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Some township truths for the Brits
Clare Rudebeck. Sunday Tribune. 13 March 2005. Republished courtesy of Independent Newspapers, (Pty) Ltd.
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Nompilo Xaba is wearing a very large polo neck. Sitting in the London offices of BBC Radio Five Live with eager news hounds bustling around her, she seems perfectly at home. Only 24 hours earlier she left her home in Umlazi for the first time in her life. ?“It?’s so cold,?” she says, ?“but if everyone here can survive these temperatures, so can I.?”
She is not in Britain to talk about the weather. After a few pleasantries, she politely reminds me of the purpose of her visit: to tell the British political elite to do more to tackle the African HIV/AIDS epidemic. ?“People are dying,?” she says in her soft, insistent voice. ?“I attend funerals every weekend. When will it come to an end??”
This week, Xaba has the kind of access usually reserved for world leaders and A-list celebrities. Meetings with Gordon Brown, Bob Geldof and Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary, are all on her schedule. When I meet her, she is fresh from the week?’s first appointment: being interviewed on the Five Live breakfast show.
Xaba is a 36-year-old single mother and HIV/AIDS Counsellor. She has no media training or previous experience of hob-nobbing with the powerful. But minutes after broadcasting live on national radio for the first time, she is unfazed by the week to come. ?“I?’m not nervous,?” she says, sipping a cappuccino. She has the calm self-assurance of someone who knows that what she has to say is something that needs to be heard.
Certainly Xaba is accustomed to talking about unpalatable truths. She runs the Student HIV/AIDS Resource Centre and Referral Service Network, part of the University of KwaZulu-Natal?’s Campus HIV/AIDS Support Unit, and is a qualified trauma debriefing counselor with experience in conflict management and ethical decision-making around HIV/AIDS.
Xaba obtained a National Diploma in Public Administration at Mangosuthu Technikon in 1992 and trained in Adult Basic Education and Training at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in 1997.
The culmination of her UK trip will be the publication of the Commission For Africa?’s report on Friday. Launched a year ago by Tony Blair and Bob Geldof, the commission will publish its recommendations for building a ?“strong and prosperous Africa?”. Xaba is optimistic about what it can achieve, but cautiously so. ?“It is difficult to say how much it will help us,?” she says, ?“because people like to preach what they can?’t practice.?”
During her whirlwind of meetings, Xaba will tell Britons what it?’s like to live in South Africa where five million people have HIV/AIDS. It is a grim picture, belied by Xaba?’s smiling, youthful face. In Umlazi, the graveyards are already full and burial plots are being recycled ?“People are being buried on top of their parents,?” says Xaba, ?“and we are now having to use cemeteries outside the township, towards Durban.?”
Her social life is a constant round of funerals. ?“I go to a funeral almost every weekend,?” she says. ?“Many of my friends and relatives have died and now the whole community is starting to feel the effects. There are many orphans and not enough money to send them all to school.?” Families of 10 people, with no wage earners, are surviving on grants of R700 a month.
Premature deaths have risen 57% in the past five years, largely due to HIV/AIDS. Yet the government has been slow to act, with President Thabo Mbeki continuing to question the link between HIV and AIDS.
?”My 25-year-old nephew is HIV-positive. When I found out, I said to him, ?‘Do you know what this means??’ But he didn?’t want to know. He said he didn?’t want any treatment. He doesn?’t have any symptoms yet so the reality of having the disease hasn?’t hit him.?”
Every weekend there are more and more funerals, but the mourners are reluctant to discuss why the deceased passed away.
?”People who come to me for counseling often believe that they have been bewitched,?” says Xaba, ?“or they will avoid telling me their status. I have to pick it up during the conversation.?”
For the woman fighting this veil of silence, Nelson Mandela?’s admission in January that his last surviving son, Makgatho, had died of HIV/AIDS, was nothing short of revolutionary. Xaba calls it a ?“wake up call for South Africa?”.
Asked what she thinks of Mbeki?’s response to the HIV/AIDS crisis, she pauses for a long time. ?“I love my president,?” she says, ?“but when it comes to HIV/AIDS, he drives me insane.?”
Xaba went for an HIV test herself a few years ago. ?“It was a very traumatic time,?” she says. ?“I sat in the waiting room thinking, ?‘Oh my God. What if I am positive??’ but luckily, it came back negative?”.
She has two daughters, Sinenjabulo, 17 and Meme, 6, and lives with her mother and five sisters. She says she is totally open with her children about the risks of getting HIV. It?’s important as more than 60% of new infections occur in the under-25 age group.
Once infected, the outlook is bleak. Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang recently admitted that the government had managed to treat only 28 000 to 31 000 HIV-positive people with Anti-retrovirals. At the weekend, the government announced that seven international pharmaceutical firms had been hired to help deliver these drugs to state hospitals ?– a welcome sign that it is now taking the crisis seriously.
In the meantime, those living with HIV must wait until they start developing AIDS before they can get treatment. ?“I have a friend who is HIV positive, who hasn?’t been able to get the drugs she needs, even though she is now eligible, because there aren?’t enough to go round,?” says Xaba. ?“People who are sick, who are developing AIDS, are being told to come back in six months.?”
What can developed countries, such as Britain, do to help? ?“We need funding for drugs, for hospitals and for hospices,?” says Xaba. ?“The world needs to face up to these challenges. And And South Africans need to be realistic about what is happening in their country.?”
Will Brown and Benn listen to her? She doesn?’t know yet, but she is determined.
Xaba, who was born in Umlazi, has made it her business to succeed against the odds. When she left school at 16, she was already pregnant with her first daughter, but didn?’t let it stop her training in public administration.
Four years later, she took a job as a bank clerk in Amanzimtoti. She was the bank?’s only black employee and customers repeatedly complained about her, but she refused to bow to discrimination. When her manager called her into his office, she told him, ?“If you could change the colour of my skin, these problems would go away?”. Her boss had no answer for her.
This week, she was due to confront British leaders with some uncomfortable realities, hopefully this time will get a response. |
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