The HIV/AIDS Pandemic: A New Apartheid by Julie Ronecker

Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes AIDS as the “new apartheid” that is “another relentless oppression denying its victims the basic rights of health and human dignity.” According to the Worth Health Organization, over 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, and six million are infected in South Africa.  There are over 1,500 new cases of the infection daily. Often termed the ultimate camouflage, HIV/AIDS is an elusive disease attacking the immune system and making those infected more susceptible to illness.  Researchers pinpoint a direct relationship between high-risk areas and the disease. High-risk areas with “impoverishment and disenfranchisement, rapid urbanization, the anonymity of urban life, labor migration, and widespread population movements” are areas most affected by disease.  It is no surprise that South Africa and the impoverished sub-Saharan region has been hit the hardest.

Researchers such as Dr. Sidney Kark connect the spread of HIV/AIDS to migrant labor during the country’s industrialization.  The country of South Africa has a rich history in population movement.  Sexually active workers traveled from the countryside to urban areas to do menial labor.  Prior to its discovery in 1981, the virus was multiplying in urban cities and being brought back to poor communities.  The Group Areas Act of 1950 only seemed to intensify the viruses’ potency.  Created by the apartheid regime, this government policy worked to forcibly remove impoverished families from previous settlements and relocate them to rural townships festering in parasitic infections, sexually transmitted diseases, and tuberculosis.  Exposure to such diseases led to lower HIV resistance.  Keeping millions of infected people in unsanitary townships increased the epidemic’s spread. 

Another contributing factor to the AIDS pandemic is South Africa’s lack of sex education in primary schools.  Nearly every classroom at the Ekukhanyisweni Primary School, the location of the Adopt-A-Student Program, lacked posters displaying HIV/AIDS facts or proper sanitation methods.  Past presidents, Mandela and Mbeki, have been criticized for their lack of funding given to sexual education and preventative contraceptive methods during their terms.  Uneducated areas also have a high prevalence of myths concerning sex.  For example, according to Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of New News Out of Africa, one myth is that, “sex with a virgin or an infant will prevent or cure AIDS.”  Myths such as this one contribute to the infection’s spread.

According to the museum at the Cradle of Humankind, the AIDS pandemic is slowing the population growth in many developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa.  The South African life expectancy dipped from 62 between 1990-1995 to 48 in 2005.  Despite the startling statistics, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has recently begun pressuring government action concerning HIV/AIDS.  The government is now required to supply mothers with nevirapine, a drug used to suppress the transmittance of HIV/AIDS from mother to child.  The TAC has also forced the government to provide free antiretroviral drugs to carriers.  While interning at the Sarah Fox Children’s Hospital, I was able to witness children taking this antiretroviral liquid, medicine that is entirely funded through the government because of the TAC. 

At the Constitution Hill Museum, infected South Africans drew body maps depicting their story.  There is a visible strength that people with HIV/AIDS must have in order to fight for themselves, their families, and members of their community.  One infected child named Bongiwe encouraged viewers that “people with HIV are active and they are alive.”

While the AIDS pandemic scours through Africa, many researchers question the cause of the disease and whether it will be stopped.  More importantly, much debate surrounds the ability for the world to accept those infected.   One student at Ekukhanyisweni Primary School expresses, “It is not the HIV virus which is killing me or making my life not living but the bad attitudes of people towards me and their rejection of me.”  Can we, as healthy, privileged individuals accept the epidemic and those infected and work toward stopping its spread without judgment?