'The President talks about the World Cup, but not about HIV'
Friday, 10 August 2007
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Cape Town's majestic Table mountain provides one of the most stunning natural backdrops imaginable to a back yard. Which is a blessing for Fezeke Kayingona, 34, because she hasn't a lot else to boast of. It is a short journey from her shack, but a world away from the city's lush golf courses, five star hotels and diamond shops.
In defence of its handling of the Aids epidemic, Thabo Mbeki's government argues it is still grappling to rebuild a post apartheid public health system, and that boosting nutrition is a vital weapon against illness .
Fourteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa's social and economic divisions are indeed still stark. Fezeke's flimsy home has plastic sheeting for a roof and apart from some old bus seating and an empty supermarket trolley there is little furniture.
She became pregnant last year and the ante-natal check up revealed she was HIV positive as well. Her family back in the Eastern Cape rejected her, she says. "They simply can t accept it".
Yet she is lucky. Unlike most South Africans with HIV she is now on antiretroviral drug treatment. Her baby daughter Emihlie has been spared infection thanks to drugs that prevent mother to child transmission.
Rose Ncumisa a volunteer comes around to check that Fezeke is taking the tablets that help her fight infections. "The accommodation is a problem, it's cold, and the diet is poor, which makes it difficult to keep healthy" she says.
But Fezeke is thankful for powerful drugs. "You can't use traditional medicine or anything else for this" she says, nodding in the direction of her emaciated, coughing husband Jongile, who is also HIV positive but started treatment late and is fighting TB.
A thousand miles away in Durban 12-year-old Babiza Ndlovu wants, one day, he says "to own a quality motorcar, to find a kind, caring and reliable wife for my wedding day, and for my Mum to be there, treated like a queen". When you meet his mother Sizakhele, 45, that part of the dream doesn't seem out of the question. She looks the picture of health.
But then, she too is receiving life-saving drugs. As her son reasons about HIV in a diary distributed to help other children affected by the disease. "It doesn't mean she is going to die. I could die before her, I could be involved in an accident".
Around 1400 people are infected with HIV every day in South Africa, most of them women. Even if the infected are offered Aids drugs, many are by now confused or fearful about the safety of antiretrovirals.
"You hear people saying the drugs will cause your liver to fail, that your mind will go. So they waste time on witchcraft."
Her sister went to a traditional healer after testing HIV positive. She died last year. "In the end she had toxioplasmosis. It was dreadful," Sizakhele recalls.
In the clinic where Sizakhele gets her treatment, the walls are plastered with reminders about Aids drugs. "Anti retrovirals keeps you healthy-they don't cure Aids" one reads.
Staff had the posters brought in from Botswana. "Because our own government doesn't do positive messages about antiretro-virals" one of the doctors explains, adding "Our president jumps through hoops to speak about 2010 and world cup soccer but on HIV/Aids he says nothing useful".
