Why Mbeki is right
Africa AIDS crisis
is rooted in poverty
By
Deirdre Griswold
Just
what is Thabo Mbeki's crime?
The
South African president gave a speech to the 13th International AIDS Conference
in which he said that poverty was the most important factor in the AIDS epidemic
now sweeping Africa. Immediately, the imperialist media monopoly told the world
that Mbeki enraged the conferees by not putting more emphasis on the HIV virus
as the cause of the dread
disease.
It
was a classic case of media spin. The World Health Organization had just
released a devastating report on the magnitude of the AIDS crisis in Africa. A
world meeting was taking place in Durban on this very topic. The attention of
hundreds of millions would be riveted on South Africa just as the president was
giving a speech to the world.
And
what could his speech be about except the terrible legacy that capitalism has
bestowed upon the peoples of Africa--a legacy of seemingly intractable poverty
after centuries in which not only were the resources of the continent torn from
the earth to enrich foreign masters, not only were the people worked to death by
brutal overseers, but they were stolen and sold as slaves.
In
South Africa, this colonial history continued until late in the 20th century in
the infamous system of racist
apartheid.
Because
of this legacy, and because of the continuing grip of imperialist monopolies on
the world economy, the vast majority of the people in Africa today have no
access to health care, let alone to the expensive medications used in the West
to treat AIDS and reduce its rate of transmission. Most people have no access to
condoms. There is very limited education of any kind, let alone sex education.
All
this is the legacy of colonialism and oppression, which also forces husbands to
leave their wives and work in the mines and factories while living in hostels
most of the year--another factor in spreading
AIDS.
The
result is that millions in Africa are already infected, and many millions more
are expected to die of the disease unless an unlikely breakthrough produces a
cheap cure or method of vaccination. The economic damage is already being felt
as millions of people in the prime of life fall sick from a lingering disease
requiring intensive
care.
A
speech on the vast suffering the legacy of poverty has caused was bound to touch
the hearts and minds of a multitude around the world. After all, Mbeki is
president of a country where the people's epic struggle against apartheid had
great international support. And what he had to say to the world is that,
considering all the great riches that have been amassed in the Western
countries, it really would take them very little to turn around the situation in
Africa.
Centuries
of capitalist
looting
set the stage
Call
it reparations, call it material solidarity, call it what you will, the cost of
providing basic health care, sanitation, clean water, and schooling for all
those who suffer today because their ancestors were worked to death by colonial
masters, or were kidnapped in chains, comes to very little compared to the huge
amounts the empire now spends on
arms.
Poverty
in Africa is not intractable at all. There are plenty of material resources to
do the job. The problem is that most of the world's wealth--including the best
land and mineral wealth of Africa--is controlled by imperialist corporations.
The
bourgeoisie, by its very nature, is focused first and foremost on enriching
itself, and uses "charity" and "aid" only as weapons of control.
Laying
out these facts before the world is a powerful indictment of imperialism. So the
capitalist media brought their much-practiced weapons of cynicism and arrogance
to bear on this leader of a Black country.
His
detractors have tried to belittle Mbeki because he consulted, among others, some
U.S. doctors who believe AIDS is not caused by HIV but by conditions of poverty.
Not long ago, there were many different theories about the cause of AIDS and its
route of transmission.
Today
the great bulk of the medical profession agrees that it is caused by the HIV
virus, and can only be contracted through an exchange of bodily
fluids.
But
is it so strange that, on taking the helm of a country wracked by such
overwhelming problems, and knowing that it would be impossible to find the funds
to treat AIDS medically in the way it is done in wealthy countries, Mbeki looked
around at all the alternatives?
He
had a right to be skeptical of what the "experts" were telling him, especially
since so many of those experts were representatives of drug companies that want
to sell their wares at inflated
prices.
So
Mbeki checked it all out. He made a personal study of the subject. Nelson
Mandela, in his closing remarks to the conference, called Mbeki "a man of great
intellect" who "continues to place this issue on the top of the national and
continental agenda."
That
is certainly more than any of the leaders of the imperialist countries have
done. Most of them find it difficult to even mention
AIDS.
Did
Mbeki tell the conference that HIV doesn't cause AIDS? Not at all, although one
could get that impression from the media hype. But according to New York Times
medical writer Dr. Lawrence K. Altman, what made the participants at the
conference "bitterly disappointed" was that Mbeki "did not acknowledge
forthrightly that HIV causes AIDS, emphasizing instead social factors like
poverty as a major force behind the epidemic."
Even
Altman then goes on to admit that "while a virus causes AIDS, social conditions
feed the
epidemic."
This
campaign to demonize Mbeki for his emphasis on poverty reeks of racism. Its
undertones present him and African leaders in general as untutored and unwilling
to take on the "real issue"--the "risky sexual behavior" of the people.
But
that behavior wouldn't be risky if condoms were available. It should be obvious
that, with so many now sick and dying, the people would quickly adapt to
self-protection if they could get it. But how can people living on a few hundred
dollars a year afford
condoms?
The
media spin on the AIDS conference is intended to dissipate the shock and anger
toward the big drug companies that followed the WHO report describing Africa's
unfolding catastrophe.
The
AIDS movement and all concerned need to understand the broader social and
political questions here and give unqualified solidarity to the African peoples'
struggle for economic justice, which Mbeki rightly located at the center of the
AIDS issue.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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