Since I arrived in SA I have met so many beautiful stong and dedicated black women. Activists and human rights defenders working to empower themselves and their sisters through skills education and advocacy. Through supporting women who have been victims of hate crimes such as assault and rape and as a result are now living with HIV/AIDS. One such woman was Buhle Msibi who died of AIDS related illness on April 1st this year. Writing in FEW’s newsletter, Sabine Neidhardt describes Buhle as
“our friend, our colleague, our comrade………was profoundly politically conscious and engaged, especially around the complex issues of relating to HIV/AIDS and lesbian sexuality. She was out about her lesbian identity and about her HIV status, and for this courageous act, her own life became a political project”
The following piece is based on a tribute written for Buhle Msibi by Sabine Neidhardt who questions why a relatively privileged black woman living with HIV/AIDS who had the support of family and friends and access to private medical care, who had information on AIDS and knew her rights, not only died but was left unattended by medical staff.
Neidhardt highlights the realities of living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa for the majority of people and emphasises the fact the HIV/AIDS is a political issue in the country. It is not just that there is a lack of access to anti-retrovirals (ARVs) and general healthcare. There is also limited access to proper nutrition, emotional and institutional support systems and basic information on how the virus is spread.
“The reality for most South Africans living with HIV is indeed dismal. Of the approximately 5.5. million infected with HIV, only 12-12% have access to life saving ARV’s.”
In South Africa an HIV + person has to have a CD4 count of 200 before they can received ARVs. In some countries in Europe it is 350, in others people are given ARVs irrespective of their CD4 count and whether they are ill or not.
Many of the reasons behind the continued spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa are constantly under public discussion. Lack of access to healthcare and ARVs; increasing poverty; lack of will by the government to invest in public health; gender based violence that results in young black women contracting HIV “at triple the rate of young men”. However Neidhardt points to one aspect of the discussion around HIV/AIDS that is absent. How race is played out in South African society and how this influences the fight against HIV/AIDS.
“how white supremacy still impacts the struggle against HIV/AIDS, how it orders relationships between people, countries and institutions. It is as if we are violating some unwritten code of conduct, especially in this country if we want to speak aloud that racist thinking is still entrenched in the psyche of all South Africans. Perhaps we think we are disrespecting the new democracy if we speak the reality that racism still does dictate for us who is and who is not , worthy of the basic human and economic rights, care and dignity that are outlined so eloquently in the 1996 Constitution.”
Neidhardt is white and personally experienced the racism that took place by her friends bedside. The difference in the way she a white woman was treated and that of other black women and worse Buhle despite the seriousness of her illness.
“I was not a patient/client/consumer at Casternhof, but my life received a level of basic respect that Buhle was not privy to, no matter how hard capitalism and its private health care schemes work to perpetuate the myth that, in the eyes of the market we are all equal consumers.”
As I have stated at the beginning of this piece I have met and spoken with many black women since arriving in South Africa and what I am hearing on a daily basis echoes Neidhardt’s reading of present day South Africa. No matter how hard the media, the government and the few privileged blacks and the white liberal population try to make out that race is not an issue. The realities of the majority lives tell a different story.
Not least of all as one sister put it to me….
The legacy of a society run on race remains. People are accuately conscious of a persons race and people are defined on the basis of race
Definately things are improving as people begin to integrate more espcially on personal levels. Nevertheless the healing process necessary to enable people to move forward has not yet really taken place at least not for the majority in an environment of increasing poverty and unemployment. There is still considerable backlash from many in the white community over affirmative action particularly from those whites born since 1994. The bottom line is that the legacy of apartheid will continue to have a long term impact on education, employment and health provision and people need to accept that reality and work towards affecting change even if it is just on a personal level.
