December. For many, the promise of Christmas. The child-like resurgence of hope, an emotional spring-time. The “effort” of re-connecting with seldom-seen friends and family. The exchange of gifts. The advertising frenzy seeking to unburden one of one’s spare – or not so spare – cash. Consumerism.
All this and more, as we all know. But December also begins with World AIDS Day (WAD). This day is really another form of advertising campaign. It is also, like most contemporary advertising campaigns, about relieving those who have it of their money. In this neck of the woods, the “haves” are known as “donors.” Those for whom the money is needed are often, despite many efforts to censor the word, known as “victims.”
The “victims” are mainly poor and female. Mostly heterosexual, poor, and female. Women, to the exasperation of many feminists, drive many an advertising campaign. When they do, they are seen as “glamorous,” and despite the vociferous hostility of the feminists, many a woman aims to be like the usually starved, emaciated figures on display. The coat-hanger like dummies used to encourage desire for the goods they are draped in or over are not just models, but role models.
The WAD “ad campaign” will also feature women. Very often, and as problematically, these women will be emaciated. They are the dark shadows of their “glamorous” counterparts. Many of them are from Africa. Their shadowy images are used to encourage “donors” to part with their money. The dynamic is not one of luxury, but necessity, not one of self-indulgence, but civic and human responsibility. The juxtaposition of this use of “images of women” highlights the profound ambiguity in the term, “the good life.”
As decades of AIDS activism should have made clear, “the good life” is not a matter of morality. Certainly it is not a matter of “private morality.” Or, at any rate, not one in the sense that it might feature in the mouths of the religious right, or of the traditionalist, or the romantic fundamentalist.
Rather it is a question of political leadership, of political will, of equity and of human rights. To quote UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, “sustaining an effective AIDS response will require unprecedented leadership at all levels, including from governments, civil society and affected communities.”

In South Africa we have seen an unprecedented shift in the vocabulary of our leadership. In November, speaking at the Positive Conference in Midrand, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi apologised to those living with HIV/AIDS for the fact that activists had to take the government to court in order to advance access to ARV treatment for those who needed it. This was a remarkable moment, one almost as remarkable as the failure of the mainstream media to give this declaration the attention it deserved.

He has subsequently pinpointed the “denialism” of the Mbeki regime as being responsible for the “shocking” rise in AIDS-related deaths in SA. These latter remarks were made in the context of his issuing what have subsequently been pinpointed as inaccurate figures.

In the face of this error, the Minister emphasised that what mattered were not the numbers per se, but the imperative need to enhance the roll out of treatment programmes for those needing them.

Here we have three instances of political leadership all of which stand in reassuring contrast to previous attitudes of government ministers. Some activists have called for a TRC into AIDS and AIDS denialism. (I think the first such call was made by Justice Edwin Cameron). While this apology from the Minister of Health falls far short of such a Commission, it certainly marks a sea change in government’s attitudes, a heart-felt humility and a commitment to reversing “the crisis of truth-telling” (Justice Edwin Cameron’s formulation) that dogged previous governments and their despicable apologists.

When one recalls the annual and shameful debates that marked the release of new statistics on HIV/AIDS each year, and the time-wasting, life-destroying arguments about whether crime or AIDS was the largest single cause of death in SA, the Minister’s sensible and prompt move to focus the debate on treatment issues and not figures is more than a breath of fresh air. It makes the gruesome recent past appear like a script of a poor horror movie.

One further, simple example will make the point about the difference between “then” and “now.” Then Deputy Health Minister, Madlala-Routledge was forced out of office for highlighting some of government’s “denialism”. Now the current Health Minster himself makes the same point as a way of providing hope and urgency to government’s HIV/AIDS interventions.

It is a tragedy that these comments have been over-ridden in media exposure by the focus on the (important) trial of Jackie Selebi and the “debates” about Athletics SA and the sex of Caster Semenya.

If the recent “attitudinal shifts” from high government officials are cause for some optimism this December (and we should not forget the announcement of an intention to test 28 million citizens) then it is sad to see the mainstream media being somewhat lax in spreading the good news. IS it that the old maxim that “bad news is good news” prevails? Is it that the media themselves are indeed suffering from that related illness, “AIDS fatigue”?

No doubt in the next several days, the amount of HIV/AIDS coverage will increase in the run-up to WAD. And I do hope that some cautious credit will be given where credit is due. In fact, I hope the point will be made that recent remarks by Aaron Motsoaledi will be seen in the light of the redemptive re-writing of history.

In the after life of apartheid, new histories have come to light, histories that were suppressed or perversely distorted. Now a shoddy distortion of history in the post-1994 era seems to be being re-written. It is crucial that we acknowledge this widely. Many ghastly hacks (one of whom is Riaan Malan, recently dubbed a “shameless denialist” by Nathan Geffen of the TAC) have lined their pockets and promoted their careers by propagating gruesome untruths. These are the Goebbels-clones of our recent history, and like Goebbels they have deaths on their hands. We need to shame these people even as we take grim delight in their belated debunking by later members of the government they so mendaciously and greedily served.

This sea-change is what I would like to celebrate this WAD.

For readers of this column, I’d also like to underscore the emphasis placed by Ban Ki-Moon on “affected communities.” I hope that from now on “spokespersons” for the LGBTI members of our society will stop reacting with horror (or assumed horror) when the point is made that men who have sex with men constitute a group who are at high risk of contracting HIV. Rather, I hope they will use every means at their disposal to promote this fact.

Furthermore, I hope they will use every opportunity to encourage us to go for testing and to convert the “know your status” mantra from words to facts.

I hope they will suggest that the testing programme is a crucial element in prevention and treatment. This sounds obvious, but where testing is concerned, if we encourage (possibly even insist) on testing, we will strategically enhance the roll out of ARVs. This follows because you cannot ethically insist on testing if treatment is not available. In the absence of the promise of treatment, people will simply not test. If you urge testing, you must do so in the certainty of available treatment for those who need it.

The World Health Organisation will announce new treatment guidelines soon. These will recommend that treatment commence far earlier than is currently the case. This will place an even higher burden on donors and health service providers than currently exists. Here is yet another challenge for us in the new climate of government commitment.

In a global economic crisis, the conditions for the transmission of HIV increase, and the commitment to deploying ever-more scarce resources to prevention of sero-conversion and morbidity is more seriously challenged. We might wish to remind tardy donors that they have signed the commitment to universal access to treatment by the end of 2010. We might point out how much money is committed to a football event, or one football stadium when people cry poverty. We might wish to point to the billions of euros spent weekly on farm subsidies in Europe. Whatever we do, we need to remain vigilant and strategically alert.

And alongside this, we need to be personally responsible. We cannot look to others for help always, nor blame others for conditions that might be of our own making. We need to use what we have, our knowledge, to attain that huge and hugely difficult quality, ‘care of the self.” And while actively working for a new public morality from governments and NGOs, we need, within our resources, to govern ourselves.

This WAD, convert your knowledge into power, if at all possible. Accept that men who have sex with men are a high risk group. Acknowledge that we often commodify each other. And do not be willing to merely be someone else’s Christmas gift this December.

This, dully, is an adult hopefulness.