In considering what makes ideas powerful today, one of the criteria we were given was that ideas, to inspire action, must be in the realm of human control. In America, HIV is a problem within human control: we can practice safe sex and avoid infection, we can get tested to verify it, and if that test is positive we can seek treatment and live for decades more. In South Africa, this is not the case; though condoms and testing are readily available,HIV is not seen as a problem society or individuals have any control over. Instead, it is a silent, pervasive killer, rarely called by its real name, and terribly fraught with stigma. In his book Three Letter Plague, Jonny Steinberg argues that this is because of a lack of resources available for treatment, and that once treatment is available the problem will be perceived as controllable/defeatable and therefore people (not activists) will act to defeat it in their personal lives. However, other than the one MSF-run clinic Steinberg studies, no such thoroughgoing treatment is available in South Africa except to the rich, who also of course are least likely to be infected in the first place.
A friend of mine is still working in South Africa and blogged today about how a hospital she works with shut down for several weeks during the recent workers' strikes, leaving a huge population without care of any kind: http://bethinsa.blogspot.com/2010/09/settling-in.html
Strikes, education, unemployment, patriarchy, homophobia, internalized oppression, teenage pregnancy, welfare dependence, racism, single-party rule, corruption...AIDS in South Africa exists in a web of social problems. Why seek treatment if you have nothing to live for but unemployment? Why trust the government to make change if everyone is corrupt? Why use a condom if getting pregnant is the one way you can find to value yourself? Why get tested if everyone will find out and ostracize you? Activists reframe with the best of intentions, but they have come up against a wall. The frames are right, but the resources are lacking.
Jade Lamb
If policies alone cannot reverse the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS, perhaps Africa needs to ramp up public AIDS education to combat the ignorance that leads people to discriminate. Increasing AIDS awareness, I believe, is within human control.
ReplyDelete-Susan Chen
I agree, but keep in mind disinformation is also within the realm of human control. For examples, consider the long-term problem with false info about AIDS in South Africa (Mbeki's long-term denial that HIV is linked to AIDS, or the myth in small segments of the population that sex with a virgin can cure it), or in The Gambia, the president flying in the face of decades of activist work to claim he can cure AIDS.
ReplyDeleteNot disagreeing with the point, just saying not to forget that it goes both ways.