Condoms everywhere, the stink of latex … thousands of them rolling off the machines like sausages.
From its nondescript factory in Turffontein, south of Johannesburg, Latex Surgical Products makes about 200Â 000 condoms every day.
For the production of these intimate objects, the factory is a place as impersonal as you’ll ever come across. But then again, it also makes latex gloves …
The place reeks of rubber, or latex, which is stored in 2m-high drums.
Jeffery Hurwitz, the factory’s MD, showed the Mail & Guardian Online the ins and outs of making a condom.
An array of glass dildos as long as a forearm, called “formers” in the trade, hang from a belt and are dipped into vats of liquid latex.
The dildos are dipped once, and then popped into the ovens. After drying, they are again dipped in the liquid latex before going back into the oven.
Thereafter, the condoms are rolled and undergo a “leaching” process, in which all the impurities, water and residual protein are extracted from the condoms to prevent any protein-based allergies, which could result in a nasty rash.
The condoms are then blown off the dildo by a jet of air into water, after which an employee inspects them for stickiness, roughness, lumps, burn marks, machine damage, uneven powder distribution, something called “figure-eight beading” (in which the base of the condom is damaged) and, of course, holes.
They are then “washed” in a slurry of pharmaceutical grain starch and dried in huge tumble dryers.
As a measure of strength, some of the condoms are tested to bursting point. A condom is attached to a tube and when the machine is switched on, the condom swells up — to double the size of a watermelon — until it bursts.
Each condom, after being electronically tested, is then packaged for distribution. They are sealed in the well-known silver packaging with the Aids ribbon on the wrapper, which South Africans can obtain at nearly every government clinic for free.
According to the national HIV-prevention campaign loveLife, 40% of South Africa’s population is younger than 20, and 35% of HIV infections in the country take place before the age of 20.
United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/Aids statistics show that South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV in the world. At the end of 2003, 5,3-million people in South Africa were HIV-positive. There is no sign of a decline in the epidemic.
In 2003, the Department of Health procured more than 200-million condoms, according to the health ministry, which were distributed through the department’s anti-HIV/Aids and sexual health programmes.
It is an uphill battle, as many perceive condoms to be uncomfortable.
Durex recently started producing extra-large condoms for well-endowed men in South Africa.
As loveLife information assistant Zweli Dlomo puts it, in rural areas there is a “very difficult issue of culture” involved. However, he emphasised that there is a problem across the board around South Africa.
“Culture is not the only main determinant. Issues such as coercion, transactional sex, ignorance, pessimism, poverty and lack of education are perpetuating the spread of HIV/Aids.
“Many don’t believe that a condom should be used during sex because of their culture,” says Dlomo.
“We’ve all heard the saying, ‘I can’t eat a banana with its peel on. I have to take it off,'” adds Dlomo. “It’s just a myth.”