CHAPTER 11

The answer lies in the reality that the hypotheses about ourselves, that are presented as facts, rest on an age-old definition by others of what and who we are, as Africans.

In her book, "Women, Race and Class", the African-American progressive activist, Angela Davis, writes of the attitude of white America towards her people. She says their view has been:

" The conditions of our problem are as follows: 1. A century or two ago the negroes were savages in the wilds of Africa. 2. Those who were brought to America, and their descendants, have acquired a certain amount of civilisation, and are now in some degree fitted for life in modern civilised society. 3. This progress of the negroes has been in very large measure the result of their association with civilised white people. 4. An immense mass of the negroes is sure to remain for an indefinite period in the midst of the civilised white nation. The problem is, how can we best provide for their peaceful residence and their further progress in this nation of white men and how best can we guard against their lapsing back into barbarism?"

This extract appears in the book, "AIDS, Africa And Racism", written by Richard and Rosalind Chirimuuta. (Free Association Books, London, 1989.)

The Chirimuuta's (themselves Medical Doctors) go on to say:

" Black people were disease ridden, dirty in their habits, uncontrolled in their sexual behaviour, and incapable of higher human values such as honesty or sexual morality. Such views were succinctly expressed by an apologist for racism, Winfield Collins, in a book published in 1918 entitled "The Truth about Lynching and the Negro in the South (In which the Author Pleads that the South Be Made Safe for the White Race)":

" 'Two of the Negro's most prominent characteristics are the utter lack of chastity and complete ignorance of veracity. The Negro's sexual laxity, considered so immoral or even criminal in the white man's civilisation, may have been all but a virtue in the habitat of his origin. There, nature developed in him intense sexual passions to offset his high death rate."

In his book "Debating AZT", (Open Books, Pietermaritzburg, 2000), Anthony Brink quotes an article carried by The New York Times of 2 July 2000, in which, in a revised rendition of the preceding paragraph, the author says:

" How much would it cost to banish ignorance, to deaden lust, to shame rape, to stop war, to enrich the poor, to empower women, to defend children, to make decent medical care as globally ubiquitous as Coca-Cola - in short, to get rid of all the underlying causes of the (HIV/AIDS) epidemic in the third world?"

This view was backed by our own Charlene Smith, who wrote in the Washington Post of June 4, 2000 that:

" Here (in Africa), (AIDS) is spread primarily by heterosexual sex - spurred by men's attitudes towards women. We won't end this epidemic until we understand the role of tradition and religion - and of a culture in which rape is endemic and has become a prime means of transmitting disease, to young women as well as children."

The Chirimuuta's also cite a letter published in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, contributed by one F. Noireau in 1987. In his letter, Noireau says:

" The isolation from monkeys of retroviruses closely related to HIV strongly suggests a simian origin for this virus.Several unlikely hypotheses have been put forward to explain the indirect transmission of the virus from monkey to man - for example, the theory that the disease spread to man through bites or the cutting up and consumption of monkey meat or the arthropod vector hypothesis. In his book on the sexual life of people in the Great Lakes area of Africa, Kashamura writes: 'pour stimuler intense, on leur inocule dans les cuisses, la region du pubis et le dos du sang preleve sur un singe, pour in homme, sur une guenon, pour une femme' (to stimulate a man or a woman and induce them to intense sexual activity, monkey blood (for a man) or she-monkey blood (for a woman) was directly inoculated in the pubic area and also in the thighs and back). These magic practices would therefore constitute an efficient experimental transmission model and could be responsible for the em!
ergence of AIDS in man."

They also quote an article written by two British scientists, Paul Nunn and Keith McAdam, which appeared in the September 1988 edition of Medicine International. They say:

" The scale of the African AIDS epidemic has led to speculation that heterosexual transmission is more efficient in Africa than elsewhere.Social and cultural factors, such as the African tradition of male sexual freedom, may also play a part. The circulation of myths, such as the only cure for AIDS being to have sex with a virgin is likely to have a greater effect on transmission in Africa than in developed countries." (Our emphasis).

It is instructive for us that this particular insulting fable surfaced in our country, not as a speculative circumstance broadcast by European intellectuals in the decade of the '80s, but as a fact of life in the South Africa of the '90s.

But unfamiliar as we are with the existing huge volume of literature on the issue of HIV/AIDS, how were we to know that the supposed behaviour of our people was, in fact, pre-prescribed by the scientists of the developed world! Naturally, having foretold of its inevitability, these scientists, supported by the media, discovered this behaviour in our country as well. Was this a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Interestingly, and inevitably, we too, the Africans, proved, once more, that we were quite willing to authenticate as the truth what the omnipotent apparatus told us was the truth. And as we behaved, as it were as to the manner born, we helped to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having done this, we then felt very useful when we stood up, relying on such authority as we enjoyed among the people, to urge them not to do what they had never thought to do, until we told them they we doing it! Such are the ironies and tragedies of our age and our condition!

The Chirimuuta's also inform us of a report sent to The Lancet in 1987 by a London-based Ghanaian physician, Dr Konotey-Ahulu, after he had toured sub-Saharan Africa for six weeks. He wrote, like Rian Malan 14 years later:

" If tens of thousands are dying from AIDS (and Africans do not cremate their dead) where are the graves?.

" 'Why do the world's media appear to have conspired with some scientists to become so gratuitously extravagant with the untruth?' - that was the question uppermost in the minds of intelligent Africans and Europeans I met on my tour."

The Chirimuuta's also quote an article by A.J. Venter that appeared in the International Defence Review in 1988, in which the author says:

" The potential depopulation of much of Black Africa holds serious consequences for the international community. Africa is still the world's largest single commodities resource, from uranium, copper and gold all the way through to hundreds of consumer items as diverse as cocoa, hardwoods, maize and a host of tropical products.

" But what if current projections are correct, and more than half the population of countries like Uganda, Kenya, Zaire and much of equatorial West Africa are wiped out before the turn of the century?

" Who will fill the vacuum?.It will be interesting to see at what stage the developed world starts its new scramble for Africa."

In a Chapter contributed to the book, "AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean", eds George C. Bond et al, WestviewPress, 1997, the Chirimuuta's write:

"Many leading doctors and scientists of their day made their contributions to the pseudo-science of racism. (vide Fryer P. "Staying Power: the history of black people in Britain", Pluto Press, London 1984 & Ferguson, J. "The laboratory of racism", New Scientist 1984, Sept 27, 103.) When humans were placed at the top of the evolutionary tree, Africans were allocated a separate species between other humans and apes and there were numerous suggestions that Africans had sexual intercourse with apes, or were the result of such unions. As Africans were deemed more akin to animals than humans, they were by definition incapable of civilised behaviour. They were believed to be sexually unrestrained and to have larger sexual organs than other races, and were therefore more prone to sexually transmitted diseases. They we deceitful, treacherous, lazy, faithless, cruel and bad-tempered. African skulls were studied and were considered to be smaller than those of Europeans, establishing beyond doubt that Africans had the lesser intelligence. In one form or another, explicitly or implicitly, many of these notions have appeared in the scientific literature about AIDS and Africa."

One among a number of examples quoted by the Chirimuuta's is a paper entitled "Population differences in susceptibility to AIDS: An evolutionary analysis", Social Science and Medicine 28 (12): 1211-1220, 1989, by Rushton, J.P. and Bogaert, A.F., which says:

"Previously we have reported population differences in sexual restraint such that, higher socio-economic status > lower socio-economic status, and Mongoloids > Caucasoids > Negroids. This ordering was predicted from a gene-based evolutionary theory of r/R reproductive strategies in which a trade-off occurs between gamete production and social behaviours such as intelligence, law abidingness, and parental care. Here we consider the implications of these analyses of sexual dysfunction, including susceptibility to AIDS. We conclude that relative to Caucasians, populations of Asian ancestry are inclined to a greater frequency of inhibitory disorders such as low sexual excitement and premature ejaculation and to a lower frequency of sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS, while populations of African ancestry are inclined to a greater frequency of uninhibited disorders such as rape and unintended pregnancy and to more sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS." (Our emphasis.)

The Chirimuuta's conclude their own book with the words:

" We have shown how racism has guided the direction of AIDS research; moreover, that the problem is not simply the subjective prejudices of individual AIDS researchers but a racist world-view that coincides with the material self-interest of research institutions and of the Western governments that fund them. There is an illusion that science is objective, that scientists search for the truth irrespective of outside pressures. In reality the only science that exists is the science that is done, and he who pays the piper calls the tune."

More recently than everything we have said about racism and AIDS, what we have recounted above was illustrated in an ugly racist incident that took place at a Caravan Park near Port Edward in southern KwaZulu-Natal at the end of December 2001.

A group of white school children decided to have an end of the year party at this Caravan Park. Among them was one black boy, Castro Hlongwane, 17, their schoolmate.

Because he is black, the owners of the Park ordered him to leave, despite the fact that he was properly booked in together with his white friends. One of the witnesses to this incident, Amy Godfrey, said this was "pure racism like I have never seen in my life."

Relevant to our story, The Sunday Times of January 6, 2002, reported:

" Schoolmate Ryan Templar, 18, said he was told by (Park owner) Theresa Smit that Hlongwane had AIDS and would rape other campers."

The unsophisticated Theresa Smit expressed openly a conviction and belief that many other sophisticated Theresa Smit's hold, but would never express in public, because they are mature practitioners of the deceits of the sophisticated.

Nevertheless, they do everything they can to demand the implementation of policies and programmes based on the conviction and belief that, because he is black, "Hlongwane has AIDS and will rape other campers"!

When they are caught red-handed in their immersion in racism, they readily respond that their accusers seek to silence them by "playing the race card!"
Thus does the victim of racism get transformed into a racist, while the racist escapes scot-free by the transformation of the perpetrator into a victim! In spite of the spectacular advances in science, miracles are still part of our daily lives!

(NB: the Hlongwane incident and Foot & Mouth Disease have provided us the title to this dissertation.)

For those who question the truth of the statements made by the Chirimuuta's about 'outside pressures' on scientists, we recommend that they read the well-researched and illuminating novel by John le Carré, "The Constant Gardener." Most important, this includes the explanatory notes the author has provided. Please read them carefully, having accepted the need for suspension of disbelief.

Regardless of the fact that the scientific proof is hard to come by, nevertheless the conviction has taken firm hold that sub-Saharan Africa will surely be wiped out by an HIV/AIDS pandemic unless, most important of all, we access anti-retroviral drugs.

This urgent and insistent call is made by some of the friends of the Africans, who are intent that the Africans must be saved from a plague worse than the Black Death of many centuries ago.

For their part, the Africans believe this story, as told by their friends. They too shout the message that - yes, indeed, we are as you say we are!

Yes, we are sex-crazy! Yes, we are diseased!

Yes, we spread the deadly HI Virus through our uncontrolled heterosexual sex! In this regard, yes we are different from the US and Western Europe!

Yes, we, the men, abuse women and the girl-child with gay abandon! Yes, among us rape is endemic because of our culture!

Yes, we do believe that sleeping with young virgins will cure us of AIDS! Yes, as a result of all this, we are threatened with destruction by the HIV/AIDS pandemic!
Yes, what we need, and cannot afford, because we are poor, are condoms and anti-retroviral drugs!

Help!

The Africans do not hear the message communicated by the Israeli scientists we cited, who, among other things said, as they sought to provide a scientific answer to the incidence of HIV/AIDS in Africa (and the developing world):

" The average African host is exposed to a huge number of infectious diseases from early childhood onwards. These include various bacterial, viral and parasitic infections. Noteworthy is the wide prevalence of helminth infections, malaria and tuberculosis in most parts of Africa: especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, and in East and West Africa. Also of central importance is the very high prevalence of STDs, particularly genital ulcer diseases (GUDs), which play an important role in facilitating the dissemination of HIV infection into the general population.

" In addition to the central role of STDs, important cofactors such as the cultural habit of scarification, as well as transfusion, hygiene and nutrition, may facilitate HIV transmission and infection."

In the main text of "Eros & Civilisation", Marcuse quotes Sigmund Freud as having written during and about the First World War:

" Think of the colossal brutality, cruelty and mendacity which is now allowed to spread itself over the civilised world. Do you really believe that a handful of unprincipled place-hunters and corrupters of men would have succeeded in letting loose all this latent evil, if the millions of their followers were not also guilty?" (Sigmund Freud: A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, New York, 1943.)

If we think of the colossal intellectual brutality, cruelty and mendacity which is now allowed to spread over Africa, we need to ask the question - are we the followers, the Africans, not also guilty!

We must ask ourselves whether we do not comply with the image painted by Marcuse:

" The people, efficiently manipulated and organised, are free; ignorance and impotence, introjected heteronomy is the price of their freedom."

In his time, Marcuse saw a different form of violence being perpetrated against the victims of poverty and underdevelopment by affluent societies. He said:

" It makes no sense to talk about liberation to free men - and we are free if we do not belong to the oppressed minority. And it makes no sense to talk about surplus repression when men and women enjoy more sexual liberty than ever before. But the truth is that this freedom and satisfaction are transforming the earth into hell. The inferno is still concentrated in certain far away places. Vietnam, the Congo, South Africa, and in the ghettos of the 'affluent society': in Mississippi and Alabama, in Harlem. These infernal places illuminate the whole. It is easy and sensible to see in them only pockets of poverty and misery in a growing society capable of eliminating them gradually and without a catastrophe. This interpretation may even be realistic and correct. The question is: eliminated at what cost - not in dollars and cents, but in human lives and in human freedom? I hesitate to use the word - freedom - because it is precisely in the name of freedom that crimes against humanity are being perpetrated. This situation is certainly not new in history: poverty and exploitation were products of economic freedom; time and again, people were liberated all over the globe by their lords and masters, and their new liberty turned out to be submission, not to the rule of law but to the rule of the law of others."

He went on to say:

" Historical backwardness may again become the historical chance of turning the wheel of progress to another direction. Technical and scientific overdevelopment stands refuted when the radar-equipped bombers, the chemicals, and the 'special forces' of the affluent society are let loose on the poorest of the earth, on their shacks, hospitals, and rice fields. The 'accidents' reveal the substance: they tear the technological veil behind which the real powers are hiding. The capability to overkill and to overburn, and the mental behaviour that goes with it are by-products of the development of the productive forces within a system of exploitation and repression; they seem to become more productive the more comfortable the system becomes to its privileged subjects. The affluent society has now demonstrated that it is a society at war; if its citizens have not noticed it, its victims certainly have.The odds are overwhelmingly on the side of the powers that be."

And yet he entertained the hope that the risen masses of the "backward countries" would help to unleash a global movement that would humanise the world. He wrote:

" When, in the more or less affluent societies, productivity has reached a level at which the masses participate in its benefits, and at which the opposition is effectively and democratically 'contained', then the conflict between master and slave is also effectively contained. Or rather, it has changed its social location. It exists, and explodes, in the revolt of the backward countries against the intolerable heritage of colonialism and its prolongation by neo-colonialism.Yet the revolt in the backward countries has found a response in the advanced countries where youth is in protest against repression in affluence and war abroad. Revolt against the false fathers, teachers, and heroes - solidarity with the wretched of the earth: is there any 'organic' connection between the two facets of the protest?"

In time, the explosion and the revolt came to an end. With regard to the developing countries, Marcuse spoke of the physical violence inflicted on them by the affluent societies.

Perhaps he did not foresee the intellectual violence that was to come, as a result of which we, the Africans, have come to accept that we are the immoral, diseased and sexually depraved animals which all racism had, from the beginning, defined us as - the putative Castro Hlongwane's!

He did not see that the overkill would be an overkill of the mind, achieved not with laser directed bombs, but the capacity to over-communicate through satellite saturation media communication.

Perhaps he did not see that, in the aftermath of the bombs, this intellectual offensive would be the trigger that would result in:

" repression from within, (when) the unfree individual introjects his masters and their commands into his own mental apparatus. The struggle against freedom reproduces itself in the psyche of man, as the self-repression of the repressed individual, and his self-repression in turn sustains his masters and their institutions."

To break out of this condition, with regard to HIV/AIDS, perhaps we need the rebellion of the intelligentsia he thought was necessary when he wrote:

" To the degree to which organised labour operates in defense of the status quo, and to the degree to which the share of labour in the material process of production declines, intellectual skills and capabilities become social and political factors. Today, the organised refusal to cooperate of the scientists, mathematicians, technicians, industrial psychologists, and public opinion pollsters may well accomplish what a strike, even a large-scale strike, can no longer accomplish but once accomplished, namely, the beginning of the reversal, the preparation of the ground for political action. That the idea appears utterly unrealistic does not reduce the political responsibility involved in the position and function of the intellectual in contemporary industrial society."