So it is a pleasure to say that I feel like our president is doing some really good work (or is at least saying he is going to). With the address to the National Council of Provinces on October 29 he has finally ended a nearly decade-long state denial of the HIV and Aids problem, and the fact that HIV is the cause of Aids. This is a really positive step and could mean that South Africans might begin to admit the scale of the HIV epidemic, their roles in finding solutions and slowing down its transmission. The question now is … what next? Now that the scale and scope of this virus has been admitted what changes will it entail on the part of the government and the South African people?
Hopefully it will include recognition of not only the significance of the impact of HIV on the lives of all South Africans, but I also hope that there will be increasing emphasis on eradicating the driving factors of HIV (note — DRIVING FACTORS, not causes). These include deep-seated societal behaviour patterns like gender-based violence (GBV), drug and alcohol abuse that lead to risky sexual behaviour and a lack of social empowerment for women. These are not simple problems, but interconnected and complex. We, and the state if it hasn’t already, need to start asking some important questions. President Zuma acknowledged that prevention is a key part of any strategy, and in my opinion, prevention is more than simply encouraging people to have an HIV test, or practise abstinence (though let it be said here that those are both important goals).
Some questions I think are important:
1. What are the conditions that facilitate/result in the prevalence of GBV, drug and alcohol abuse and women’s dis-empowerment?
2. What attitudes allow GBV/drug and alcohol abuse/women’s dis-empowerment to continue as a South African cultural pattern (note — South African, these problems occur across social groups, they are systemic and ubiquitous)?
3. What statements can top state officials (who should be our representatives, not only our figureheads) make to indicate the scale and scope of the problem and their dissatisfaction with the status quo — and the desire to make changes in their own lives — words and behaviour patterns?
Words are tools in changing attitudes and changed attitudes can eventually be transformed into changed behaviour. So thank you Mr President for taking these small vocal steps in the right direction. I hope that you and your cabinet continue to walk on this path.
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