Some learners make a bigger impression on you than others. Naledi was one of these. I met her at a secondary school in Soweto in 2002 where I was working on an HIV programme.
Naledi was not the kind of person who waited for you to tell her what to do. In no time she had formed a small group of juniors to mentor and brought me an inspired poem one of them had written about the Aids virus. Next she choreographed a dance that depicted the power of the HIV virus and our power to overcome it. There was no doubt about it — this was a great girl. Was it a year later that I got a message that she had taken an overdose of pills and died? She had spoken to her friends who did not take her seriously as she had such an effervescent personality. She has not left my mind — as I type the print becomes indistinct.
Teenagers are important to you as an educator, however much trouble they give you! In a sense they belong to you. Educators are the ones who prepare young people for the future. The awful truth is, that for many of our learners, there will be no future. Research on the number of deaths per age group verifies the toll HIV is having on the younger generation. There is an ‘unnatural hump” in the graph depicting the number of 15 to 24 year olds that are dying of Aids.
One principal I met washed his hands of the situation. He was adamant that learners had to take responsibility for themselves. This argument is difficult to accept for a number of reasons. One is that teenagers are inexperienced and another is that, according to brain research, they are less able physiologically than adults to make decisions or control impulses (The Education Digest).
Adam Kahane, writer of Solving Tough Problems puts forward a theory that does not let us off the hook quite so easily. Kahane contends that ‘it is not enough to be observers of the problem situation; we must also recognise ourselves as actors who influence the outcome. If we cannot see how what we are doing or not doing is contributing to things being the way that they are, then — we have zero leverage, for changing the way things are —”
‘The way things are” on the HIV front is easier to access than usual because of the news reports that flooded in from the 16th International Aids Conference that took place in Toronto recently.
Overall, our report card indicates that we have failed on a number of scores.
South African had the highest number of HIV/Aids deaths in the world last year — 320 000 — and the second-highest number of people living with Aids — more than five million.
Tragically, 750 000 lives were lost in 2005 alone because the South African government failed to roll our anti-retrovirals in time. Furthermore 800 HIV-positive people die every day in South Africa.
Our health minister caused a stir at the conference with her controversial claim that ‘nutritious food”, such as garlic, and the African potato, is an ‘alternative to anti-retrovirals”. This in the face of research conducted by Professor Patrick Bouic of the immunology department at Stellenbosch University proving that the African potato damages bone marrow thus weakening the immune system.
Tshabalala-Msmang has been called by a string of incriminating names in the past such as ‘Dr No”, ‘Motor-Mouth”, and ‘Dr Death”. To top the list she has now been dubbed ‘Dr Beetroot”. The Democratic Alliance and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) have called for her resignation.
The HIV/Aids director of the World Health Organisation accused African leaders of not making HIV/Aids their single most important issue. Mark Heywood, of the TAC echoed this view at the conference when he said: ‘There has been an absence of moral, political and strategic leadership from the African National Congress.”
According to Heywood, HIV/Aids should be ‘prioritised by the president himself and every single person under his command”. Clem Sunter of Anglo American, and something of a prophet in South Africa, also emphasises the role of a leader. He says that the CEO of a company must fully back any project if it is to succeed. Similarly the leader of a country plays a vital role if objectives and policies are to be implemented and achieved.
Heywood has suggested that government should sit down and talk to members of the TAC, business, trade unions and other relevant groups to implement an ‘accelerated plan of action”.
Learners cannot change the times they are born in, but need the tools to deal with the situation they find themselves in. As educators, we are in a unique position to influence teenagers and help them to cope with the HIV holocaust. But how? Information-giving has failed. We need a new approach.
There may well be a comprehensive plan the Department of Education is implementing in the schools. But, if it is a plan that comes from outside of the school environment I believe it has little chance of succeeding. It is paperwork as opposed to an ongoing living plan shaped by a whole school community.
Each school has the same tough problem to solve and a starting point could well be similar to the one Heywood suggested. Schools could set up a representative team of people across the board — learners, parents, school cleaners, principals, the governing body, the education department and HIV experts — to plan a way forward together. At such meetings no one dictates or imposes their ideas — what we need to do is listen to every story.
To make progress we cannot, as Kahane puts it, ‘reload our old tapes”. Instead we must be receptive to new thoughts, and question our own thinking. We need to talk openly and listen from the heart and not mechanically. This will be a new experience for many learners who often close up and only speak openly to their peers about sensitive issues.
When we ultimately frame solutions they will belong to the whole school and reflect a new reality backed by everyone involved. We want a miracle and the miracle that occurred when apartheid ended can serve as our blue print and inspiration.
Dommisse provides training on HIV/Aids in high schools