Terry Pheto tells UCT students to condomise

A large number of University of Cape Town (UCT) students crowded into the Leslie Social Sciences building on Thursday to hear members of student organisations and campus faculties talk about HIV/AIDS stigma.

Tsotsi star Terry Pheto told them that young people needed to think what they could do to help people living with HIV/AIDS and those who were afraid to talk about the disease or were naive about it.

"Face reality, HIV/AIDS is there," Pheto said. "Go get tested, condomise or abstain if you can."

Pheto said the issue was dear to her heart because of her experiences working in the theatre for two years with HIV-positive youths and seeing how their lives were affected.

She said the biggest issue for young people was stigma as they did not want to be labelled. They "want to be cool and fit in".

The event was marked by the lighting of white candles in honour of the lives lost to HIV/AIDS and those who remain affected.

Paper doves and lines of poetry adorned University Avenue in an effort to get students talking about the stigma of HIV/AIDS.

Students and faculty members submitted haikus, Japanese-style poems of three lines in which the first and third have five syllables and the second, seven syllables.

These expressed thoughts about the stigma of HIV/AIDS in people's daily lives.

Other speakers at the event included a representative of the Treatment Action Campaign and a student group, HAICU or HIV/AIDS Co-ordination at UCT.

HAICU hoped to make students aware of the HIV/AIDS services available to them, the group's project officer and event organiser, Sean Brown, said.

UCT offers counselling, blood testing and online support for students.

The student group has been running a month-long campaign on the subject of HIV/AIDS stigma.

"We want to inform students about HIV/AIDS and the misconceptions and myths related to it," Brown said.