TNA ticks all the boxes

JournAIDS

7 September 2011

A featured article in The New Age (TNA) uncovers the SA prisons system’s secret scourge. Choruses of assenting and dissenting voices, broaching all aspects of the matter allow for an informative and balanced article.

The article opens by recounting one young man witnessing the rape of another in a Durban prison. This ‘hook’ not only draws the reader in through holding off on the hard facts but humanises the prisoner, successfully bringing a society’s cast offs into the public consciousness as living breathing human beings who are capable of pity and fear.

Through the narrative device the article clearly communicates that male rape is wrong because it represents the violation of a living, breathing and feeling human being. But in providing the context of HIV, the writer shows that sexual assault in prisons gains an added dimension as a deadly biological threat which extends beyond prison walls.

Taking the story to its conclusion, the piece questions what implications a high, unaddressed HIV prevalence in prisons has for a country which has its ‘own’ alarmingly high HIV prevalence to boot.

The piece shores up its musings by using a variety of sources; prison activists, experts and key research all lend their voices the argument.

The Department of Correctional Services also weighs in on the debate denying that male-on-male sexual assault is a problem in its facilities.

The piece goes beyond just reporting each side and mounts an argument ultimately showing that failure to address male rape and HIV in South Africa’s prisons will mean failure for the country’s response to the epidemic as a whole.

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