When I visited the countries of southern
Africa, AIDS was always somewhere over my shoulder. In Zambia,
there were billboards that instructed you to
“condomize” as the third step toward protection (the
first two steps said, essentially, never have sex). In Malawi,
there were ads everywhere that showed a warrior shield against a
stark yellow flag and read “Chishango” in bold letters;
I asked two men at a bar in the town of Mchengawamoto (the Hot
Sands Village) what it was, and they laughed — it’s a
brand of condoms. And in the Botswanan town of Nata, attendants
pumped gas and children wearing V-neck sweaters walked to school
everyday under the AIDS billboard at the main intersection.

But to me, an outsider, the presence of the disease was only
felt indirectly, because no one will talk about it.

My group’s guide in Zululand, a woman in her mid-twenties
named Jabu, introduced us to her family and showed us pictures of
her sister’s children, whom she cared for herself. Her sister
had died a few years ago, and one of us asked, innocently enough,
what she died of. Jabu told us, “She just …
died.” It seemed as if we had intruded on something just
then. You would think anyone would be compassionate toward an AIDS
orphan, but they face a strong stigma. I met a girl in Cape Town
who had just come from Durban, part of the Kwazulu-Natal province
that has the highest incidence of HIV in the country, and she told
me she had worked at an orphanage there. I asked if she meant an
AIDS orphanage, and she said yes, but she avoids saying so because
people can be scared by it.

Stigmas about AIDS are not a uniquely African phenomenon. People
will avoid thinking or talking about sexual disease if they can,
and our entertainment and advertising industries thrive on carefree
portrayals of sex.

It is also hard to depend on leaders, anywhere in the world, who
deny problems that are obvious. The Kenyan government denied for a
long time that the AIDS-ravaged slum of Kibera even existed, though
it holds 700,000 people and sits within view of the
president’s house. Likewise, President Ronald Reagan
hesitated to address the U.S. AIDS crisis in the ’80s because
he wondered if AIDS “was perhaps a plague brought down by God
because illicit sex was against the Ten Commandments” (this
from a Grand Rapids Press article citing a biography written in
cooperation with the Reagans).

But Africa is unique because it suffers more than anywhere else.
South Africa alone contains 5.3 million of the 46 million infected
worldwide. Botswana is a prosperous country by most measurements,
but it has a 38 percent adult AIDS rate, and its president came to
the United States three weeks ago to say it needs help. African
leaders have the resolve to combat the problem, but they
don’t have the resources. The amount of money making its way
from Congress to the continent this year will not be anywhere near
enough, and Africans are looking to raise awareness in new
ways.

On Saturday, Nelson Mandela put on an AIDS benefit concert with
world-famous performers in Cape Town’s Greenpoint Stadium in
Cape Town South Africa. It will air globally on MTV tonight as a
celebration (if that’s the right word) of World AIDS Day, and
will include acts like Beyonce Knowles, Peter Gabriel, Bono, Annie
Lennox and Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens). It will be worth
watching to hear the Soweto Gospel Choir sing, and to hear Mandela
speak about this crisis, which he says will require “even
greater resolve than was shown in the fight against
apartheid.” He understands the importance of appealing to the
conscience of Western nations, and though it would be easy for some
to shrug off the politics of celebrities, I think they all know the
importance of what they’re doing.

The fight against AIDS will not be easy — people will have
to change their sexual behavior, embrace the use of condoms and
overcome any number of stigmas against victims. But none of this is
as important as the very first step, when people finally start
talking about the disease. Mandela’s efforts are significant
for that reason. They are an unequivocal appeal for help from
abroad and a rallying point for sufferers all across Africa. The
proceeds from the benefit concert will go to the Nelson Mandela
Foundation, which will only help with AIDS research and relief
within South Africa, but the awareness raised should help everyone.
In some countries, as many as 90 percent of those infected
don’t even know it. Once people start talking, maybe things
will change.

Cotner can be reached at "mailto:cotners@umich.edu">cotners@umich.edu.