Promiscuity is murdering us

Why does South Africa have the largest HIV-positive population in the world?

And why have other countries, including extremely poor ones, succeeded in containing or beating HIV and Aids?

DA leader Helen Zille asked these questions in her statement on Sunday, "Tackling the new Aids denialism", - and she was also kind enough to give us the answer to bringing our HIV-infection rate under control.

Zille said the reason we top the list of countries with the largest number of people living with HIV is because we are unfaithful.

Quoting Dr Helen Epstein's book, The Invisible Cure on the HIV Pandemic in South Africa, Zille said the only countries in Africa that have turned the Aids pandemic around are those that have focussed on partner reduction.

South Africans are promiscuous. To reduce our HIV infection rate, we need to be faithful and reduce the number of sexual partners we have. Problem solved. It is as simple as that. Why didn't I think of that!

Zille also said that our country's strategy for dealing with HIV is too focused on "condom distribution and free treatment because these interventions shift the responsibility away from the individual".

She said real change will happen only when South Africans change their sexual practices and accept responsibility for stopping the spread of Aids.

How do we encourage South Africans to be more sexually faithful?

We must require everyone to take a regular HIV test and accept responsibility for preventing risk to others.

Those who are HIV-positive and don't accept responsibility for preventing risk to others by not disclosing their status "must be prepared to face criminal charges".

Now that HIV is no longer the "death" sentence it was thought to be; you can at least get a prison sentence and pay damages if you infect another person.

Zille said other "rights-based" countries that have beaten or limited the Aids pandemic are "managing to remove the stigma against people living with HIV while stigmatising the behaviour that spreads HIV".

According to Zille, our goal is to reach a point at which we stigmatise the behaviour, not the person.

This means the countries that have arrested HIV infections distinguish between the behaviour that spreads HIV, which they condemn and stigmatise, and the people living with Aids, whom they don't stigmatise.

But is it not because of the "behavioural choices" we associate with the group of people among whom the HI virus was discovered?

Is it not because HIV was first identified in gay men, who were already marginalised for their sexuality, that there is such disgrace associated with HIV?

Is it not a fact that it was also associated with drug users who shared needles?

Is this why HIV is "dirty" and diabetes is not? Is this why HIV brings shame and cancer does not?

Is this why people are more sympathetic to diabetics and cancer sufferers than they are to HIV-positive people?

I, however, agree with Zille that our HIV strategy should be focused more on the individual.

HIV adverts, programmes, strategies and campaigns should start by removing the dirty, slutty, loose, immoral connotations that come with the disease so that those who are infected can start living. Those living with HIV should know that is it not a death sentence, a prison sentence - or social suicide.

In addition to promoting the use of condoms and treatment, our fight against HIV should highlight that HIV is preventable, treatable and manageable.

If you smoke, you expose yourself to the risk of developing lung cancer; if you eat junk food, you increase your risk of getting heart disease and diabetes; if you have sex without a condom, with more than one partner, you increase the risk of contracting HIV.

HIV is as much a heterosexual as a behavioural disease.

Is it not possible to devise an HIV strategy that does not isolate and alienate the very people whose attitude we need to change to reduce its spread?