Nelson Rohlihlala Mandela.
In the face of death they laugh as they stand up for all our lives,
These young women are the living spirit of Ubuntu,
Let them fill your heart with power, my president, as you say no to war.
I write this to you in honour of all my friends and comrades who have died of Aids.
Pregs Govender, a former ANC MP who wrote the report ”How Best Can SA Address the Impact of HIV/Aids on Women and Girls?”, delivered this speech on Friday at the march to Parliament for a National Treatment Action Plan. Govender is currently an associate at the Africa Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town.