South Africa and HIV
I have picked up a new friend to spend time with on Sundays in Jo’burg: the newspaper, Sunday Times.
One of my favorite columnists is a woman named Pinky Khoabane.
On Sunday, November 15th, I read her short but bold piece titled “A Pandemic of Body, Mind, and Soul” which rightfully calls people to have a deeper dialogue regarding the AIDS pandemic in Africa, specifically South Africa. You can check out the article here: A Pandemic of Body, Mind, and Soul. “Awareness” is no longer the primary issue–then what is?
Below were my thoughts after reading the article:
Dear Ms. Khoabane,
Do you have any friends? No, I am not being facetious. Do you have any real-life friends besides the likes of me who may admire you for your boldness from afar? Individuals who actually have the courage to participate in a conversation that reveals how they are or are not responsible for the “broken social fabric”? How many, besides you, can hold the space of the audacious truths in your latest article without looking away from the fact that their own “friends” might be welding this very social fabric? A “real” conversation regarding this is decreasing at a frequency that is beyond alarming. I know that the diverse company of individuals (ethnically and of varying social stratum) where I centrifuge the fundamentals are dismissed as criticism given I am a New Yorker docked in South Africa for the moment.
