DENIER: A PERSON WHO DENIES

The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 1993 Edition defines Denier: A person Who Denies.

After the Second World War of 1939-1945 (WW II)a new industry was spawned and a new word came into the English language.

Hitler's holocaust attack on world Jewry in which he was responsible for the deaths of around 6 million Jews was denied after WW II by the Nazi supporters around the world.

The words used to describe these people were "Holocaust Deniers".

To this day in 2014 there are still thousands who believe that the massacre of the Jews never happened.

However denying something has happened has created "denier" industries in other issues, one having been current in South Africa when Thabo Mbeki became president after Nelson Mandela retired from the position after one term in office.

Mbeki denied that AIDS came from HIV and for the years of his presidency and the incumbency of a health minister whose theories included cures for AIDS with garlic and beetroot, thus being responsible for one of the most devastating health crises in South Africa's long history.

A turnaround only occurred when Mbeki and his government were challenged in the courts by South African AIDS activists, leading to reductions in infection and mortality rates in that country. The situation is still critical, but at least is not quite as out of hand as it became in the Mbeki years.

There are no doubt other "denier" issues around the world, but the latest and possibly one of the most critical for life on this planet as we know it in 2014 is global warming and climate change denial.

Global warming has become a dirty set of words for many in Australia, including in political circles such as the current federal government.

Thus we have seen the Australian prime minister making a yet further public exhibition of himself on the world stage in his utterances about climate change and global warming.

POWERHOUSE MUSEUM SYDNEY - AIDS QUILT PROJECT UPDATE

21 NOVEMBER 2013

The following information has been received from Anni Turnbull of the PowerHouse Museum in Sydney:

"All of the 97 Australian AIDS Memorial Quilts we have acquired are now on line and can be viewed here
Australian AIDS Memorial Quilts


The Museum's fabulous team of volunteers have also been documenting (as much as we can ) information on the individual

panels and are up to Quilt 88 so by early next year (2014) the panel information will be up in detail.
I also developed an exhibition last year HIV & AIDS 30 years on: the Australian story
HIV and AIDS 30 years on:

the Australian story"

WORLD AIDS DAY AND THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT

World AIDS day has been and gone but you wouldn't have noticed anything out of the ordinary from the Federal government.

During the past year it has been noticeable how in the federal parliament when parliamentarians are shown, they have more often than not -symbolic only, of course - worn something or other in their lapels or on their garments to indicate their "theoretical" support for an issue of "national" importance.

For World AIDS Day, despite statistics showing that the numbers of new infections had risen beyond what is reasonable in 2012 considering that educational programmes have been around for well over 25 years, the federal government totally ignored the Day! Even Obama managed to recognise the event, despite the United States' appalling record locally and internationally on HIV/AIDS support.

The current Australian parliament, and in this respect I mean all politicians of all flavours, left -ha ha ha -, right and centre - well left of extreme right ignored World AIDS Day as if the issue was irrelevant in this country.

When the next out-of-control disaster occurs, Australia will be less prepared than many countries with very poor infrastructures and resources, but who are aware of the daily HIV rates and their ongoing crisis figures.

Here is the World AIDS clock which gives a picture of the ongoing unfolding crises:

AIDS CLOCK

To find out the number of people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, click on the above link

HIV SURVIVORS FACE BITTERSWEET OLD AGE

For many years, while being involved with ageing in the gay, lesbian, transgender, HIV (GLTH) communities, I have stressed that people with HIV are ignored in the general analyses of ageing, because in the 1980s and 1990s - until 1997 - there WERE no HIV ageing people - generally speaking!

Now, it seems, people around the world are realising that the treatments which became available after about 1997 have allowed people with HIV to survive in the same way as others in our communties have survived, and they are now living to the same old ages as the rest of us who are HIV negative.

The article below, from the Guardian Weekly of 3-9 August 2012, gives an analysis of the situation now confronting so many ageing members of the GLTH communities. It is a wake-up call for those in government to do something about the situation, because it will only get worse as time passes.

HIV survivors: alive, but facing poverty, loneliness and prejudice

Thousands heading into an old age they did not think they would see, having given up jobs expecting to die young


o Sarah Boseley in Washington
o guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 July 2012

Stephen Karpiak, of the Aids Community Research Initiative of America, and Carolyn Massey, who has HIV, at the international Aids conference in Washington DC. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

In the 1980s and 1990s they were told they were going to die young, so they gave up their jobs and cashed in the pensions they wouldn't need, buried their friends and tried to make the most of their last months on Earth.

Decades later, thousands of men and women with HIV in the UK, US and across the world are heading into an old age they never expected to see. In the US in 2001, 17% of people with HIV were over 50. Now that figure stands at 39% and by 2017 it will be half. In the UK, the Health Protection Agency says one in six people (16.8%) being seen for HIV care in 2008 were over 50 – and that will double in the next five years.

Many of those who were saved by the discovery of antiretroviral drugs in the early 1990s felt it was a miracle to be alive. But life for the survivors of HIV, as they age, is bittersweet. Many are poor and have long since been edged out of the workforce. Half a lifetime spent on powerful drugs has taken its toll. Aside from the physical health issues as a result of the virus, there are high rates of mental health problems too.

John Rock, from Sydney, Australia, was diagnosed with HIV 30 years ago. "My partner started getting sick in 1983 and died early in 1996," he said at an international AIDS conference in Washington DC. "Many of my colleagues and friends were pushed out of the workforce around the mid-90s because they were not well enough to work. Subsequently triple combinations [of antiretroviral drugs] came along and they are still alive, but at the peak of their earning capacity they were out of the workforce for 10 years. Now they are destined for a retirement they thought they never would have, but it's going to be in poverty."

Lisa Power from the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), who spoke at the conference about the ageing HIV-positive community in the UK, acknowledged the unfortunate consequences of advice from support groups to those who were thought to be dying. "In the 1980s and 90s we encouraged people to give up work and go on state benefits and not be economically productive," she said. "Now we have condemned people to live on an old-age state pension."

Money is not the only need. Many feel lonely and isolated. In a video made for a project called The Graying of HIV in the US, Bill Rydwels, 77, from Chicago, recalled a time of terror and sadness when AIDS was scything down his friends. It was nonetheless a time of warmth and support that he no longer has. "It's just so much better today and yet it is a lonelier time. Years ago it was a time that we all spent together. It was a terrible time and a wonderful time because you got to know everybody very, very well. They cried on your shoulder and laughed with you. You don't get that any more."

Recent research from THT in the UK reveals similar sadness. James, 61, a gay man living in the UK who did not want to give his full name, is suffering from serious health problems, including blindness resulting from the use of an experimental drug to treat another condition (not HIV). "My life is empty," he told researchers. "I have tried so hard over the last 10 years to fill the emptiness. Worked really hard at it. I am in a cul-de-sac. It would be nice just to have somebody to telephone.
"I am fed up with people at the top of HIV organisations saying because there is combination therapy everyone is fine. People with neuropathy, and in wheelchairs, we are the forgotten people."

Half the world away, in Africa, which now bears the brunt of the epidemic, the numbers of older people with HIV are also rising fast. Epidemiologists at the University of Sydney estimate that there are more than 3 million people over 50 with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and that the figure is rising rapidly.
Ruth Waryero, from Kenya, now 65, had an HIV test when she was 48. She went home and told her husband. "He listened to me and then he got up and said, it's up to you.

"Take care of yourself – I'm off. Since that time I have not seen him again and yet he was the breadwinner in the family. He left me with the four children and two years later I had two grandchildren.

"In Kenya we have different problems [from those in Europe]. Older men try to get younger women for sex. They ignore you because as far as you are concerned, you are finished. You don't need sex and they can apply to the young girls.

"But when you are old you are likely to be raped by those who are positive because they believe if they rape you, as old as you are, they will turn negative."

Older women also face embarrassment at clinics when they go for tests or drugs, she said. They are asked who they are collecting the drugs for.

"You are not supposed to have sex at your age," she said. "As a woman they ask if you are a sugar mummy. I say this HIV came from an old man and the old man has run away from me."

The older HIV generation – in Africa and elsewhere – is not only made up of those diagnosed years ago. Some are people who have been diagnosed late, having lived for years without knowing they were infected. And many people are now becoming infected later in life.

Laura, who took part in the THT research, is a white, heterosexual, divorced mother of two. At the age of 52 she started a new relationship and then suddenly became ill. Because her symptoms were similar to those of a friend who had been diagnosed with HIV, she took a test. When she was told it was positive, she felt numbness and shock, she said. She cannot believe, as a well-educated person, that she stopped using condoms with her partner and allowed it to happen.

Mark Brennan-Ing, from the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America, told the conference of the "fragile social networks among people living with HIV in the US and Europe". Families have abandoned them or do not give them enough help, meaning they end up relying on friends, who often have HIV themselves.

Men who have sex with men, he said, are much less likely to have partners, spouses or children to care for them in their old age. Many of those interviewed live in fear of encountering hostility and rejection in care homes. A 52-year-old gay man from London told the THT: "I am somewhat fearful of a lonely old age. In practical terms, if I become mentally or physically frail, the prospect of being the only gay man in an old people's home is very frightening indeed."

SOUTH AFRICA - ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE THE BOMB EXPLODES!

Subject: Article by Moeletsi Mbeki (Thabo Mbeki's brother) - South Africa: Only a matter of time before the bomb explodes

South Africa: Only a matter of time before the bomb explodes

7 November 2011

by Moeletsi Mbeki: Author, political commentator and entrepreneur.


I can predict when SA's "Tunisia Day" will arrive. Tunisia Day is when the masses rise against the powers that be, as happened recently in Tunisia. The year will be 2020, give or take a couple of years. The year 2020 is when China estimates that its current minerals-intensive industrialisation phase will be concluded.

For SA, this will mean the African National Congress (ANC) government will have to cut back on social grants, which it uses to placate the black poor and to get their votes. China's current industrialisation phase has forced up the prices of SA's minerals, which has enabled the government to finance social welfare programmes. The ANC is currently making SA a welfare state and tends to 'forget' that there is only a minority that pay all the taxes.

They are often quick to say that if people (read whites) are not happy they should leave. The more people that leave, the more their tax base shrinks.

Yes, they will fill the positions with BEE candidates (read blacks), but if they are not capable of doing the job then the company will eventually fold as well as their 'new' tax base. When there is no more money available for handouts they will then have a problem because they are breeding a culture of handouts instead of creating jobs so people can gain an idea of the value of money. If you keep getting things for free then you lose the sense of its value. The current trend of saying if the west won't help then China will is going to bite them. China will want payment - ie land for their people and will result in an influx of Chinese (there is no such thing as a free lunch!)

The ANC inherited a flawed, complex society it barely understood; its tinkerings with it are turning it into an explosive cocktail. The ANC leaders are like a group of children playing with a hand grenade. One day one of them will figure out how to pull out the pin and everyone will be killed. .and 20 years on they still blame apartheid but have not done much to rectify things - changing names etc only costs money that could have been spent elsewhere.

A famous African liberation movement, the National Liberation Front of Algeria, after tinkering for 30 years, pulled the grenade pin by cancelling an election in 1991 that was won by the opposition Islamic Salvation Front.

In the civil war that ensued, 200,000 people were killed. The 'new' leaders are forgetting the 'struggle' heroes and the reasons for it - their agenda is now power and money and it suits them for the masses to be ignorant - same as Mugabe did in Zim. If you do not agree with the leaders then the followers intimidate you.

The former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, once commented that whoever thought that the ANC could rule SA was living in Cloud Cuckoo Land .
Why was Thatcher right? In the 16 years of ANC rule, all the symptoms of a government out of its depth have grown worse.

* Life expectancy has declined from 65 years to 53 years since the
ANC came to power; - a leader who did not believe that HIV causes AIDS
(Mbeki) and another who believes having a shower after unprotected sex is the answer and has 5 wives and recently a child out of wedlock (Zuma).
Great leaders for the masses to emulate!!- not!!

* In 2007, SA became a net food importer for the first time in its
history; Yet they want to carry on with their struggle song 'kill the boer(farmer)' and stopping farm killings does not seem to be a priority.
They do not seem to realise where food actually comes from.

* The elimination of agricultural subsidies by the government led to
the loss of 600000 farm workers' jobs and the eviction from the commercial farming sector of about 2,4-million people between 1997 and 2007; and - yet they want to create jobs and cause even more job losses - very
short-sighted thinking.

* The ANC stopped controlling the borders, leading to a flood of poor
people into SA, which has led to conflicts between SA's poor and foreign African migrants. Not much thought was given to this - their attitude was to help fellow Africans by allowing them 'refuge' in SA. Not thinking that illegals cannot legally get jobs but they need to eat to live. I believe that most of our crime is by non-South Africans from north of the borders.
They need to do something to survive! Remove the illegal problem and you
solve most of the crime problem.

.but is it in their interest to solve crime?

There are whole industries built on crime - each burglary, car hijacking etc results in more sales of product and contribute to GDP. What would sales be if crime was down? I do not believe that anyone has worked out how much electricity is consumed a day because of electric fencing and security lights at night. Reduce the need for this (crime) and Eksdom (Eskom) would probably have a power surplus. - or if they charged our African neighbours the correct rates at least make a decent profit to build more power stations.

What should the ANC have done, or be doing?

The answer is quite straightforward. When they took control of the government in 1994, ANC leaders should have: identified what SA's strengths were; identified what SA's weaknesses were; and decided how to use the strengths to minimise and/or rectify the weaknesses. Standard business principle - but they too busy enriching themselves. People who were in prison or were non-entities 20 years ago are now billionaires - how? BEE??

A wise government would have persuaded the skilled white and Indian population to devote some of their time - even an hour a week - to train the black and coloured population to raise their skill levels. This done by lots of NGO's but should have been more constructively done by the ruling party.

What the ANC did instead when it came to power was to identify what its leaders and supporters wanted. It then used SA's strengths to satisfy the short-term consumption demands of its supporters. In essence, this is what is called black economic empowerment (BEE). .and put people in positions they could not cope with making them look stupid where if they had the necessary grounding could have been good in the position at the right time.

You cannot 'create' a company CEO in a couple of years. It takes years of work starting at the bottom of the ladder - not in the middle. Only some things can be learnt in books - experience is the most important factor and this is not found in text books or university corridors.

BEE promotes a number of extremely negative socioeconomic trends in our country. It promotes a class of politicians dependent on big business and therefore promotes big business's interests in the upper echelons of government. Second, BEE promotes an anti-entrepreneurial culture among the black middle class by legitimising an environment of entitlement. Third, affirmative action, a subset of BEE, promotes incompetence (what I said above)and corruption in the public sector by using ruling party allegiance and connections as the criteria for entry and promotion in the public service, instead of having tough public service entry examinations. Nepotism is rife - jobs for friends and families who are nowhere near qualified - and then hire consultants to actually get the work done - at additional cost of course!

Let's see where BEE, as we know it today, actually comes from. I first came across the concept of BEE from a company, which no longer exists, called Sankor. Sankor was the industrial division of Sanlam and it invented the concept of BEE.

The first purpose of BEE was to create a buffer group among the black political class that would become an ally of big business in SA. This buffer group would use its newfound power as controllers of the government to protect the assets of big business.

The buffer group would also protect the modus operandi of big business and thereby maintain the status quo in which South African business operates.
That was the design of the big conglomerates.

Sanlam was soon followed by Anglo American. Sanlam established BEE vehicle Nail; Anglo established Real Africa, Johnnic and so forth. The conglomerates took their marginal assets, and gave them to politically influential black people, with the purpose, in my view, not to transform the economy but to create a black political class that is in alliance with the conglomerates and therefore wants to maintain the status quo of our economy and the way in which it operates.

But what is wrong with protecting SA's conglomerates?

Well, there are many things wrong with how conglomerates operate and how they have structured our economy.

* The economy has a strong built-in dependence on cheap labour; with
tight labour legislation they are preventing people from getting jobs. For some industries minimum wages are too high resulting in less people being employed. Because it is almost impossible to get rid of an incompetent employee without it costing lots of money in severance people rather do not employ - run on minimum with no incentive to grow the business - or alternatively automate. Result - more unemployment and employment of
illegals at more affordable wages.

* It has a strong built-in dependence on the exploitation of primary
resources;

* It is strongly unfavourable to the development of skills in our
general population; Gone are the days of the artisan - no more structured learning to be artisans over a period of time. Try to fast track everything resulting in little on the job experience to be able to do the job. That is why Eksdom has sub stations blowing up and catching fire - lack of skill and maintenance. A friend told me about 5 years that this would start happening after Tshwane (Pretoria) started qualifying
electrical engineers who were not up to standard.

* It has a strong bias towards importing technology and economic
solutions; and - at a higher cost

* It promotes inequality between citizens by creating a large,
marginalised underclass. Who depend on handouts that cannot be maintained into perpetuity.

Conglomerates are a vehicle, not for creating development in SA but for exploiting natural resources without creating in-depth, inclusive social and economic development, which is what SA needs. That is what is wrong with protecting conglomerates.

The second problem with the formula of BEE is that it does not create entrepreneurs. People do not develop necessary skills when being fast-tracked into a position and being given a free ride. You are taking political leaders and politically connected people and giving them assets which, in the first instance, they don't know how to manage. So you are not adding value. You are faced with the threat of undermining value by taking assets from people who were managing them and giving them to people who cannot manage them (what I said earlier above) BEE thus creates a class of idle rich ANC politicos.

My quarrel with BEE is that what the conglomerates are doing is developing a new culture in SA - not a culture of entrepreneurship, but an entitlement culture, whereby black people who want to go into business think that they should acquire assets free, and that somebody is there to make them rich, rather than that they should build enterprises from the ground. Agree!

But we cannot build black companies if what black entrepreneurs look forward to is the distribution of already existing assets from the conglomerates in return for becoming lobbyists for the conglomerates. All companies start from the bottom - when they are 'given' these businesses they are usually run into the ground because of inexperience. And when they are given loans to buy business the loans invariable are not repaid and the businesses go bankrupt.

The third worrying trend is that the ANC-controlled state has now internalised the BEE model. We are now seeing the state trying to implement the same model that the conglomerates developed.

What is the state distributing? It is distributing jobs to party faithful and social welfare to the poor (what I said in different words) This is a recipe for incompetence and corruption, both of which are endemic in SA.
This is what explains the service delivery upheavals that are becoming a normal part of our environment.

So what is the correct road SA should be travelling?

We all accept that a socialist model, along the lines of the Soviet Union, is not workable for SA today. The creation of a state-owned economy is not a formula that is an option for SA or for many parts of the world. Therefore, if we want to develop SA instead of shuffling pre-existing wealth, we have to create new entrepreneurs, and we need to support existing entrepreneurs to diversify into new economic sectors.

Make people work for their 'handouts' even if it means they must sweep the streets or clean a park - just do something instead of getting all for nothing. Guaranteed there will then be less queuing for handouts because they would then be working and in most instances they do not want to work - they want everything for nothing.

And in my opinion the ANC created this culture before the first election in
1994 when they promised the masses housing, electricity etc - they just neglected to tell them that they would have to pay for them. That is why the masses constantly do not want to pay for water, electricity, rates on their properties - they think the government must pay this - after all they were told by the ANC that they will be given these things - they just do not want to understand that the money to pay for this comes from somewhere and if you don't pay you will eventually not have these services.

And then when the tax base has left they can grow their mielies in front of their shack and stretch out their open palms to the UN for food handouts an live a day to day existence that seems to be what they want - sit on their arse and do nothing.

Mbeki is the author of Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing. This article forms part of a series on transformation supplied by the Centre for Development and Enterprise.

SPAIDS AND CANDLELIGHT

Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves - SPAIDS - had its first planting on 15 May 1994 to remember people who had died from AIDS. At that stage, before drug therapies had improved to the stage where people with HIV can now expect a normal life expectancy, the numbers dying horrible deaths from a dreadful disease were so great that we saw the planting of trees as a step in the healing process of loss and sadness.

Other events commemorating people who had died of AIDS were the Australian Quilt Project and the Candlelight Memorial.

As time passed and SPAIDS continued to grow and become established as an AIDS memorial, we anticipated that, with the establishment of a Reflection Area as the centrepoint of the Groves, memorial services would be able to be held in Sydney Park.

We now find that events on World AIDS Day, 1 December annually, and Candlelight, also an annual event, usually held later in the year but this year to be held on 15 May (the anniversary of SPAIDS origins) are held elsewhere, notably the Sydney Botanic Gardens for World AIDS Day, and now Candlelight, held at a private venue in Oxford Street Darlinghurst.

We are at a loss to understand how these organisations organising such commemorative events fail to understand the historic and educational relationship to the SPAIDS project. Sydney Park is used by hundreds of people weekly, and the Park is in a sufficiently accessible area by public transport or by car so that there is no difficulty in finding the venue, yet they continue to disregard SPAIDS.

This is really their loss as the AIDS Groves continue to become more beautiful every year, and particularly in 2011, after Sydney has experienced record rainfalls.

"CORRECTIVE RAPE" IN SOUTH AFRICA

“CORRECTIVE RAPE” IN SOUTH AFRICA

In February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years incarceration by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Four years later, Mandela became the first president of a multi-racial South Africa with a new constitution which guaranteed equality for all its citizens.

In 1999 Thabo Mbeki became president of South Africa and presided over one of the biggest health crises in South Africa’s history –the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Thanks to Mbeki and his health minister, both AIDS deniers, we have now, in 2011, nearly 1 in 5 South Africans who are HIV positive and many children have lost both parents and are themselves HIV positive.

This is South Africa’s future generation and this is the legacy they have inherited from Mbeki and his 10 years as South Africa’s president and his disastrous presidency.

If the current South African government does nothing about this “corrective rape” scourge damaging South Africa’s constitutional reputation, then its international reputation will suffer long-term damage and its human rights record will be set back for another generation at least while women remain not only second-class citizens but are cruelly punished for being who they are.

The items below are to point out to you that there are people around the world who are outraged at the inactivity of the South African government over this issue over at least the last year, and we await urgent action from the president and all members of the government to push legislation to punish the offenders and ensure that the law deals with them accordingly.

Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne, Australia
PO Box 1675
Preston South
Vic 3072
Australia

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 2010
End "Corrective" Rape of Lesbians in South Africa

• signatures: 35,669
•
• Target: South African President Kgalema Motlanthe
• Sponsored by: Care2
A new ActionAid report describes the shocking rise of "corrective" rape in South Africa - in which South African lesbians are being raped in an effort to "cure" them of their sexual orientation. Support groups in Cape Town say they see 10 new cases of "corrective" rape every week. And it's even more widespread around the rest of the country.

Many perpetrators of rape already go unpunished in South Africa, but the situation is even worse for lesbian women. Indeed, 31 lesbian women have been murdered in homophobic attacks since 1998, but in only one of these cases has there been a conviction.

Although South Africa's constitution recognizes rights of gay and lesbian people, its legal system does not view crimes committed against gay and lesbians on the basis of sexual orientation to be hate crimes. The South African legal system must recognize "corrective" rape as a hate crime in addition to a rape in order to establish a greater punishment for this brutal and widespread act of sexual violence. Urge South African President Kgalema Motlanthe to deem "corrective" rape a hate crime!

30 DECEMBER 2010





Spread the word about corrective rape in South Africa





Several weeks ago, survivors of "corrective rape" -- a heinous practice in South Africa where lesbians are raped under the guise of "curing" them -- started a petition on Change.org to ask the Minister of Justice to declare corrective rape a hate crime.

It has since become the largest-ever petition on Change.org, and the Chief of Staff at the Ministry of Justice has repeatedly contacted us to complain that they are overwhelmed with the messages coming from every part of South Africa and every corner of the globe. But the minister still refuses to meet with the activists who started the campaign -- Ndumi Funda and the women of the non-profit Lulekisizwe.

Ndumi asked us to pass the note below along to Change.org members. Read the note, then please continue to spread the word by posting on Facebook and forwarding this email to 10 friends.
___________
To Change.org members, editors and most of all to all of you who signed our petition,

We are GOBSMACKED at the response that our petition has received. Our fight against corrective-rape has been going on for so long, under the most harrowing of circumstances, with only a few volunteers to help, and it just seemed that nobody was listening, nobody cared, and our sisters were getting raped, beaten up and murdered without anyone doing anything about it.

In absolute frustration, we decided to write a petition. This was a first for us, and never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that we would get this kind of a response. We did jokingly say that we wanted to crash the Ministry of Justice's servers, but we thought that our petition would get a thousand or so signatures if we were lucky. More than 65,000 signatures later, and the senior Ministry officials we targeted are apparently having major difficulty accessing their e-mail because of all the e-mails your signatures are generating! WOOOHOOOO! Well done & thank you!
If you haven't already signed the 'Corrective Rape' petition, please sign and share it with your friends:
http://change.org/petitions/view/south_africa_declare_corrective_rape_a_hate-crime

Unfortunately, despite this becoming the most popular petition of ALL TIME on Change.org, and clearly getting the attention of the minister, Lulekisizwe has still not heard a word from the Justice Department! We need a meeting with the Minister of Justice so we can discuss how 'corrective rape' victims are treated, the lack of police response, how long the court cases take, why so many of the dockets get 'lost' and why the rapists get out on such low bail. Please keep the pressure up!

Thanks to a donation from an ethical cosmetics company in the UK called Lush, we were able to get another, more secure place to stay and use as a safe-house for the victims, but the rapes and assaults are continuing. We are worn out and things are far from easy, especially at this time of the year when stress levels are very high.

The one thing that is giving us hope is all of you showing love and caring by signing and sharing the petition. We are thrilled, excited and very, very humbled by the support that every one of you have shown, and all we can say is thank you and please, please don't stop. Ask your friends to sign our petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/view/south_africa_declare_corrective_rape_a_hate-crime?alert_id=CpiAYQksBB_iByXFCbPtJ&me=aa

Bless you all and have a great Festive Season,
Ndumi Funda & the Lulekisizwe team




25 JANUARY 2011
Dear friends,


‘Corrective rape’, the vicious practice of raping lesbians to ‘cure’ their sexuality, is becoming a crisis in South Africa. But brave activists are calling on the world to help stop these heinous Hate Crimes -- and finally the government is beginning to respond. Let's support them. Sign the petition and send it to friends!





Millicent Gaika was bound, strangled, tortured and raped for five hours by a man who crowed that he was ‘curing’ her of her lesbianism.

She barely survived, but she is not alone -- this vicious crime is recurrent in South Africa, where lesbians live in terror of attack. But no one has ever been convicted of 'corrective rape'.

Amazingly, from a tiny Cape Town safehouse a few brave activists are risking their lives to ensure that Millicent’s case sparks change. Their appeal to the Minister of Justice has exploded to over 140,000 signatures, forcing him to respond on national television. But the Minister has not yet answered their demands for action.

Let's shine a light on this horror from all corners of the world -- if enough of us join in to amplify and escalate this campaign, we can reach President Zuma, who is ultimately responsible to uphold constitutional rights. Let’s call on Zuma and the Minister of Justice to publicly condemn ‘corrective rape’, criminalise hate crimes, and ensure immediate enforcement, public education and protection for survivors. Sign the petition now and share it with everyone -- we’ll deliver it to the South African government with our partners in Cape Town:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_corrective_rape/?vl

South Africa, often called the Rainbow Nation, is revered globally for its post-apartheid efforts to protect against discrimination. It was the first country to constitutionally protect citizens from discrimination based on sexuality. But in Cape Town alone, the local organization Luleki Sizwe has recorded more than one 'corrective rape' per day, and impunity reigns.

'Corrective rape' is based on the outrageous and utterly false notion that a lesbian woman can be raped to 'make her straight', but this heinous act is not even classified as a hate crime in South Africa. The victims are often black, poor, lesbian women, and profoundly marginalised. But even the 2008 gang rape and murder of Eudy Simelane, the national hero and former star of the South Africa women's national football team, did not turn the tide. And just last week Minister Radebe insisted that motive is irrelevant in crimes like 'corrective rape.'

South Africa is the rape capital of the world. A South African girl born today is more likely to be raped than she is to learn to read. Astoundingly, one quarter of South African girls are raped before turning 16. This has many roots: masculine entitlement (62 per cent of boys over 11 believe that forcing someone to have sex is not an act of violence), poverty, crammed settlements, unemployed and disenfranchised men, community acceptance -- and, for the few cases that are courageously reported to authorities, a dismal police response and lax sentencing.

This is a human catastrophe. But Luleki Sizwe and partners at Change.org have opened a small window of hope in the fight against it. If the whole world weighs in now, we could get justice for Millicent and national action to end 'corrective rape':

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_corrective_rape/?vl

This is ultimately a battle with poverty, patriarchy, and homophobia. Ending the tide of rape will require bold leadership and concerted action to spearhead transformative change in South Africa and across the continent. President Zuma is a a Zulu traditionalist, who has himself stood trial for rape. But he condemned the arrest of a gay couple in Malawi last year, and, after massive national and international civic pressure, South Africa finally approved a UN resolution opposing extra-judicial killing in relation to sexual orientation.

If enough of us join this global call for action, we could push Zuma to speak out, drive much-needed government action, and begin a national conversation that could fundamentally shift public attitudes toward rape and homophobia in South Africa. Sign on now and spread the word:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_corrective_rape/?vl

A case like Millicent’s makes it easy to lose hope. But when citizens come together with one voice, we can succeed in shifting fundamentally unjust, but deeply ingrained practices and norms. Last year, in Uganda, we succeeded in building such a massive wave of public pressure that the government was forced to shelve legislation that would have sentenced gay Ugandans to death. And it was global pressure in support of bold national activists that pushed South African leaders to address the AIDS crisis that was engulfing their country. Let’s join together now and speak out for a world where each and every human being can live without fear of abuse.

With hope and determination,

Alice, Ricken, Maria Paz, David and the rest of the Avaaz team

SOURCES:

Blog of Luleki Sizwe, South African organization leading the call to their government to stop 'corrective rape', and provides support to victims
http://lulekisizwe.wordpress.com

Minister of Justice Radebe’s nationally televised interview (South African Broadcasting Corporation)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkx-PYqHM0U

Protest against ‘corrective rape’ (The Sowetan)
http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2011/01/06/protest-against-corrective-rape

Petition launched on Change.org by activists from Luleki Sizwe
http://humanrights.change.org/petitions/view/south_africa_declare_corrective_rape_a_hate-crime

"South Africa's shame: the rise of child rape" (The Independent)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/south-africas-shame-the-rise-of-child-rape-1974578.html

"Exploring homophobic victimisation in Gauteng, South Africa: issues, impacts, and responses" (Centre for Applied Psychology, University of South Africa)
http://www.avaaz.org/out_ucap_gauteng_study

"We have a major problem in South Africa" (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/nov/18/south-africa-murder-rape

"South Africa: Rape Facts" (Channel 4)
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/articles/south-africa-rape-facts

"Understanding men’s health and use of violence: interface of rape and HIV in South Africa" (Medical Research Council)
http://gender.care2share.wikispaces.net/file/view/MRC+SA+men+and+rape+ex+summary+june2009.pdf

"Preventing Rape and Violence in South Africa" (Medical Research Council)
http://www.mrc.ac.za/gender/prev_rapedd041209.pdf


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SYDNEY PARK AIDS MEMORIAL GROVES - MEDIA RELEASE

SYDNEY PARK AIDS MEMORIAL GROVES

SPAIDS
MEDIA RELEASE – 9 JULY 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sydney City Council has advised SPAIDS that Sydney Park is now fully planted and there will be no SPAIDS planting in 2010.

PlanetArk is having a National Tree Day event in another less heavily tree-ed area of Sydney Park on Sunday 1 August 2010 and the public is invited to attend.

SPAIDS friends may wish to enjoy a quiet, peaceful day in the SPAIDS Groves and Reflection Area by having a picnic there to celebrate the lives of those we have lost to AIDS and from other causes.

Mannie De Saxe and Kendall Lovett, SPAIDS co-convenors

LINK TO SPAIDS:

SYDNEY PARK AIDS MEMORIAL GROVES WEB PAGES

BMJ Group blogs

Pat Sidley on South Africa after Mbeki

26 Sep, 08 | by BMJ Group
South Africa’s newly elected president, Mr Kgalemo Mothlante, acted swiftly to end an era of ugly controversy and extreme incompetence in the health ministry by appointing a highly regarded, new health minister and effectively demoting the previous one, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who implemented all of former president Thabo Mbeki’s eccentric AIDS beliefs, which has laid the foundations for the increased burden of disease that South Africa now has.
Within hours of his inauguration he appointed to cabinet, Ms Barbara Hogan, one of very few white women sentenced to a long stretch (10 years) in prison for treason by the apartheid government. Since then, she has chaired parliamentary committees on finance and on the auditor general, as a member of the ruling party, the African National Congress, has been noted not only for efficiency and intellectual astuteness, but for not being afraid to challenge the former president’s views on AIDS and make her own views known by siding with the activist groups trying to change AIDS policies.
As one of very few high-profile changes to government, her appointment signalled the urgency with which the new government needed to rid itself of what has been repeatedly referred to as destructive and divisive era of health policy and care. It has not been limited to a few disgruntled voices to criticise the previous president and his health minister - political commentators, journalists, broadcasters, trade unionists, and others have all clamoured in this recent fortnight of turmoil to be heard noting Mr Mbeki’s AIDS legacy.
It would not have gone without notice either, that on the day of the inauguration, and effective demotion of the previous health minister, yet another TV news item showed a community’s discontent with its large, but ill-equipped hospital. The Carltonville hospital, serving a large and impoverished population outside Johannesburg and close to many gold mines, had seen the deaths of three patients who had fallen out of a broken window with, it was alleged, insufficient reason for this. Protesters and patients outside the hospital complained that a doctor was available only once a month and that nurses beat patients. It is another unfortunate legacy of the Mbeki-era that patients’ complaints of failing services have fallen on deaf ears and resulted in frequent similar stories in the media. In the TB arena, viewers used to thinking of the occupants in hospitals as “patients” have become used to stories in the media, of patients who have “escaped” their quarantine facility and are being hunted down by police, like criminals.
While nobody has diminished the enormity of the task of repairing the damage to the health of all but the small white minority population, caused by apartheid, the small hints at improvements to the country’s vital statistics during the tenure of president Nelson Mandela (among them a small drop in the infant mortality rate) were rapidly undone when Mr Mbeki assumed office in 1999, announcing shortly afterwards his intention to follow up his inquiries into already well accepted AIDS science. His health minister, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, although struck off the professional register in Botswana for her theft of patients’ belongings while in exile, became his loyal hatchet-man when after several years of blunt refusals to listen to wiser counsel, Mr Mbeki was eventually forced to keep quiet on health issues.
Ironically, had he but listened to Mr Mandela in one of several meetings within the ANC on the AIDS issue and anti-retroviral therapy, and heeded a very pointed warning, Mr Mbeki may well have avoided his sacking. On that day, Mr Mandela told the meeting that it was not unprecedented within the ANC for it to depose a leader who had lost favour. He cited the one little known instance when this had happened as a way of warning the president that his party was capable of running out of patience and loyalty and sacking him too . However, it was not only the president who failed to heed the warning, but the majority of his cabinet and the national executive committee of the party. Almost nobody spoke or voted against the president at that time - but this trickle began to develop into what became a torrent of irritation when activists with doctors, trade unionists and others began using the courts and the constitution to force the government to begin providing ARV treatment. More importantly for a president who was fired in part for letting go of the ANC’s policy of alleviating poverty and creating jobs, the government found itself baring the brunt of démarches from Western embassies, deputations from multinational pharmaceutical companies, threats from prospective donors to his pet projects within Africa to withdraw their backing, and finally his own ambassadors and a large and influential grouping of black businessmen. While he became quiet, his health minister took over startling and dismaying local and foreign experts with her preference for beetroot and traditional medicines to treat AIDS.
Mr Mbeki’s legacy, from one of AIDS denialism, also incorporates after the long battle, the fact that the country now has the largest anti-retroviral programme in the world. It took subterfuge within the Treasury and certain people in the health departments to ensure that enough would be found to budget for the programme so that resources could not be used as an excuse to continue to deny ARVs to people in need of them.
However, the health system has been bleeding professionals with doctors and nurses trained in South Africa, leaving the country in droves and doctors from Tunisia and Cuba among other countries, being recruited to work in South Africa. This has left less skilled and sometimes incompetent people in the country. The same pattern has been mirrored in the health department itself with those able to get jobs leaving and those remaining not able to make headway in improving health.
At a recent conference in Cape Town of several United Nations groups on mother and child survival, it was noted that in the area of child deaths, South Africa was one of the 10 worst performing countries in the world and would not meet its Millennium Goals for the Countdown to 1015 for Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival in health.
The conference heard that at least 260 women babies and children died daily in South Africa and no progress had been made to reduce this. Making matters worse, many of these deaths were caused by inadequate care by health care workers. The figures were worse than those during apartheid.
There are few if any experts who would now jump to the defence of former president Mbeki’s health legacy, partly because so many people are part of communities robbed of young lives from AIDS and because it is likely to become as unfashionable to defend his policies as it suddenly became to defend apartheid in 1994.
Pat Sidley is a medical journalist in Johannesburg.
5 Responses to “Pat Sidley on South Africa after Mbeki”
1. Pat Sidley fundamentally misstates how South AFrica’s black government makes its decisions on issues like AIDS. As President Motlanthe said yesterday, these decisions are made by the collective,not by any individual. Sidley confuses the authorities of the President of the United States or some other strong presidential system with the South African system in which the president is basically a prime minister with a presidential title and who is accountable to the cabinet and the party caucus in the National Assembly. To personalize policy decision on Mbeki is to be fundamentally misinformed about how South AFrica’s government is run.
The new minister of health will be part of the same collective decision making system as Tshabalala-Msimang and will have to get a consensus in cabinet for any new policy. It is not even clear that the new minister wants any change in policy. But, being from the white English-speaking community, perhaps the white English speakers who viciously attacked her two black predecessors will lay off. At least for a while.
Paul
September 26th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
2. Pat is spot on in her article. Mbeki imposed his views on government leadership, which he had filled with yes-men. Ministers, such as the former deputy Minister for Health, who disagreed with him didn’t last long in their post. (But no one ever got fired for incompetence.)
Paul needs to get over his race hangups. Mbeki had the same problem hence he mistook AIDS as a race issue and refused to deal with it, with genocidal consequences for South Africa.
Ravi
September 28th, 2008 at 7:03 am
3. Paul states that decisions are made by the “collective”; in the case of the Ministry of Health, this grouping consisted of a small cabal with a bizarre agenda that attempted to politicise science. The steadfast opposition (and forced change that occurred as a result) by a growing number of incensed ordinary South African health workers and activists was one of the major factors that prevents Mbeki and Msimang being remembered as the Pol Pots of the medical world. I very much doubt if they have the insight to be grateful to them.
Andrew
October 2nd, 2008 at 1:00 am
4. Finally after years of Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s poor handling of what is an AIDS crisis in South Africa, we can finally look forward to some sensible national policy which will deliver appropriate care at the grassroot level.
Vishen
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
5. Mr Mbeki’s legacy, from one of AIDS denialism, also incorporates after the long battle, the fact that the country now has the largest anti-retroviral programme in the world. It took subterfuge within the Treasury and certain people in the health departments to ensure that enough would be found to budget for the programme so that resources could not be used as an excuse to continue to deny ARVs to people in need of them.
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Mobin
Promoter
Mobin
October 11th, 2008 at 12:03 am