It’s too easy to hit a sitting duck

If you’re a journalist or activist you may start losing count of the number of awareness days rolling around this time of year. If you’re anybody else you probably haven’t even noticed.

We’ve had the cleverly named International Day of No Violence against Women kicking off the 16 days of activism and on December 1 the more prosaically termed Aids day rolls around again.

Now this where it gets interesting; our country’s history in responding to the syndrome is the stuff tragedy is made of. Of course, things are rapidly changing under Jacob Zuma’s administration. We’ve gone from one president — who disastrously questioned the very existence of the syndrome — to another who mistakenly inflated the number of fatalities, such was his enthusiasm for the subject to be taken seriously. Now, if we’re going to err on any side in this debate, that’s the kind I’d like to see.

But it’s not enough for those who — about a decade too late — are waking up to the fact that what former president Thabo Mbeki’s regime did was wrong, wrong, wrong. That the Aids activists and medical professionals who put their lives on the line in the fight to save people were actually right and that 330 000 deaths and counting is really quite a big number.

People such as Young Communist League leader Buti dancing-on-graves Manamela. He wants to see Mbeki and his minion Manto Tshabalala-Msimang charged with genocide for denying life-saving drugs during their tenure to thousands of HIV patients.

Buti, I understand. I’m pretty pissed too. We were too young to stop them and now we have to deal with the consequences for our generation, while their old cohorts and, um, Julius Malema frantically defend them.

But here’s an idea. Instead of spending our energies on a cause already lost, how about looking around you. Here and now I mean. There are a number of people who really deserve our collective rage and demands for action.

The international Aids scene is rapidly changing for the worse. Our government lost out on a chance to capitalise on early sympathy for the syndrome and plenty of funding. Now an ill-timed and uninformed backlash against HIV/Aids funding from international donors means we’ll have to fight harder than ever to win this battle, in a region that depressingly accounted for 72% of the world’s Aids-related deaths in 2008.

Throw in the economic recession affecting what funding there is, along with misspent health budgets across the continent and the inaction of WHO-AFRO is all the more upsetting.

Who? you ask. (Except you wouldn’t, because that would be too cheesy). The World Health Organisation regional office for Africa, that’s who. The WHO who didn’t steal Christmas, but who certainly stole our cheer this festive season as we’re left to contemplate how the body which gets billions of dollars every year has not achieved a single one of its objectives for the continent, according to one NGO.

The Aids and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (Arasa) has been involved in a to-and-fro with the organisation, demanding some sort of accountability. And an African Union paper earlier this year showed that nearly half of Aids funding doesn’t reach its intended recipients.

So Buti — and the rest of the firebrand youth leaders out there — it’s easy to take out the lame ducks. But let’s face it, it’s not going to do a whole lot except help you feel better about yourself and your party’s inaction when it mattered. Let’s go for the real game: the African leaders spending millions on cars and parties instead of treatment; the health ministers not meeting agreed targets on HIV/Aids spending and the health organisations not doing their jobs.

Because a sitting duck is an easy shot, but a real firebrand leader will fight the battle that matters.