Johannesburg — Lucy is South African. She is 17 and HIV positive. Lucy's baby daughter, Pearl, is fifteen months old. Pearl is a product of rape which, like AIDS, is a scourge in South Africa.
Lucy and Pearl share a Salvation Army Hostel room in Johannesburg with Dorothy, another young mother infected with the virus, and her infant son, Mvelo, which, in Zulu, means 'nature'. But nature has not been kind to Mvelo. Like his mother, he is also HIV positive.
Lucy's child was luckier. Pearl also tested HIV positive at birth but her status later reverted to negative.
Lucy, who was thrown out of home by her mother after she was raped and became pregnant, is appalled by what she perceives as the South African government's dithering on the issue of whether to give anti-retroviral drugs, such as AZT or Neviropine, to HIV-positive pregnant women to prevent transmission of the virus from mother to child.
"I don't know what's wrong with them, because the world is dying. Others will get raped, get pregnant and they won't even say 'I'm HIV-positive', because the government won't do anything," snaps Lucy. Instead, she adds,"they'll just spread (the virus) around, because of anger that the government won't help them". The implication is that the essential message - 'protect yourself and your sexual partner' - is being lost.
This teenage mother knows little about President Thabo Mbeki's initiative to set up an AIDS advisory panel, inviting, among others, 'dissident' doctors and scientists to South Africa -- some of whom deny that HIV leads to AIDS -- to sit and discuss their theories. Lucy is barely aware that the 13th international AIDS' conference is being held in her country, in the city of Durban.
But she has heard, in a vague way like many other young South Africans, that the government says it cannot afford the widely-used drug AZT, even for pregnant women and rape survivors. Lucy is furious, with Mr Mbeki and the international pharmaceutical companies. "They don't care about the people, whether they die or they live. At least they can reduce the price or something like that".
More than four million people in South Africa are HIV positive; "that's a tenth of the population marked for death" says Dr Robert Shell, director of the Population Research Unit at Rhodes University. AIDS-related deaths are expected to exceed the number of births in the country within three years. Two hundred and fifty thousand people will die of AIDS this year in South Africa. Dr Shell says the president and the government are sending out confused messages to South Africans, instead of spearheading the anti-AIDS campaign, through awareness, action and effective leadership.
He disagrees with President Mbeki that poverty is a bigger problem than HIV. "HIV/AIDS is driving poverty, it is making us poorer. AIDS is moving faster than poverty". Shell gives the example of a household wage-earner who is HIV positive and gets AIDS, loses his or her income, needs medication and family support, stays at home and dies. The family then incurs huge funeral costs it cannot afford, making it even poorer. But he adds that AIDS is not only a disease for the poor, and that "the virus is spreading faster than our awareness".
There are sixty thousand AIDS' orphans living in Gauteng province alone, which covers Johannesburg and Pretoria. The statistics, many of which come from the Health Ministry, are staggering. It is estimated that by 2005, there could be half a million AIDS' orphans in South Africa. By the same year, six million South Africans could be living with HIV. By 2010, it is said that six million South Africans will have died of AIDS.
Dr Shell argues that there are too many policy statements from the government and not enough action. "We must go to war against AIDS, we must mobilise the government and the citizenry," he warns. "You can't negotiate with AIDS, you can't hold summits with AIDS".
Thabo Mbeki has taken on his critics, who question the relevance and timing of his decision to delve into the fundamental science of AIDS. In his speech at the re-opening of the debate on AIDS, by his advisory panel in May, Mbeki quoted his critics as asking: "'Why is this president of South Africa trying to give legitimacy to discredited scientists because, after all, questions of science affecting this matter had been resolved by the year 1984.'(But) I don't know of any science that gets resolved in that manner. (That) there's a cut-off year and, as from this year, science doesn't develop any further. It sounds like a sort of biblical absolute truth".
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The South African president has repeated that excluding others' ideas, because they may clash with your own, is not healthy. But many feel this is not the moment for intellectual pondering and reflection. AIDS' specialists in South Africa insist that testing, counselling, education, awareness and the provision of drugs are the priority to fight the disease. For Robert Shell, Mr Mbeki's approach to the AIDS' pandemic is a "costly and fatal indulgence" for South Africa.
From Lucy, the HIV-positive teenage mother who has been rejected by her own mother and who is determined to 'break the silence' (the theme of the global AIDS conference in Durban), comes a warning for Thabo Mbeki and his government. "They must pull up their socks. They must think straight. They must think wise. They must look at what's happening outside here, instead of staying in offices and thinking things that they think. They must see, you know, and plan from what they see".
