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by Lani Kent/PoorNewsNetwork
June in LA. All 450 of us highschool students filtered into the crowded gym and took seats. It was wet with heat and my long
hair stuck to my wet neck. An unfamiliar man stood
center on the gym floor, emaciated and limp. The
microphone in front of him seemed more capable of
speech than he appeared to be, yet he motioned to our
school principle that he was ready. We settled, and
then the lights dimmed: "Hello class of 1993. Please
look at the person on your left, and then look at the
person at your right," he said with a voice too loud
for a body so weak, "In ten years, one of you three will
be HIV-positive."
It being graduation
rehearsal, and adhering to the standard simplicity of
sitting in alphabetical order, one of my two seatmates
appeared to be doomed. I did not know either of them
well, so I did not feel bad when I justified in my
head that they were both boys and I was the girl and
to make things statistically even, HIV would have to
take one of them. I released all my fear with this
convenient conclusion; with the logic of a
16-year-old, I was safe from AIDS and free of
responsibility and consequences. No longer in such a
hurry to avoid responsibility, I do think of those
boys often, for ten years is only 18 months away.
That nameless man who drove to my high school on that
hot June day lives in my memory.
Today, there is a nameless man in South Africa who
drives a lot. Much like the man who spoke at my
graduation practice, this man travels to schools and
community centers and orphanages, where he attempts to
spread life-saving information. Information the South
African government, and its leader, Thabo Mbeki,
willingly ignores—critical information that is
disposed of like spoiled food, leaving people swarming
around it, a now-rotting feast of health that could
have been theirs. This man who drives a lot attempts
to educate young children about AIDS and safe sex,
young children for whom statisticians have labeled
illiterate and poor, nameless faces with big bellies.
These children who, according to research on the AIDS
epidemic in South Africa, will become HIV-positive
adults. Daily, this man fights the statistics by
educating the numbers.
Of the 36 million people on this planet infected with
HIV, almost 70 percent are living in poverty in
Africa. The poor man who drives a lot has a lot more
driving to do, for South Africa’s government-funded
programs prove oblivious to the needs of the poor.
Currently, programs do not address the basic
precautionary measures to prevent HIV transmission,
they do not address the specific circumstances by
which poor people are exposed, and they do not
distribute to them the drugs needed to combat the
virus. In effect, HIV and AIDS spreads further and
deeper into the population least capable of dealing
with it. A fact such as using a condom to prevent the
spread of disease is a foreign concept to many South
Africans. Unless one happens to be on the driving
mans route of knowledge, this fact will remain
elusive.
Information that most of the world believes mythical
or calls urban legend, is real for many South African
people. For centuries traditional healers have paved
the road to health for their people, and for centuries
this road has absorbed various urban legends, gaining
strength and carrying more people. For example, a
popular legend has over-shadowed condom-use, as it
promotes unprotected sex by convincing women that
semen helps them stay young and fertile.
Consequently, fear of infertility has kept many women
away from condom use. Another myth attributes
magical healing powers to young women. Youth and
brilliance have been elevated to such outstanding
importance that young women become magical. This myth
has been taken to repulsive and bewildering heights in
South Africa.
Circulating throughout the continent, stealing
international headlines and questioning the validity
of Africa’s traditional healers, this urban legend has
lead to the regular raping of women, young girls, and
infants. Several, but not all traditional healers, or
witch doctors as they have become known in America,
have passed along the myth that having sex with a
virgin will cure HIV and AIDS. In a country where
urban legends thrive as a fact, and are readily
available to the people who need some type of
information to deal with their poverty and disease,
children are now being raped everyday. Scared men who
don’t know what’s wrong with them but have heard of
this absurd cure have self-diagnosed, they think youth
and brilliance will cure them of AIDS.
Add to this ancient road of misinformation another
popular myth: Having sex with a lunatic, or a mentally
ill female, will lead a man to riches. With 10
percent of the population suffering from some type of
mental illness, there is yet another justification for
the raping of women. Recent headlines in Nigeria
address the problem of pregnant lunatics roaming the
streets. Now consider that 90 percent of the
population seeks treatment from traditional healers,
the very doctors who frequently confirm the antiquated
tales plaguing South Africa. Pregnant lunatics and
violated adolescent girls are not the outcome of
misguided evildoers; they are the unfortunate products
of a society without the information to lead them to
healthy resolutions.
Two men were just sent to court for raping a five-month-old child. An eight-month-old was found raped
and left to die on the side of a road. Child rape in
Johannesburg is said to be up to 10 young girls a day.
Two rapes occur every minute in Africa, the highest
incident of rape in the world. Gang rape is common in
elementary school, and often goes un-reported. Eighteen hundred
new HIV infections are reported a day. Thirty-three percent of women,
children, and babies are HIV-positive due in part to
this rape, and the government has done nothing to
address this specific situation that lives and
breathes through legend and poverty. The urban
legends strengthen, the poor grow diseased and poorer,
and there is only one man driving around in his car
trying to dismantle this lethal system of beliefs.
The man who came to my school and addressed all 450 of
us American students did not have to dispel any
overwhelming urban myth; he had only to confirm
well-known facts—facts we read daily in our media,
study in our classrooms, and talk about with peers.
The process of breaking down old myths and introducing
new information has proved difficult on many different
levels for South Africans. As the driving man tries
to inform the people for whom Mbeki has kept
uninformed, he has encountered men whose only power
comes from their sexual organs. The self-respect and
dignity of many South African men has not been
restored after being brutalized under the apartheid
system; many of these men use rape to regain the power
lost to them.
These men, or rapists, are guilty of
savagery, that is certain; but they are committing
savagery in a society that does not base its actions
in science and logic. Their decisions are found in
the legends and tales, the spirits and stories that
confirm South African culture. They work within a
completely different set of rules than we do in
America, and they have a government intentionally
withholding valuable information from them. How can we
hold a rapist 100 percent responsible for his crime,
when the only doctor his country has ever known told
him to do it? When his own leader has denied him
every other possible solution? How can we judge his
desperation? We have the luxury of knowledge that
South African people do not have; knowledge they may
not even want. The challenge for South Africa will be
to dispel numerous lethal myths without dispelling an
entire way of existence.
One small victory for South African people concerns
Thabo Mbeki and his political stance on HIV and AIDS.
He just recently, although reluctantly, withdrew his
statement that HIV does not cause AIDS. He did not
replace his statement with a new one, nor did he
administer credibility to the West’s belief that HIV
leads to AIDS. Mbeki simply retracted an earlier
statement that bestowed upon him international scorn.
His original stance has successfully ensured that AZT
is not distributed to the population at large, even
though the drug could be readily available to him and
his entire country at 30 percent of what the rest of
the world pays for it. A financial bargain that could
prevent infected mothers from passing HIV onto their
children, and minimize the risk of rape victims from
becoming infected with AIDS. He denies this to his
people. Interestingly, though, is that Mbeki does
make AZT freely available to members of parliament.
They, and other wealthy South African people who can
afford international AZT prices, visit the few medical
doctors practicing in South Africa.
The small and
almost hidden victory here is that Thabo Mbeki took a
step back from ignorance by retracting his statement
that HIV does not lead to AIDS. We anxiously wait to
see where he goes next. Maybe the man who drives all
over South Africa will not have to do it alone for
much longer.
The nameless man who spoke at my graduation rehearsal almost nine
years ago drove a dilapidated Toyota Tercel out of my
school parking lot. His real job, or the one that
paid, was at the recycling center next to the car
wash. Up until two years ago, I would always see him
in front of the recycle bins, sorting glass or reading
soiled newspapers. I talked to him once, but didn’t
tell him how I remembered him slumped and standing
small with a big voice in the middle of my school
gymnasium. I didn’t tell him how I had manipulated
his facts into convenient untruths, simple myths that
comforted me. On that hot day nine years ago I was
not much different from most South African people,
except that I knew I was wrong. My myth was intentional.
Sometimes I wonder, if I had never heard about AIDS
beyond that day, if facts were not sprayed across our
daily media, might I still be rationalizing deathly
statistics into neat little male/female categories?
What if that man never drove his Tercel to my school?
The man who drives all over South Africa is a
non-practicing playwright; he hopes to one day make
money by selling his words. He is a speaker by trade,
HIV-positive and well informed about his disease. He
is finally seeing progress, or at least finding people in
support of the message he is trying to spread. He
spoke at a school recently where a young girl had
actually heard of condom-use. He also found a clinic
that somehow secures AZT and provides it to the
community at no cost. This nameless man smiles as he
drives by taxi stands in Johannesburg that now fly
banners reading: "It is illegal to have sex with a
child."
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