HIV/AIDS in Africa: Links, livelihoods & legacies

Of the significance of HIV/AIDS at household, village and community level throughout Africa there can be no doubt. By 2002, the cumulative number of deaths from the disease in Africa had been estimated to be of the order of 19 million (calculated from Barnet & Whiteside, table 1.1 and UNAIDSa), almost 30 million Africans were estimated to be HIV positive, and by 2010 some 6 million of the then total deaths will have been in South Africa alone (Lewis, 2004). Although it is impossible to be precise, such figures considerably exceed those of around 11 million often (conservatively) estimated to have been transported during the entire period of the Atlantic slave trade (Austin, 1987). As with slavery, HIV/AIDS also primarily claims adult victims where the impact on economic production is greatest - another recent estimate is that between 1985 and 2020 over 20% of adult farm workers in the nine hardest hit African countries will have lost their lives because of AIDS (UNFAO, 2004a). While the impact is likely to be similar in many respects, two obvious differences from slavery are that the perpetrator is less easy to identify and moral judgements more readily confused, producing many examples of politically loaded policy decisions and value-laden interventions. Moreover, debates about ‘being faithful’ to one partner, possibly in marriage, and postponing teenage sex are institutional camouflage over the fact that a primary means of transfer of this disease in Africa has been through a physical activity as natural as eating and drinking, and which often involves great emotional and affectionate intimacy between two people. It can also of course be a violently imposed act by men on women and girls. In either case, there is the heightened pathos of human tragedy to which we as commentators should not lose our sensitivity and potential for empathy as a result of excessive intellectualising.