Sizwe's Test

(1)
Jonny Steinberg, an South African journalist, reported AIDS, the "gravest medical crisis" in his country:

More than one out of every eight South Africans is H.I.V. positive, Steinberg reports; every day roughly 800 South Africans die of AIDS and more than 1,000 additional people are infected. A recent survey found that in the previous month, the average South African was more than twice as likely to have been to a funeral as to a wedding. [...] Almost one out of three pregnant women in Lusikisiki [a district in the country] was H.I.V. positive.

Adam Hochschild wrote a book review of Jonny Steinberg's book, Sizwe's Test. (Death March, 10 Feb 2008)

(2)
Steinberg reported through a man's eyes: Sizwe Magadla, who lives in Lusikisiki. He explained why so many South Africans are not willing to take AIDS test.

The first layer of fear is lack of privacy. If one in South Africa was going to test, everyone knows

And if you get your H.I.V. test results at one of the clinics, hundreds of your fellow villagers are waiting in line behind you. If you immediately leave the nurse's office and go home, they know you’re H.I.V. negative; if you're kept behind for an hour of counseling, they know you're positive.

And the next layer:

He fears any sign of weakness or vulnerability could lose him customers or get him robbed.

There is a even deeper layer, related to the long, sad racial history

If whites already took so much farmland and mineral wealth, the thinking goes, could not the very needle the white doctor or his nurses use to draw blood be what's spreading AIDS in the first place? And if an enemy does attack you, what more deadly way than with an illness that seems connected to a man’s potency and ability to procreate?

(3)
Where is Lusikisiki?


檢視較大的地圖

(4)
Steinberg spent a few pages to blame Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa since 1999:

Hundreds of thousands of South Africans who have died of AIDS might still be alive today if Mbeki had repeatedly spoken out about safe sex and AIDS testing and treatment, and had thrown the full weight of his ruling party apparatus behind such a campaign