Woman "A" has been in a steady relationship for a few years.Boddingtons Technical Plastics provide a complete plastic injection moulding service including design， One day her partner forces her to have sex against her will. She goes to the police station and lays a charge of rape. She immediately finds support from a range of organisations for her courageous determination to "break the silence". The media comment favourably. She is feted for facing the stigma and becomes a role model for rape survivors. In short, she is a hero.
Woman "B" has also been in a steady relationship. One day she goes for an AIDS test, and learns she is positive. She finds out that she contracted the virus from her partner who chose to remain silent about his status. She would never have consented to unprotected sex had she known. Betrayed and violated, she also knows that if she takes a stand, she will stand alone. If she lays a charge or sues for the violation of her physical integrity, she will be accused of "stigmatising HIV", "driving the pandemic underground" and "violating" her partner's "right to privacy". In short, unless she meekly accepts her situation, she is a villain.
In fact, under South African law, if her partner refused to reveal his status, she would only be able to force him to test for HIV if he raped her.
This is a consequence of the "progressive" line on HIV/AIDS, touted by people who actually have much in common with religious fanatics or fascists. In their blinkered focus on a free-floating single issue, they lose sight of the broader public good. Of course, they believe they are motivated by a commitment to "human rights". But they are very selective in whose "rights" they promote. They claim to "own" the moral high ground, but they hunt in a vicious pack to prevent anyone questioning their assumptions. Slacktivists is too gentle a word to describe them. They are more like an AIDS Gestapo.
That is why I am interested in a matter that is scheduled to come before a Durban court soon. In the first case of its kind in SA, a Cape Town woman is suing a Durban man for R2.56-million for infecting her with genital herpes, which like AIDS is an incurable, sexually transmitted disease. Herpes is typically dormant in the system, with intermittent, painful flare-ups, similar to a cold sore on the lip. In Britain recently,If so, you may have a cube puzzle . a young man was controversially sentenced to 14 months in jail for passing on genital herpes to his partner.
Although this is the first case of its kind in South Africa, the press reports of the Durban matter have passed almost unnoticed. There has been no outcry about stigmatising genital herpes or driving it "underground".
But then,which applies to the first offshore merchant account only, this woman is middle-class and white. And her former partner is rich and white - a chief executive of a large company.
"So what?", you ask. "Why bring race into it? Surely the sexual transmission of diseases is primarily an issue of behaviour, NOT race?"
I thought so too. I thought we had, at last, got over the racial stereotyping that characterised AIDS denialism under Thabo Mbeki, who was determined to prevent the debate focusing on the need for behaviour change. Anyone who dared venture into this territory was accused of perpetuating the racist myth that African men are "rampant sexual beasts, unable to control our urges, unable to keep our legs crossed, unable to keep it in our pants," as he once memorably told Parliament. That accusation was intended to shut down the debate. And it did.
There is no irony like a South African irony, but this one beats them all: During the Mbeki era, anyone who dared argue that AIDS was a function of sexual behaviour and NOT of race was labelled a racist!!
The election of President Zuma, whose lifestyle reinforced the stereotype Mbeki wished to eschew,If any food Ventilation system condition is poorer than those standards, inevitably meant that the denial would deepen.
As the Durban court case illustrates, it is publicly acceptable for a white man to be called to account for infecting his partner with a sexually transmitted disease. But,The application can provide Ceramic tile to visitors, not vice versa, according to the AIDS Gestapo. Who actually is being racist?
The Gestapo approach is riddled with such contradictions. But it still comes as a surprise to find traces of Gestapo logic in the writings of an eminent and respected scientist like Dr Helen Epstein who has written by far the most compelling and rational treatise on AIDS. Her book, The Invisible Cure, explains so many things about the disease that once seemed inexplicable to me, and there has not yet been a credible rebuttal.
Her book seeks to explain why the AIDS pandemic is disproportionately centred in Southern and Eastern Africa. She comes to the conclusion that the major driver of AIDS is multiple concurrent sexual partners. She coined the term "AIDS superhighway" to describe such sexual practices, at approximately the same time that Mbeki was so determined to prevent the debate going in that direction.
It is to Epstein's credit that she persisted, nevertheless. But it also explains why she is at such pains to prove she is not a racist. She seeks to avoid the "Mbeki stigma" by repeatedly explaining that Americans have more partners over their lifetimes than people in Africa. Serial monogamy, she explains, is far less likely to transmit AIDS than multiple concurrent partners.
Her case is convincing. Thus it comes as a surprise to find that she was prepared to use the Mbeki trick against me (and accuse me of "reviving stereotypes of the promiscuous African") simply because I refuse to demean myself by desperately trying to prove I am not a racist when I state a case that should have nothing to do with race. I simply ignore the tired and tedious reversion to the "race card" by people who have run out of credible arguments.
As in so many other cases, we can learn from Mandela's early example in the HIV debate. In 1992, addressing a meeting of 50,000 people in Zwide, Eastern Cape, Mr Mandela pledged that the ANC would face the AIDS issue uncompromisingly.
He said: "We as an organisation are going to take this matter seriously. Even the Government has not enough resources to deal with it. The misconception that our men can go around having many women, that is polygamy, must come to an end. It was all well in the olden days of our fathers but today it is dangerous." As with so many other issues, he was prepared to confront the emerging AIDS pandemic head-on.
But not for long. Interestingly, I can find no other example of Mr Mandela ever explicitly raising this issue in this way again. In fact, during his Presidency he seems to have paid scant attention to AIDS. I have often wondered whether the AIDS Gestapo managed to silence him too.
They will probably also go for Health Minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, after his comments last week, when he announced the latest AIDS data and effectively conceded that the government had failed to bring down the infection rate through current strategies. He optimistically described the statistics as an indication of "stabilisation". But the fact is, SA has fallen far short of its stated aim of halving the HIV transmission rate by 2011. The only province that has done so, is the Western Cape.
Woman "B" has also been in a steady relationship. One day she goes for an AIDS test, and learns she is positive. She finds out that she contracted the virus from her partner who chose to remain silent about his status. She would never have consented to unprotected sex had she known. Betrayed and violated, she also knows that if she takes a stand, she will stand alone. If she lays a charge or sues for the violation of her physical integrity, she will be accused of "stigmatising HIV", "driving the pandemic underground" and "violating" her partner's "right to privacy". In short, unless she meekly accepts her situation, she is a villain.
In fact, under South African law, if her partner refused to reveal his status, she would only be able to force him to test for HIV if he raped her.
This is a consequence of the "progressive" line on HIV/AIDS, touted by people who actually have much in common with religious fanatics or fascists. In their blinkered focus on a free-floating single issue, they lose sight of the broader public good. Of course, they believe they are motivated by a commitment to "human rights". But they are very selective in whose "rights" they promote. They claim to "own" the moral high ground, but they hunt in a vicious pack to prevent anyone questioning their assumptions. Slacktivists is too gentle a word to describe them. They are more like an AIDS Gestapo.
That is why I am interested in a matter that is scheduled to come before a Durban court soon. In the first case of its kind in SA, a Cape Town woman is suing a Durban man for R2.56-million for infecting her with genital herpes, which like AIDS is an incurable, sexually transmitted disease. Herpes is typically dormant in the system, with intermittent, painful flare-ups, similar to a cold sore on the lip. In Britain recently,If so, you may have a cube puzzle . a young man was controversially sentenced to 14 months in jail for passing on genital herpes to his partner.
Although this is the first case of its kind in South Africa, the press reports of the Durban matter have passed almost unnoticed. There has been no outcry about stigmatising genital herpes or driving it "underground".
But then,which applies to the first offshore merchant account only, this woman is middle-class and white. And her former partner is rich and white - a chief executive of a large company.
"So what?", you ask. "Why bring race into it? Surely the sexual transmission of diseases is primarily an issue of behaviour, NOT race?"
I thought so too. I thought we had, at last, got over the racial stereotyping that characterised AIDS denialism under Thabo Mbeki, who was determined to prevent the debate focusing on the need for behaviour change. Anyone who dared venture into this territory was accused of perpetuating the racist myth that African men are "rampant sexual beasts, unable to control our urges, unable to keep our legs crossed, unable to keep it in our pants," as he once memorably told Parliament. That accusation was intended to shut down the debate. And it did.
There is no irony like a South African irony, but this one beats them all: During the Mbeki era, anyone who dared argue that AIDS was a function of sexual behaviour and NOT of race was labelled a racist!!
The election of President Zuma, whose lifestyle reinforced the stereotype Mbeki wished to eschew,If any food Ventilation system condition is poorer than those standards, inevitably meant that the denial would deepen.
As the Durban court case illustrates, it is publicly acceptable for a white man to be called to account for infecting his partner with a sexually transmitted disease. But,The application can provide Ceramic tile to visitors, not vice versa, according to the AIDS Gestapo. Who actually is being racist?
The Gestapo approach is riddled with such contradictions. But it still comes as a surprise to find traces of Gestapo logic in the writings of an eminent and respected scientist like Dr Helen Epstein who has written by far the most compelling and rational treatise on AIDS. Her book, The Invisible Cure, explains so many things about the disease that once seemed inexplicable to me, and there has not yet been a credible rebuttal.
Her book seeks to explain why the AIDS pandemic is disproportionately centred in Southern and Eastern Africa. She comes to the conclusion that the major driver of AIDS is multiple concurrent sexual partners. She coined the term "AIDS superhighway" to describe such sexual practices, at approximately the same time that Mbeki was so determined to prevent the debate going in that direction.
It is to Epstein's credit that she persisted, nevertheless. But it also explains why she is at such pains to prove she is not a racist. She seeks to avoid the "Mbeki stigma" by repeatedly explaining that Americans have more partners over their lifetimes than people in Africa. Serial monogamy, she explains, is far less likely to transmit AIDS than multiple concurrent partners.
Her case is convincing. Thus it comes as a surprise to find that she was prepared to use the Mbeki trick against me (and accuse me of "reviving stereotypes of the promiscuous African") simply because I refuse to demean myself by desperately trying to prove I am not a racist when I state a case that should have nothing to do with race. I simply ignore the tired and tedious reversion to the "race card" by people who have run out of credible arguments.
As in so many other cases, we can learn from Mandela's early example in the HIV debate. In 1992, addressing a meeting of 50,000 people in Zwide, Eastern Cape, Mr Mandela pledged that the ANC would face the AIDS issue uncompromisingly.
He said: "We as an organisation are going to take this matter seriously. Even the Government has not enough resources to deal with it. The misconception that our men can go around having many women, that is polygamy, must come to an end. It was all well in the olden days of our fathers but today it is dangerous." As with so many other issues, he was prepared to confront the emerging AIDS pandemic head-on.
But not for long. Interestingly, I can find no other example of Mr Mandela ever explicitly raising this issue in this way again. In fact, during his Presidency he seems to have paid scant attention to AIDS. I have often wondered whether the AIDS Gestapo managed to silence him too.
They will probably also go for Health Minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, after his comments last week, when he announced the latest AIDS data and effectively conceded that the government had failed to bring down the infection rate through current strategies. He optimistically described the statistics as an indication of "stabilisation". But the fact is, SA has fallen far short of its stated aim of halving the HIV transmission rate by 2011. The only province that has done so, is the Western Cape.
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