PREMIER'S ADDRESS
Programme Directors Sylvia Basjan and Elphas Nkosi,
MEC for Health Sibongile Manana
Members of the Executive Council present here today
DG Advocate Stanley Soko
Dr Karim and other heads of department
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me from the outset wish all women a happy international women's day. But then because ours is a non-sexist society, our men may feel aggrived.
Allow me then to say happy international women's day ONLY to those men who love and respect women. And while we are at it let us pause for a moment and think about all those women who died from AIDS-related diseases and other preventable diseases.
Those who died; were raped and abused in wars; assaulted and sexually abused in homes or on the streets and those who are victims of exploitation, hunger and disease.
As we meet here today, less than two weeks before March 21, Human Rights Day, let us reflect on what someone with HIV infection once said:
“It is not the HIV virus which is killing me or making my life not worth living, but the bad attitudes of people towards me and their rejection of me.”
Therefore when I was asked to speak at the launch of the provincial aids council I wondered whether I would be speaking to people who genuinely understand that people living with HIV/AIDS are humans and deserve to be treated with respect?
And that like them, every one of us can become infected?
I then realised that all of us would not have been here if we were not bound by our genuine respect and love for our country. And a love, passion and patriotism so strong that it saw all of us openly declare that HIV/AIDS is not someone else's problem. It is my problem. It is your problem.
We have, I believe, all come to the realisation that we can only win against HIV/AIDS if we join hands to save our nation. Indeed we must join hands because HIV/AIDS threatens to undermine our efforts to grow our economy and build a better life for all our people.
It kills those on whom our society relies to provide income through agriculture, through mining, in the factories, those who run our schools and our hospitals, and those who govern our towns and provinces.
It worsens the poverty pervasive in our society when parents who are breadwinners die. Programme directors, by allowing it to spread, we face the danger that half of our youth will not reach adulthood.
Their education will be wasted. The economy will shrink. There will be a large number of sick people whom the healthy will not be able to maintain.
Our dreams as a people will be shattered. For too long we have closed our eyes as a nation, hoping the truth was not so real.
Many of us have grieved for orphans left with no one to fend for them. We have experienced AIDS in the groans of wasting lives. We have carried it in small and big coffins to many graveyards.
At times we did not know that we were burying AIDS victims. At other time we knew, but chose to remain silent. Believe me when I say that one of our greatest challenges is how we deal with the HIV/Aids scourge. In partnership with all sectors of society , we must continue to give absolute priority to HIV/AIDS programmes .
The power to defeat the spread of HIV and AIDS lies in our joining hands as youth, as women and men, as business people, as workers, as religious people, as parents and teachers, as farmers and farm workers, as the unemployed and the professionals, as the rich and the poor - in fact, all of us.
I am not a great fan of statistics, but allow me to quote from a study released recently.
According to the South African Health Review 2000 released last Friday, 71 percent of the estimated global total of people with HIV/AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. In most sub-Saharan countries adults and children are acquiring HIV at a higher rate than ever before.
There were 4-million new infections in the region during 1999. South Africa has a high infection rate, and with a total of between 3.5 and 4.2 million infected people, has the largest number of people living with HIV in the world.
South Africa has been described as having one of the fastest growing epidemics in the world. From 1990 up to 1998 there had been a 32-fold increase with a slight flattening for 1999.
In 1990, South Africa had an infection rate of less than one percent. By 1999, an average infection rate of over 22.4 percent. With more than 1 700 people infected daily with HIV, approximately 550 000 new infections are expected to have occurred over the last 12 months in South Africa. By the year 2005 the total number estimated to be positive in South Africa would be six million.
At the present rates of AIDS or late stage HIV infection, estimates of death due to AIDS stand at 120 000 per year, with this figure climbing to 250 000 by 2002, and reaching one million per year by 2008.
The reasons why the epidemic has spread so rapidly in South Africa are many and complex.
Factors including poverty, migration, the position of women, socio-economic conditions, unemployment, the challenge of development, illiteracy and poor education were all detailed in the introduction to the 1994 National AIDS Plan.
These same factors continue to fuel the ongoing epidemic. The epidemic, in turn, exacerbates these factors, creating a cycle of infection and vulnerability, and leading to more poverty.
Increased susceptibility to infection is due to numerous environmental, cultural, class, racial and socio-economic factors. Being a newly democratic society in transition, with a developing economy, our vulnerability to its' impact is potentially immense.
In addition, through historical neglect, there are high rates of sexually transmitted diseases amongst the population, a generally early age of sexual debut; a high number of concurrent sexual partners; low levels of condom usage;
Poor rates of successful STD treatment; high mobility of the society; high rates of poverty and low levels of literacy. Frightening statistics. But we can and MUST do something about it. In fact we have started to and continue to do something about it.
As a province we are now rated the third highest after KwaZulu/Natal and the Free State. But that is not something we can gloat about. We need to work harder.
That is why we are here today to join hands as members of the Mpumalanga Provincial Aids Council, together we pledge to spread the message that HIV/AIDS is real and is spreading.
This weekend Deputy President Jacob Zuma will be speaking in Hazyview at a South African National Aids Council meeting. Our council is part of SANAC
Programme directors, I am heartened by the fact that almost all sectors are represented on the council.
The religious sector, organised labour; the media, the Education sector; the business sector, Government; non-governmental and community based organisations; the sports, arts, and entertainment sector; Women and Individuals.
But let me hasten to point out that every group is made up of individuals. The final onus, therefore, rests on the individual. The reality of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is that it can only be averted by individual behavioural change.
Therefore, every individual has first to avoid an individual risk of contracting HIV. The virus knows no age, gender, race, or status boundaries. Every man, woman and child is at risk.
Our schools and other educational institutions have the unique opportunity to provide young people with adequate information on sex, sexuality and sexually transmitted disease like AIDS.
Because HIV related absenteeism, loss of productivity and the cost of replacing workers lost to AIDS threatens the survival of a number of businesses and industrial sectors, it clearly underlines the role of business in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS.
On the micro- economic level, a reduced family income and increased health related spending would depress many markets. And on the macro-economic level, export oriented industries (will experience increased production costs due to AIDS. This impacts negatively on their global competitiveness.
The millions of people in employment are a captive audience for HIV/AIDS information and education. Given the fact that these employees are family members, parents and community leaders, collectively the business sector has access to the majority of the South African population.
And as government we employ close to a million people and will thus be affected by HIV/AIDS like any other large employer. With one in seven civil servants already being infected with HIV/AIDS, it will impact on employee benefits, absenteeism, productivity, recruitment, and training costs.
Programme directors, AIDS is going to impact on the service of communities by putting additional strain on already overstretched health and welfare budgets, for instance. Each government department must therefore develop a better understanding on how exactly HIV/AIDS is impacting on its line function.
Communities have tremendous powers, resources, and ability to find appropriate solutions to their problems. Community based organisations therefore enjoy a high degree of credibility and can mobilize large numbers of people.
Non-governmental organisations are usually formed to address a particular problem. Their operational principles are flexible and usually appropriate to the task at hand.
International experience has shown that HIV/AIDS programmes are likely to succeed if they enjoy a high degree of community involvement and support.
Community-based and Non-governmental organisations are key partners of government in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
These types of organisations are well placed to raise the awareness of HIV/AIDS in communities before the harsh realities of the epidemic become more evident. Such organisation can shape people attitude towards risky sexual activity or towards people living with HIV/AIDS.
They can also provide community based care and help communities to cope with the psychosocial consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Similarly the entertainment industry, arts, culture and sports target mainly the young section of society, which is most at risk of HIV.
Sporting personalities like Magic Johnson are powerful role models with the ability to influence attitudes of societies. The arts and entertainment sector are in an ideal position to spread our HIV/AIDS messages.
Like sports, the arts and the entertainment sector produces its heroes who, through the power of the personality, can influence young people to avoid risky sex and discriminatory behaviour.
Programme directors, the strategies undertaken to prevent the spread of HIV have focused mainly on promotion of condom use, reduction of numbers of sexual partners and treatment of STDs. Many of these responses, however, have failed to address the social, economic and power relations between men and women.
Women continue to bear the brunt of the AIDS epidemic. Women are physiologically more vulnerable to HIV infection, stereotyping and blame-placing.
The low social status and economic dependence of women also prevents them from controlling risk situations and negotiating safer sex practice. As I mentioned earlier women, as care-givers, often carry the psychological and physical burdens of AIDS care.
Therefore, women's groups play an important role in sensitizing their constituents and lobbying for greater gender sensitive AIDS strategies.
The need for home care is overwhelming, and the resources for meeting that need outside the home are nonexistent nearly everywhere."
The church can also help us in dealing with the taboo subject of sex and abstinence. Many of us have been taught to think of sex as immoral, dirty or embarrassing, unless it is practiced within the bonds of marriage.
As adults we are not used to talking openly about sex or hearing about sex. We are not used to talking with children about sexual matters. These aspects of our culture, that have made us shy about sex, were developed in different times. We now have a completely new challenge with HIV.
It is a new disease that was not there when our old customs were created. The arrival of HIV means we have to make some changes to our culture because if we do not make these changes very large numbers of our young people will die and we may do so as well.
Let us remember that tens of thousands of our young people have already begun sexual activity and become infected by the HIV virus out of ignorance.
Not only are many children starting to have sex fresh out of primary school, but they do so in the shadow of an AIDS pandemic that threatens to rob them of what should be a bright future.
But we must urge all our youth to protect themselves at an early age. And to protect their loved ones against this disease by abstaining from sexual activity as much as possible; by being faithful to their partners or by always using a condom if they are sexually active.
I believe, therefore, that it is important for all of us to educate each other about the danger that HIV/AIDS poses.
Everyday every night - wherever we are - we shall let our families, friends and peers know that they can save themselves and save the nation, by changing the way we live and how we love. We shall use every opportunity openly to discuss the issue of AIDS.
As Partners Against AIDS, together we pledge to care. And so today we join hands in the Partnership, fully aware that our unity is our strength. The simple but practical action that we take today is tomorrow's insurance for our nation.
There is no other moment but the present, to take action. And to take it now.
I thank you.