Now that I have arrived in Dubai, I feel like I am finally getting a chance to decompress and think about the last 10-11 days we spent in South Africa. Overall, I could not have asked for a better visit or travel partner. Some things, beyond the usual gibberish I've carried on about, have stuck out though:
AIDS - is there hope for South Africa?One of the interesting things about doing tours with other people is that sometimes, just sometimes, you meet people doing very compelling work and you get sucked into a conversation which you could not have imagined having when you started the tour. One of these serendipitous events occurred during the our shark dive engagement. I ended up chatting to a British chap, David Royle who works in Johannesburg for a ministry program called Moriel (
www.moriel.org). The organization is religious in origin but the people it helps come from across the board. David focuses on HIV orphans: children who are orphans who may or may not also be HIV positive. According to him, there are
1.1 million of these children in South Africa.
I had read about repeatedly during the past 3 years in a variety of news sources about South Africa's awful record on AIDS prevention, awareness and education. Here was a person who could verify or dispel what I was getting from the mainstream media. Unfortunately, David said the situation was worse than what was already labeled as dreadful in the press. Official estimates call for around 6 million South Africans, out of a population of 45 million to be HIV positive. David implied the figure should be closer to 20 million based on his and South African physicians' testing experiences. That's almost 50% of the population of the country.
David mentioned that antiretrovirals work beautifully but the public administration of the country, at very high levels, all the way up to President Mbeki still do not appreciate the ruthlessness of the disease and how it is ravaging South Africa. Mbeki held at some not too distant past that AIDS was not caused by HIV and this was all a ploy by big pharma to sell more drugs. His health minister concluded that eating the hairy South African potato was sure to cure the disease. And then you have controversial doctors (I won't call him a quack yet, but he's likely pretty close) like German Matthias Rath who think that multivitamins can be a cure. The picture is not pretty - only 1/10th of the population which needs to be getting antiretrovirals is receiving them and there is still a pervading sense of lack of urgency from the government.
If potentially half your productive population is infected with HIV and the appropriate steps don't get taken, what happens to South Africa?
David also mentioned a point that I am not positive I fully agree with but can see making an impact: religious and tribal culture. David's contention is that monotheistic societies such as Kenya (a former colony ruled under one flag) have far lower rates of infection, versus South Africa, with its Christian and competing pagan rituals. If that is true, what do you then - how do you change accepted culture in a democratic country (maybe we need to start taxing sex)
Anyway - I don't know what the solution is - likely a multifront attack featuring a reinvigorated healthcare system with lots more doctors, nurses, more of support infrastructure. Maybe even a "Truth" like campaign to raise awareness, as well as a widespread true communal outreach program and compulsory testing to get the antiretrovirals to the people who need them. That's what I observe from the ivory tower....
White versus Black South AfricaI posted when I first arrived in South Africa about how optimism about the future reigned supreme amongst most people. The TRC had done a great job of soothing the deep wounds inflicted by apartheid and people, black and white, were looking towards a more diverse, inclusive South Africa in which the fruits of economic progress are more evenly distributed. As I leave South Africa I, of course, find the problems knottier, the solutions grayer and feel an underlying tension, especially in the previously privileged white population. There are race based quotas for employment here, similar to the affirmative action laws in the US, which set to level the playing field for non-whites. I feel there's a fair amount of underlying resentment at this type program, and not just by the white population, although they do make up the majority of the employing class.
Other tidbits
That's not a traffic light - it's a robot. Seriously - that's what they're called here....
A shout out to Jennifer Cox at Cyber. This atlas was likely the single most helpful item in our inventory.
Finally -
One thing Britton commented on when we were staying at a country lodge near Hermanus, was how much the employees' uniforms, especially the room service people, which were all non-white, except for the manager, looked like those worn by house slaves in the 1800s in the United States. As he put it, it was a weird thing for us to be playing tennis and have people in this garb doing service work.
Another observation: almost any bar or restaurant we went to (and we went to some lower priced ones as well), all patrons were white or whitish (that's my classification!). Anyway, nothing profound here in these observations - the bottom line is that healing an entire society takes time - hopefully the patience and drive will be there.
Here's to hope and will for South Africa.
