HIV/AIDS: From pandemic to pandemonium

Everywhere else on the planet, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is exactly that: a pandemic. But when it comes to South Africa, it mutates from pandemic into pandemonium.

Which makes me think that it?’s something of a miracle that more people living with HIV/AIDS have not by now become activists for euthanasia. Anything, dear Lord, anything but the sordid bickering and spectacular verbal brawls that persist while millions of lives slowly fade away.

The South African AIDS civil war has become, to some of us, as incomprehensible as the biological causes of the epidemic. And any new attempt at explaining the different factions involved in our emotive health discourse seems as painful as the disease itself. That, of course, is an exaggeration, but it is surely a form of prolonged torture to listen to the prominent personalities in this society talking (if we can call it that) about HIV/AIDS.

The latest was of words from my countrymen and women in Bangkok really got me frightened. I could not understand what the hell was going on. My difficulty was not accent, but content. Everyone was talking about Nevirapine but I could not understand what was being said.

One voice on television was explaining something about how our bodies develop a resistance to Nevirapine, and I could not decipher whether that was good or bad for me. Another was saying that actually the other voice was wrong, seeing that there was something that could be done about the resistance that the human body could develop to Nevirapine. Problem solved, I thought. And then another dramatic voice entered the fray, claiming that the other voice that was saying that the human body could develop resistance to Nevirapine was actually looking at the whole picture out of focus. Then there was another voice, pretending to be a voice of reason, saying that the other voices were confusing me unnecessarily.

It was then that I got very confused and I switched off. And then I switched off the television. It was just too much. Imagine what all this means for a person with full-blown AIDS. His or her daily concerns are focused on how he or she can make the best of today, and wake up tomorrow with a glimmer of hope or promise for the day ahead.

I think that the spectacle of this continued bickering must destroy even a vague grain of hope for many people living with HIV/AIDS. Knowing that a shortened life-span is likely, and death is inevitable, must be agony, not least of all while the banter among government, private sector and civil society stakeholders continues unabated. Were it not sad, even tragic, it would be ridiculous.

The pontificating between government and civil society is of concern. Representing government is the Health Department in the form of Manto Tsahabalala-Msimang, who does not seem to exude any other air but the need to win her argument. And even when her argument is correct, it does not entice me to listen to her or anybody else who speaks about anything that remotely represents a reasoning that she might have originated. Her countenance sometimes says that she hates her civil society counterpart more than she hates HIV/AIDS. It is scary.

On the other side is the Treatment Action Campaign, whose campaign is slowly becoming more of a fixture of the Manto-Zackie tug-of-war than one battling for access to treatment.

The end result is a ?“discussion?” absolutely blurred by the political overtones and utterly lacking in the simple but important things such as compassion, care, tenderness, vision, co-operation, humility and commitment to a joint victory over this sad moment in human existence.

Bangkok would have been a highlight for many of us had it shown South Africa (and indeed other countries on the planet) turning a united face and speaking in one voice in the fight against HIV/AIDS. It would not have suddenly made us HIV-negative, but it would have suggested that there is a united effort to confront and constructively deal with the pandemic.

Unity does not mean a uniform articulation about the blood of the unicorn being the cure for HIV/AIDS. It means a certain level of sharing in research, study and projects about HIV/AIDS. At the moment, all we can detect is competition, and pontificating about something that demands more than what we are currently doing.

Somebody ?– tell these people that while they are arguing, people are dying.

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