HIV and AIDS in South Africa

HIV and AIDS in South Africa

The issue of HIV/AIDS is a very personal to me. I have many friends who are currently diagnosed with AIDS/have the virus. I have attended funerals of dear people close to me who passed away due to complications with HIV/AIDS. No one will understand the gravity of HIV/AIDS until it has affected someone personally.

As a result of knowing close friends who contracted the virus, I became a Peer Health Educator through the AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) in High School. As Peer Health Educator, it was my role to provide exciting workshops that would attract “at-risk” youth and teach them about Sexually Transmitted Infections, fun and safe sex. As a queer Chicano living in Los Angeles county, I am at a huge risk of getting HIV. Young queer men of color have the highest risk of getting it. Though the numbers do look promising, it will never be enough until everyone knows their status and is protected.

Coming to South Africa, I have learned so much more about HIV/AIDS. It always seems interesting to me, that when we are discussing HIV/AIDS we are not talking about the queer community. Per my academic and also personal development, anything related to HIV/AIDS always involved the queer community. HIV/AIDS has become a national epidemic, and a world-wide pandemic. In this country, everyone is at risk.

Which is why there have been many efforts, campaigns, to raise awareness about healthy and safe sex, status awareness, and empowerment for those who are positive. After arriving from Dundee, we immediately had a seminar with two guest speakers who are working with different HIV/AIDS agencies.

The speaker that most students found interesting: because of his provocative comments and his high energy made some interesting points. This idea of working with private companies to help promote safe sex, while it may seem like an obviously good idea, I still find many reservations. The speaker’s job is to find “cool” ways to engage the youth in condom usage, and other precautions. But what is “cool” is relative, and in my personal opinions (and experiences) other people have MANY more things to worry than to find out what is cool and how to practice “cool” sex. Nonetheless, cool becomes a fad, which will ultimately dissolve. Therefore, finding “cool” avenues is a challenge because it does not solve the problem at the core, but rather find temporary ways of helping the country, but then having to repeat the “cool” cycle.

This is the second time I hear people talking about how capitalism (the private market/corporations) are going to help end the HIV/AIDS pandemic. But, it has been the capitalist culture that has caused such a huge number of HIV/AIDS. Poor people are not poor because they want to be poor. Rather, it is under a capitalist society that we have poor people. The rich need a class of people to exploit in order to be rich. Therefore, the poor people have had a history of no access to many important institutions: education, healthcare, etc. These are the institutions that they needed in order to be more cautious. However, they are now infected. And now, the same capitalist society is trying to come back and provide band-aid solutions to a larger problem. Since when has capitalism ever cared about the poor person? Perhaps now that capitalism feels guilty for what it has help create.