Having just finished reading Jonny Steinberg’s latest book on HIV/AIDS, called The Three Letter Plague, many feelings and thoughts swirl through my head. It is a shocking, sad, depressing, yet uplifting and insightful book – all at the same time – and should be required reading for opinion formers in South Africa.
Steinberg spent much time in villages in Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape and followed a young man he calls Sizwe around, while investigating the nurse-based ARV programme initiated by Doctors Without Borders in the area.
Many things in the book confirms what most informed readers would already know: that HIV carries a serious stigma in this country; that many people in South Africa are confused about the causes of HIV and how to treat it; that the HIV epidemic has strong political undertones in South Africa because of our history of colonialism and apartheid.
But what forcefully struck me about the book is the sensitive and nuanced way in which Steinberg exposes the complexities of this epidemic in a rural area utterly unfamiliar to a white middle class person like myself. He takes the reader into villages where cars and even television sets are never seen and where people negotiate the complex relationship between their own traditions and the Western influences in often surprising ways.
Reading the book made me realise again how little some of us city folk know about the lives of people living in many rural parts of South Africa and how complex the relationship is that some people have with the Western/colonial/white world that many of us in the chattering classes belong to or take for granted.
I like the fact that he highlights the fantastic work done by some of these folks in some of the villages and that he portrays the heroic dignity and strength of especially some of the rural woman in these parts, while at the same time discussing the often vicious and selfish attitudes and behaviour of others. He does not shy away from talking about the more difficult aspects of a culture that to some extent have been decimated by the colonial experience.
It seems to me the book goes a long way to explain – without justifying – the AIDS denialism/dissidence of President Mbeki by focusing on the relationship that especially rural black men have with the epidemic and the life-saving ARV’s. He points out that these ARV’s are seen by some as an invention of western white doctors and that many black men feel humiliated about having to rely on them. By relying on ARV’s, he argues, some people might feel that they would once again be enslave by the white man.
Paradoxically, despite this highly sensitive and even sympathetic look at the culture and beliefs of people living around Lusikisiki, it seems to me the book indirectly shines a harsh light on President Thabo Mbeki’s “leadership” on HIV/AIDS. As a self-proclaimed intellectual and as a compassionate leader, one would think that the President would have confronted these issues in a sensitive but firm manner in order to help people overcome the stigma of HIV and the stigma associated with taking ARV’s.
Yet, after reading this book I wonder whether the President himself is not perhaps the prisoner of shame and fear and whether he has not failed the very people whose lives depended on him transcending these colonially instilled feelings of fear and shame.
Steinberg makes clear that even if President Mbeki had confronted the fears and stigma head on, had publicly gone for an HIV test and had championed the use of ARV’s, there would still have been those who would not have tested and would not have arrived at clinics before it was too late.
But I cannot help but think that strong leadership on this could have saved countless lives and that the tragedy of Mbeki’s Presidency and of the history of HIV in South Africa over the past ten years has been that he has not been able to do that because he has not addressed his own demons.
In any event, this is a book that might open many eyes and might – unexpectedly – even garner some sympathy for our desperately flawed President and his unconscionable attitude towards HIV/AIDS.
I will go and buy the book. I will be alone at my holiday house this weekend, so I will have ample time on my hands.
I will comment on Monday.
An interesting insight – indeed – but I would rather wait until Monday when Khosi reports on his insights, which I suppose will be in defence of Thabo Mbeki’s approach to the HIV/AIDS problem, after returning from his ‘holiday house’ before responding on political / legal grounds. I will, however, venture an humanitarian insight. The problem in the area I live in, is that, whenever people are hospitalized with fully blown ‘AIDS’, some ‘educated’ people, especially some qualified nurses, after ‘black’ doctors have diagnosed AIDS, tend to tell people to leave hospital and to go and to go and see ‘traditional healers’ because, ‘this is not an illness that Western medicine can cure, it is a sickness that black people have to look into and cure’. Just a week ago, I attended a funeral of, yet another, child of the woman and man who work for us, who has died of AIDS. In a small rural town, with just a few thousand (black and white) inhabitants, there were seven open graves (ours was the first one) for people to be burried, all reportedly having died of the same ‘disease’. When I came here 14 years ago, there was only one Funeral Parlour, … now, there are seven. We, I was told, were lucky to get a spot (the first spot) on a Saturday morning (the traditional time to burry ‘black’ people), as “yesterday, we burried five, and … tomorrow, we will burry three more”. Shocking, I would say. Even more troubling, like with their first two daughters and one son who had died of AIDS, the poor people working for me came to my wife and I afterwards, saying: ” “You and the doctors can say just what you like. We know, what has killed our children, is witchcraft. Not an illness. But soon, our luck will turn, we will see a very powerful witchdoctor, and he will fix those responsible.” Problem is, the grandparents will now have to feed three more children, in addition to the seven others they had to adopt due to their parents having died, because of AIDS, that notorious killer disease, and the fact that the people were not educated by ‘leaders’. They have only one ‘living’ child left. A whole generation of people is being taken out, and, … a lack of education, insight, medication and support is responsible. … Our leaders will have to come out ‘guns blazing’, and supply all the help that is needed to put an end to this dreadfull disease, and to help those infected, to live a better life or, … at least, to die with dignity.
Faceless Rat,
Judging from your response, you MUST read the book.
Prof,
I could not find the book, Exclusive Books are still waiting for it. But of what I have read about the book and interviews on the author, the book should say nothing that I will disagree with. Infact I expect it gives a view that is totally taken in disregard in fighting and managing what many people believe is a ‘harmless’ virus. The fact is that no-one wants to be a part of a shame. For me shame is a state of mind, and that is the source for the, supposed, potency of HIV. Unfortunately, HIV was vigorously sold a a shameful virus that attacks people who sleep around and homosexuals. Given that, I would understand the likes of Sizwe. If we strip shame away from HIV, it will remain just a ‘harmless’ virus. Mockery of African value systems and medicines by the likes of the faceless rat, will not take us forward. What we need is to understand that no one way of life, African Or Western, is the fountain for solutions when it comes to resolving the HIV problem.
Oh, Just got an sms from Exclusive Books saying the copy I requested has arrived. Will pick up later today.
How is that for timing?
Thanks for the review. I note that you found Steinberg treated the issue of ‘black” African culture well and gave meaningful insights how it is a matrix for dealing with HIV/AIDS and explains different responses. In contrast, a recent review in the Weekender came to another conclusion. Here, Steinberg was trapped in a western perspective of what African culture and its implications was.
good site tuimra