September 16 – 22 2005

An ungenerous critique

Rena Singer’s commentary (“Is loveLife making them love life?”, August 19) is thought-provoking and provocative. Healthy public debate about our national response to the HIV/Aids epidemic is important to increasing public understanding of Aids and to improving the public response. In provoking this, Singer’s article makes common cause with the loveLife campaigns it considers.

But it seems less than generous to loveLife’s objectives and achievements. In targeting highly vulnerable youth, loveLife is one of the very few national HIV prevention programmes in South Africa.

I became a member of loveLife’s advisory board in 2003, sharing some of the reservations Singer cites. But I have been impressed by its innovative approaches and by the wide range of its constructive interventions (often wrongly thought to be only the billboards).

As Singer’s article acknowledges, sexual behaviour change is difficult — there are few successful models from which to draw lessons. What is clear is that curtailing the rate of HIV infection requires long-term effort. There are no quick answers.

And loveLife has certainly provoked awareness and debate — by 2003 (three years after its launch), more than 85% of young people knew about it.

This is a perplexing and in many respects intractable epidemic. There is a strong argument that loveLife’s messages should become more explicit; but its preventive work certainly deserves time to prove itself. — Edwin Cameron, Bloemfontein

loveLife is making a difference to the young people out there. That is my experience.

loveLife gave me choices. My sexual behaviour was not good, and it shaped me through its training.

I know a lot of young people involved in drug abuse, who had lots of sexual partners, who were involved in crime and who dropped out of school. Since they started using our programmes, a lot of them are improving.

We see the behaviour change each and every day. They visit our clinic, seek advice and get services.

On the antenatal care day at the clinic, we see only about one teen in 20 clients who is HIV-positive. We distribute about 10 000 condoms each month.

Young people now feel free to come to the clinic and talk about any problem with us.

Come to my community, and I promise they’ll tell you loveLife is changing and saving lives. — NB Cetuso, Centurion

Robert Kirby’s comments on a recent Soul City publication HIV and Aids, Prevention, Care and Treatment, aimed at a highly literate readership, makes a number of points we believe are unfounded (Loose Cannon, September 2).

Far from criticising the many logos on the publication, Kirby should applaud our ability to bring in multiple partners to fund this type of intervention. If he has access to one major funder who will cover all our work, we would welcome discussions, as it would make our life simpler.

Kirby wrongly assumes the booklet is aimed at a low-literate, “unsophisticated” audience and that meanings could be misconstrued. In fact, it is written for a sophisticated, highly literate readership. The development of Soul City material involves rigorous research. The booklet’s contents were tested on a selected sample of its target audience and passed by a range of experts in the field. No one drew Kirby’s conclusions.

The two paragraphs he quotes are presented totally out of context. He concludes that the sentence “non-consensual sex and sex with a young child is rape” implies that sex with older children is not rape. However, this quote is part of a broader paragraph on HIV/Aids myths, where the first myth outlined is that “having sex with a young child or a virgin can cure HIV”. The paragraph then states: “Non-consensual sex and sex with a young child is rape”. Any intelligent reader will understand that the wording is tailored to counter the wording of the myth itself.

His second example — “Thus men may have unprotected anal sex with other men” — is part of a larger paragraph that explains how men can place themselves at risk. Read in context, it is clear that literate people, for whom the book is written, are highly unlikely to draw Kirby’s conclusion.

We have, in addition, received excellent feedback from people using the booklet. — Garth Japhet, executive director, Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication

To Alex Myers, a foreskin seems more important than life itself (Letters, September 9). I find it astounding that after 30 studies involving thousands of men producing overwhelming evidence that circumcision is an effective anti-HIV measure, Myers still insists it is a “sexually crippling” procedure.

I and millions of others enjoy happy sex lives, untainted by smegma and an over-sensitive penis.

The government should sponsor routine circumcision of all male babies as a matter of urgency. This could save lives. — Roy Anderson, Gardens, Cape Town

SA needs defection law

I see no reason for the “crosstitution” complaints of Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosutho Buthelezi and other opposition parties. Floor–crossing has an impact on the original electoral balance, but it does not necessarily mean a shift in defectors’ ideologies and electoral support. The law gives parliamentarians freedom to speak and act on the basis of personal conviction.

South African politics requires this type of manoeuvring because if parliamentarians are disaffected with internal party anarchy, like many Inkatha Freedom Party members, they can change to other parties to uphold the needs of voters, not just party interests. — Selby L Matloga, Braamfontein

Scandal in waiting

Yolandi Groenewald quotes the South African NGO Coalition as saying NGOs were not asked to inject reality into the government’s Millennium Development Goals report to the United Nations (“Power vs Poverty”, September 9). The true figures of working taps, usable toilets and occupied houses will not be released because no one knows them. It is a national scandal in waiting.

Municipalities are nervous of being given responsibility for hundreds of non-functioning water systems. They are worried about the many unusable latrines, and about the building standards of the thousands of Reconstruction and Development Programme houses that will not withstand heavy rainfall.

Because of the almost total lack of contract monitoring, huge sums of money have been wasted, and plans are being made to rebuild water systems less than 10 years old that have never produced water.

The government’s figures reflect the numbers written into contracts, not what the customer gets. — John King, Tzaneen

Rape device will not empower

There appears to be a widespread belief that the new Rapex device will empower women and protect them from rape. I am concerned about the device for the following reasons:

• Women have a constitutional right to feel safe, and this device creates the perception that they are responsible for their own safety. Why are we not focusing on what must be done to stop men from raping?
• It is only activated once the penis enters the vagina.
• It will not protect women from oral rape, anal rape, rape by objects or gang rape.
• It will make women vulnerable to violent reactions from the rapist, and increase the potential of being hurt or killed. Rapists may also “test” to see if the woman is wearing the device by using an object, and then rape her genitally.

There are no simple solutions to rape in South Africa. We must find solutions to the root causes, and this starts with the relationship between men and women in families, in homes, at work and society in general. — Chantel Cooper, director, Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust

Cronin’s wilful blindness

Jeremy Cronin supports the continuation of the tripartite alliance because, among other things, it has weaned Thabo Mbeki away from neo-liberalism. (“It’s not going to happen”, September 9) How little, and how late! After a million jobs have been lost!

Cronin adds that “a democratic breakthrough has been won [in 1994]” and that in “townships and rural villages, communities are trying to give substance to this democracy through community policing forums, school-governing bodies, water committees, co-ops, health forums, ward committees and integrated development plans”.

Cronin’s complacency, or perhaps wilful blindness, is astonishing. The recent experience in Cape Town’s townships, and I imagine it is repeated countrywide, is that this whole structure of “forums”, “ward committees” and so on is constructed top-down above the heads of ordinary people, to impose an African National Congress consensus view on them.

“Integrated development plans” are hardly worth the paper they are written on. Take the trumpeted N2 Gateway Plan. There is a 260 000 housing backlog in the Western Cape. The N2 Gateway Plan is supposed to deliver 22 000 houses before June next year — but only 145 houses have been constructed. At that rate, it will take many, many years before the existing housing backlog is cleared. Moreover, many communities feel they have not been consulted about this “plan”.

It is the people who struggle outside these structures to demand delivery who are the real democrats. Yet they are accused by ANC “committees” of “politicising” issues and are demonised. Dozens of people in the recent housing protests in Cape Town were charged with “public violence” for merely burning tyres in the road.

Take three examples of democratic protest: the 11km march of 40 000 people in eMbalenhle; the march of numerous communities taking place in Durban on September 14; and the mass rally around the slogan of “Decent housing for all, now” scheduled for September 17 in Khayelitsha.

Cronin supported this kind of protest several years ago. Yet none of them owe anything to the — “alliance”. They are genuine protests of ordinary people.

If the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions would break with the alliance and lead the overwhelming majority of the people, it would offer hope to all those who face the prospect of an irreconcilably divided ANC. It would assert a mass force that could meet the needs of the people and realise the demands of the Freedom Charter. — Martin Legassick, Mowbray

Life without God full of meaning

Does Derrick Kourie, in his letter “Gloomy culture of death” (September 9), not see the irony in wanting George Monbiot to abandon his 100-year-old “old-fashioned faith” in favour of one (I suspect) that is 2 000 years old?

His letter is typical of the methods used to attack those of an atheistic outlook. He first of all extrapolates Monbiot’s view to infer that “life is essentially meaningless” and then takes a further illogical (as he admits) step to say that Monbiot would consider a shorter life preferable to a longer one.

What nonsense. A lack of belief in eternal life, a corollary of the lack of belief in God, in no way makes one’s life meaningless. What about living a happy family life, having a successful career, holding political office, working for charity, discovering new areas of science or simply enjoying the beauties of nature and art?

I would submit that these are meaningful goals and a longer life containing these things is preferable to a shorter one. What is more, being an atheist in no way precludes one from these pursuits. Robert Kirby (Loose Cannon, September 9) might be interested to know that the word for “reverse polygamy” is “polyandry” — a woman being married to more than one husband at the same time. Despite his claim that this idea “flies in the face of traditions going back to the very dawn of time”, Hindus are familiar with the story of the much-revered Draupadi, from the Mahabharata, who was married to five brothers at the same time.

She is portrayed as proud, courageous and outspoken, protesting vehemently at various male–perpetrated injustices meted out to her: a possible role model for contemporary women. — Alleyn Diesel, Pietermaritzburg

The difference between an atheist and a person with a religious outlook is that they believe that fulfilment of one’s potential must occur here on Earth, and that good deeds are done purely for mankind’s benefit, not for the attainment of eternal life. — Peter Gibb, Durban

Role model

Robert Kirby (Loose Cannon, September 9) might be interested to know that the word for “reverse polygamy” is “polyandry” — a woman being married to more than one husband at the same time. Despite his claim that this idea “flies in the face of traditions going back to the very dawn of time”, Hindus are familiar with the story of the much-revered Draupadi, from the Mahabharata, who was married to five brothers at the same time.

She is portrayed as proud, courageous and outspoken, protesting vehemently at various male–perpetrated injustices meted out to her: a possible role model for contemporary women. — Alleyn Diesel, Pietermaritzburg

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