Zuma rape trial helpful in fight against HIV/AIDS
HIV/AIDS activists have labelled Jacob Zuma’s pronouncements on HIV/AIDS and sex during his rape trial as a setback in the fight against the pandemic, but I’m not so sure.
Under cross-examination this week, Zuma said he took a shower after sex with an HIV-positive woman because “it was one of the things that would minimise contact with the disease”.
“It’s the same sort of myth that you get with teenage pregnancy, that if you wash you might not get pregnant,” Annabel Kanabus, director of the British-based Aids charity AVERT, which runs prevention programmes in South Africa, told the Irish Examiner.
“Grassroots prevention efforts will be terribly, terribly harmed by this. It will indirectly result in a lot of people dying because they will follow his example.”
It’s a sentiment that is shared by South African activists, according to the same report.
“He is sending a very wrong impression to the youth, that if you engage in unprotected sex the transmission risks are minimal,” said Nokhwezi Hoboyi, a spokeswoman for the Treatment Action Campaign.
eTV ran a vox pops on Thursday night with HIV/AIDS organisations expressing a similar sentiment.
But it may not be as big a loss in the fight against HIV/AIDS as people are making it out to be. The issue has brought the usually taboo topic of sex, and negotiation around sex, firmly into the public sphere. Who needs obscure billboards when you have prime-time news presenting the debate?
One aspect of Zuma’s testimony that has got tongues across the nation wagging is his assertion that culturally it’s important to satisfy a woman who wants sex, even if you are committing adultery and you don’t have a condom, is at odds with Zulu culture.
“As I was growing up as a young boy, I was told if you get to that stage with a woman and you don’t do anything it is said she will become infuriated with you, that she may even lay false charges of rape against you,” he was reported this week as saying in court.
A Zulu friend told me this week that Zuma’s excuses were laughable and just that: excuses. No traditionalist could take them seriously, he added.
The idea that South Africans would believe and internalise Zuma’s remarks hints at a racist colonial discourse that should have been buried a long time ago. And to suggest that his position will spawn new HIV myths around showering and male HIV-risk is a tad paranoid.
In fact, frank and open discussions and debates around sex are more likely to occur in South African households as a result of the media coverage around Zuma’s bedroom antics. It may be sensationalist and lurid, but it’s better than nothing. – Richard Frank
April 10th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
It is quite nauseating to have Jacob Zuma, such a high-profile man commit an offence when he should have satisfied his sexual desires with any of the many mature women who could have given him the sex without trouble. The trial is well placed in the fight against HIV/AIDS and people will learn quite a number of things which they should otherwise would not have learnt.
Jordan
April 10th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
I am ready for any exchange of views and feelings about this whole things.
Jordan
April 11th, 2006 at 10:19 am
What a role Model
If you watch Zuma’s die hard supporters outside the high courts in Downtown Jozi, then surely you will believe that he is a role model to many young up and coming men and women. A recent stunt was displayed on the front page of the Sowetan where actually an armed child was used in the public circus to popularise Zuma’s support. Whether this was child abuse or not , depends on your own point of view regarding the whole unfolding issue. This being the case, and with Zuma’s careless utterences about HIV/AIDS in the name of culture, there is a danger that he might just be modelling perceptions that might surely act as a set back to combat the disease.
April 12th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
I disagree with Richard wholeheartedly. Jacob Zuma has done irreparable damage to prevention efforts in this country. This man weilds serious power and Richard underestimates it. When Thabo Mbeki says HIV doesn’t cause AIDS people don’t bother to wear condoms. When Jacob Zuma says that he thought his risk of contracting HIV was small, and he knows this because he was the head of the National AIDS Council, believe me, there are going to be lots of people out there who take that message on board. What this trial is really pointing to is the lack of moral and political leadership on HIV/AIDS in this country owing to the behind-the-doors denialism that is rife in the upper eshelons of our government.
April 12th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
I think it is really stupid to think that people from this country cannot make smart decisions about their lives. A lot of HIV/AIDS education is being done by different organisations. There is also a lot of information available on the subject. I honestly don’t think that a comment made by one man can change the way South Africans feel and think about the issue. It is very naive to think that Jacob Zuma has that much power over people. The comments he made in court have started debates in all spheres of society. People are talking about this in taxis and townships. The topic comes up on African language radio stations. I believe what Zuma said in court will definitely help the fight against HIV and AIDS.
S’phume!
April 12th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Urban legends start all too easily. No doubt there will be (many more) people who think they can minimise their risk of contracting HIV/AIDS by showering after sex, after this trial.
Many people, just like our president, prefer to comfort themselves with denial about HIV/AIDS, because the truth is perhaps just too painful to confront. Zuma’s testimony in his trial will aid and abet this denialism, more than expose it or change it into understanding about how people contract this terrible disease.
April 13th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Experts did not find a cue for this deadly virus but yet another solution by our own Deputy President JZ. Yes, Jacob Zuma he made a moving statement by saying he took a bath after having sex with the alleged Victim to minimize chances of contracting the virus it seems as if the Minister of Health did not brief her colleaqeus about this virus she is only interested in children and youth.
I would like to make a freindly but agent request to HIV/AIDS activists to inform{brief} members of parliament about this deadly virus>>Off Recod
April 15th, 2006 at 9:50 am
Part of being a journalist is to be up on the science, before leaping to opinions. The importance of the evidence of Dr Hefer is that HIV is not like other sexually transmitted diseases where the chance of infection is one in four contacts. One in a 1000 contacts, quoted by Hefer, in Zuma’s case is just one of the statistics coming out of such studies. Notably Padian etal. Where in about 500 discordant couples (one HIV- one HIV+) there were no incidences of infection over a five year period. I am not saying don’t wear condoms, safe sex is the best sex. But journalists should concentrate on gathering facts. Gisselquist et al in 2003 reviewed the scientific literature on sexual transmission of HIV and came up with an estimate that at most only 38% of HIV+ reactions in Africa could be attributed to sexual transmission, the rest was iatrogenic - caused by the doctor/health professional. In which case, you have a better chance of testing HIV+ if you see your doctor than if you stay away. - Anita Allen, MA HDipEd BA, anita@theallens.co.za
April 15th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Anita, come on. Most South Africans never go doctors. So how is it the pandemic spreading if (according to your logic) sex doesn’t cause HIV (much), but drs do? Having unprotected sex causes HIV finished and klaar. Denialism is a disease almost as bad as HIV itself. Studies that say only someone will only contract the virus statistically 1 in 1000 times of having sex have to be flawed. Otherwise why would about 30% of South Africans have the virus? Most people probably wouldn’t have sex 1000 times in thier lifetime, especially unsafe sex with a partner whose sexual history they didn’t know.
April 16th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
“I am not saying don’t wear condoms, safe sex is the best sex. But journalists should concentrate on gathering facts.”
With whatever due respect, Anita, journalists do have a system of fact-gathering (aka news gathering). Your suggestion, that journalist should scour academic journals to gather the kind of data you present to us, is hilarious.
Which is more resonant, some detached citation from ScienceDirect or the number of funerals you see in your neighbourhood every Saturday?
I strongly believe that being “up on the science”, if it means coming up with these tranquilizing statistics you bring us, would be superlative regression.
April 19th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
Dear Sipho and Bulelwa,
Thank you for commenting. One way millions of people could have genetic scraps dubbed “viral”-whatever is through their bloodlines - vertically from father/mother genes passed on to off-spring. That’s why in a very real sense one would like to make sure that close encounters of the fourth kind gives rise to off-spring with the best shot at life. It’s good for the temples that house and give rise to precursor off-spring to be healthy.
It has been confirmed, that there was xenogenic transfer of simian-specific viruses to humans due to widely disseminated vaccines contaminated during the culturing process in monkey-renal cells. That’s another possible explanation as to how viral bits and pieces get to be archived on genomes as endogenous and passed on throughout evolutionary history as harmless passengers. Vertical transmission which has been happening ever since sexual reproduction made its entry. If something infectious were in that mix which had 100% fatality, it would run a short explosive course, and then stabilise as people gain natural immunity.
HIV, incidentally, whatever it eventually turns out to be and not to be behaves like a vertically transmitted bit.
These are basic facts in which science defines as nearly as it can, the reality we all live in. If a particular journalist does not “believe” in this day and age that scientific literacy is a pre-requisite to judge science issues, and a whole newsroom ascribes to this “belief”, then you end up with what we’ve got - whole media companies taking someone’s word for it that “belief” can replace hard facts. Some facts it is true are indeed hilarious, but collecting facts is what journalists are paid to do and to make sense of them, not take sides in a statistical or scientific debate. No matter how many funerals one attends, the facts as we best know them are that between 1997-2003 deaths from HIV/AIDS have remained static at between 9,000 to 10,000 per year in this country. - Anita Allen anita@theallens.co.za
April 20th, 2006 at 11:41 am
I want to urge fellow young South Africans irrespective of race ethnicity and religion to continue refraining from engaging themselves in unprotected sex because recently there is nothing that can minimise their chances of contracting the HI virus. When our parents say we must go to school, they did not mean we must go there to learn to write and read only, no, but to learn how to act responsible and without misdirecting the whole nation if I can mention but a few. Good people lack of information and ignorance is very much dangerous. Unprotected sex is a dice with contracting sexual transmitted disease including the HI virus if not making a baby. Mr Jacob Zuma said that statement as another way of avoiding going to jail, but forgetting that the very same statement could mislead the soul of the society(youth) as well as tarnishing his image politically.
June 15th, 2006 at 10:39 am
Well isn’t it just annoying when supposedly smart people say stupid things. Zuma is not a role model for up and coming young people, he is a role model for relics of the old regime. People who think we are still fighting for black liberation and should support our so called leaders even if they are in the wrong. We have a new battle now, HIV/AIDS. Sphume please don’t be naive, of course what Zuma says is going to have an impact on the HIV/Aids issue. Look at how many people went ballistic over him being accused of rape. That very same group possibly consists of a large number of people who think conodms are taboo anyway. One way to measure whether or not Zuma’s statements work would be to look out for a boom in the shower installation business in remote Zulu villages, because we all know that a bath isn’t as good as a shower.
Zuma is an irresponsible liar and his statements bout the shower just prove that he was getting desperate. And this wasn’t the only lie he told the court.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Jacob Zuma made a mistake by sleeping with this woman, and yes he should have taken better care of himself especially since he was in the forefront of the fight against HIV/Aids. But i also feel that south africans always find someone to blame for the actions we never take responsibility and be the designers of our journeys in life. look at us with apartheid we still blame being disdvantaged etc when we could be focusing our energies on the opportunities that are open to us. So No i dont think there will be a setback in the fight against Aids if you choose to listen and have sex not use a condom and take a shower it is your fault Zuma did not take and Positive person and force you to sleep with them and give you a shower, its your stupidity and your responsibility so take responsibility for them.
November 5th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
To follow the footsteps of Zuma will be a bad decision .Not all of us who are having unprotected sex with someone who is HIV+, then go 4 a shower will help us to not contract the epidemic.
So guys I urge you dont follow what he did ,because you gonna face the consequences of having HIV diseases.Secondly sciences is full of uncertainties especially it`s statistics therefore should not rely on it 100%
especial in these kind of scenarios. as Xolisile said act responsible
October 12th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
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