Although South Africa is clearly no longer under the same kind of explicit occupation as French Algeria or the Belgian Congo, it is widely acknowledged that demands for debt repayment, structural adjustment, and the World Bank and the WTO’s role in cateringto multinationals throughout Africa, collectively share features with earlier models of colonial domination. Echoes of the Victorian civilis-ingmission are also found throughout AIDS discourse, particularly in the US where one tenth of the AIDS budget has been allocated for strict abstinence campaigns rather than condom distribution. The US also recently imposed a moralising`gagrule’ that required NGOs to pledge their opposition to prostitution in order to receive funding for international anti-AIDS work.
A representative of a major evangelical charity in the US reacted to the global AIDS crisis by saying, `AIDS has created an evangelism opportunity for the body of Christ unlike any in history’.
This emphasis on evangelism through AIDS work has been matched by placing AIDS under the umbrella of anti-terrorism. In an interview on CNN in January 2002, Bono warned that in a country like Botswana, which is 40 per cent infected with AIDS, the abject poverty of the people makes them `very susceptible to the likes of al Qaeda . . . if you look at Africa, there’s potentially another 10 Afghanistans in Africa. Are we going to leave them the way we left Afghanistan?`
The suggestion that treating AIDS is a way to combat terrorism and Christianise a continent devoid of sexual morality demonstrates the extent to which the AIDS crisis in Africa has been conveniently appropriated by those with a neocolonial agenda. The author of `The humanisation of the African’ affirms this link between the past and present by quoting Fanon’s argument that `The effect consciously sought by colonialism was to drive in the natives’ heads the idea that if the settlers were to leave, they would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation, and bestiality.`
To acknowledge the ubiquitous spectre of colonialism is to offer a partial explanation of South African AIDS denialism that links it with Fanon’s observation that `the colonised native’s mistrust of the colonisingtechnician’ may lead to the refusal of medical treatment. Although Fanon was writing about individuals, this blanket refusal was writ large in the contemporary instance of Mbeki’s AIDS policy. When Fanon wrote, `It is not possible for the colonised society and the colonisingsociety to agree to pay tribute, at the same time and in the same place, to a single value’, he foresaw the kind of political resistance played out in the anti-colonial rhetoric of the `The humanisation of the African’.
A closer examination of this document thus helps to illustrate the perceived choices facing Thabo Mbeki during the period of his AIDS denialism: either to succumb to the `assistance’ of pharmaceutical companies and an exploitative industry bent on scorn, if not racism, for the actual plight of African subjects; or, to pause and consider the veracity of scientific discoveries about AIDS and, meanwhile, risk the rapid spread of a deadly virus and the deaths of untold millions. That Mbeki chose the latter is deeply tragic; however, to have succumbed to the former would have resulted in humiliation and a loss of its own kind. It was in effect the racism of the past and present that distorted claims of the epidemic so that, as Fanon said, `the truth objectively expressed’ was `vitiated by the lie of the colonial situation’
As a result, an inevitable battle was forged between Mbeki and the neocolonial forces of economic and political domination, at the expense of the lives of impoverished, dying South Africans. Such grave, unimaginable consequences can be understood as the end result of a large-scale historical tragedy which both sides - not merely the Mbeki government - must atone for.
PS, please note!!!, this has nothing to do with the religion of Christanity and the author does not make critism. I have posted this information because it is related to my study
Posts: 2198 | Registered: Jun 2006
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Stop worrying yourself (if possible). If the creator of the universe does not care about all these atrocities being carried out on the innocent & excessively ignorant people of the world, why should you?
People always/often wonder if they're going to hell or heaven, but how many people have ever considered the option that they may be in hell already?
2 cents.
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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My approach to knowledge--scientific or otherwise--is to be always vigilant and sceptical--especially where vested interests, race, money, ideology, etc. are involved.
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My mother told me few days ago that some Kenyan scientists succeeded to find drug against AIDS but they decided to keep it secret from Western drug companies.
About the article ( a must read indeed) discusses not only about AIDS treatment but also polio and how countries like Nigeria and Afghanistan are not allowed to question these treatments which all of them are produced in the West.
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warned that in a country like Botswana, which is 40 per cent infected with AIDS, the abject poverty of the people makes them `very susceptible to the likes of al Qaeda . . . if you look at Africa, there’s potentially another 10 Afghanistans in Africa. Are we going to leave them the way we left Afghanistan?` 
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