WORLDVIEW: AIDs time bomb – blind eye to “cultural” sex habits, infections soar

For a column to work, it needs to be something only the writer could produce while simultaneously being interesting to those reading it. We require the Worldview to be judged against those standards..My Biznews colleague Chris Bateman hits the sweet spot here with his unique and myth-busting insights into SA's HIV/Aids infections – taxpayer resources address the symptom, but the cause is ignored because it is too hot a political hot potato. Chris opens our eyes through sharing his vantage point of having been raised in deep rural KZN..Chris Bateman writes: "The graph of South Africans living with HIV is flattening out at eight million, with tens of thousands now surviving due to antiretroviral drugs..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Yet one statistic in the annual demographic health survey released last week worries, but doesn't surprise me: Half of all people in the 11,000 households surveyed admitted to having had sex over the past 12 months with someone who is not their regular partner (45% were women, 55% men). Juxtapose that with 18.9% of the same age cohort, (15-49) being HIV positive. It's no coincidence..The reasons are not complex. I grew up unknowingly witnessing several drivers of the pandemic: migrant labour, patriarchal cultures/tradition and poverty. Despite all the apparent efforts to promote safe sex, every week there are a staggering 2,000 new HIV infections in young women..I'm the son of deep rural KwaZulu-Natal traders and grew up just 24kms from the country village that President Jacob Zuma made famous; Nkandla, once home to our modest country club..Zuma epitomised rural Zulu male attitudes and ignorance at his 2005 rape trial (where he was acquitted), saying he took a prophylactic shower after having sex with a young HIV positive woman. The court found the sex was consensual. Which exactly illustrates the anecdotes to follow. (HIV prevalence in KZN, by the way is 40%, the highest of all nine provinces)..Every Christmas, impeccably-suited mine worker customers of our trading store would nonchalantly peel off wads of R10 notes and wave them at one of their grateful wives to go and buy groceries or perhaps even some beads for themselves. This would happen with no break in the all-male conversation, complemented by a communal carton of Ibhubesi sorghum beer..Pan camera to an interview I had on the banks of the Tugela River downstream of Jameson's Drift with one Sipho Mchunu. Sipho found brief fame as Johnny Clegg's founding partner in the historic Juluka duo, in fact taught Clegg to play Zulu guitar..Seated outside his main bee-hive khaya, Sipho asked what I'd like to drink. I looked around puzzled. Out of my view, close behind and to one side, a bare-breasted maiden knelt, her eyes and head averted, holding up a tray bearing a wide array of Western alcoholic beverages. She was his youngest wife, doing duty..Add to these illustrations, rampant poverty driving transactional sex in urban and rural societies and escalating gender-based violence as adopted Western behaviours clash with indigenous practice and culture. I see no great mystery in the stats. A massive peer-based education and job creation campaign might mitigate, but there'll be no magic bullet..As usual, Chris nails it. In the 1990s, futurists warned that HIV was SA's ticking time bomb. While antiretrovirals have slashed the death rate, with infections still mushrooming there is a growing burden on an increasingly beleaguered Treasury. If you thought education was expensive, try ignorance.

WORLDVIEW: AIDs time bomb – blind eye to “cultural” sex habits, infections soar

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