E-mail a friendJonny Steinberg
airdate February 26, 2008
Jonny Steinberg is a prize-winning South African journalist who has twice won his country's premier nonfiction literary award, for Midlands and The Number. He's written on the constitutional court and the police for the daily newspaper, Business Day, and was a consultant to the South African government on criminal justice policy. His latest work is Sizwe's Test: A Young Man's Journey Through Africa's AIDS Epidemic. A Rhodes Scholar, Steinberg earned his doctorate in political theory.
Jonny Steinberg
Tavis: Jonny Steinberg is an acclaimed South African writer and journalist whose first two books received South Africa's top literary award. His latest deals with the AIDS and HIV crisis in South Africa. The book is called "Sizwe's Test: A Young Man's Journey Through Africa's AIDS Epidemic." Jonny Steinberg, nice to have you on the program.
Jonny Steinberg: Good to be here, Tavis.
Tavis: Good to have you here. Let me pull out this card and put some numbers on the screen so we can put some context to the conversation about Sizwe, this young man, before we move too fast here.
In South Africa - well, first of all, 25 million people currently live with HIV in all sub-Saharan Africa. In sub-Saharan Africa, 25 million people currently living with HIV. About 800 South Africans die of AIDS-related causes each day. Eight hundred South Africans dead every day of AIDS-related diseases. The infection rate is 1,000 new cases per day - 1,000 new cases per day, the infection rate.
That puts some pretty good context, you think, to this conversation?
Steinberg: There's never been this much death. It's the biggest health catastrophe in South African and southern African history. It's almost unthinkable.
Tavis: And how is it being handled or not handled in the country, and I ask that against the backdrop of the conversation that those of us - those of us who pay attention to this conversation know about the controversy around Mr. Mbeki, the current president, Mr. Zuma, who may be the next president. I'll let you explain the controversy both of them have stepped into where HIV/AIDS is concerned from a public policy perspective.
Steinberg: We've had a long fight in South Africa to make antiretroviral medicine available. In 2000, 2001, President Mbeki started saying he's questioning whether HIV actually causes AIDS and whether the epidemic is sexually transmitted. There was talk about the drugs being toxic and not good enough.
And there's been a huge battle inside the ruling party, in a very powerful social movement, and that battle's slowly being won. And we now have nearly half a million South Africans on antiretroviral medicine, but it's been a big fight.
Tavis: So that's the president, Mr. Mbeki.
Steinberg: That's right.
Tavis: Then the man who would be the next president, Jacob Zuma, his story about this issue is?
Steinberg: Well, he's not against treatment at all. His issues are very different from Mr. Mbeki's issues. He's totally for treatment. But he presents some other issues. His slogan, he's a very popular man and a populist man, and his slogan is "pass me my machine gun." The story he presents to South Africa is of a strong man who's been wronged, and many young men around the country identify with that.
We have a high unemployment rate, we've been through a lot, and a lot of men feeling emasculated rally behind him. And that raises big issues for HIV prevention and transmission about what sort of message you're sending out to young men.
Tavis: How is that particular issue being talked about inside the country, what he is or is not doing where these young men are concerned, and the kind of image that he is promoting to them?
Steinberg: Well, the debate's very, very polarized. A lot of the media is lashing out against him and telling him he's got to have a different image and send a different message. His supporters rally back and say, "This is elite, this is liberal, this is White." So it's a very, very polarizing issue in South Africa.
Tavis: Tell me, then, about your work where this issue is concerned, particularly as it relates to a young man named Sizwe.
Steinberg: Well, there was all this fight around President Mbeki's position and I wanted to kind of transcend it and go down and see what is happening on the ground among people. And what triggered this book was a day in April, 2005. I was reading another book by a South African judge called Edwin Cameron who told a really horrific story about Botswana.
In 2001, Botswana government announced that they were going to make antiretroviral medicine available to everybody who needed it, and they calculated that about 100,000 people were in urgent need of drugs or they're going to die. And that was unprecedented in sub-Saharan Africa. They did it. But two years after the program started, only 15,000 people had come forward.
The rest had stayed at home and were either dying or dead. And why'd they do that? Once the drugs had become available, why were they staying at home? What was that about? And I wanted to find that out. So I went to a deep rural area in South Africa called Lusikisiki, which had a really good program run by Doctors Without Borders.
And I went there to find out if people were staying at home and if they were, why. And I met this young guy who I've called Sizwe Magadla, and his story is this. He lives in a very poor place where most young men don't get drugs. He's successful; he runs a shop in his village and he's making money. He's got enough money for bride wealth, he's going to have children who are going to bear his name, he's a success.
But he won't test. He feels that his blood's contaminated. He believes he's HIV positive. He sees the drugs are around him and the villagers are around him and working, and he won't test. So the book's kind of a conundrum or riddle - why won't this successful young man test? What's it about? So that's what the book's about.
Tavis: Why does - his wife is HIV-negative.
Steinberg: His wife is HIV-negative.
Tavis: Why does he feel he's HIV-positive?
Steinberg: Well, both he and his wife slept with a lot of people before they got together. They've been monogamous by then by about three or four years. But he's not sure. He's not sure, he's scared, but he won't test.
Tavis: Is that the primary reason? He's afraid? Is that why he won't ultimately get tested, or is there something more to that?
Steinberg: Well, I think there are lots of layers, and for me, what's interesting is that he's doing well because he's a child of democracy. He wouldn't have been able to do well like this 10, 20 years ago. It's primarily as a result of democracy that he's flourishing. And yet a man flourishing because of democracy is not looking after himself, is not going to get tested.
And for me, the two issues intertwine. A young man, a young democracy, doing quite well, not doing so well. And I think one of the reasons is that he experiences AIDS as a continuation of racial oppression. We were once at a treatment center in his hometown, Lusikisiki, and the waiting room was filled with people, all sick, all going onto drugs.
And I said to him, "This is amazing. These people would be dying, and this is bringing them life." And he said, "No, this is humiliation. This is a bunch of Black people who are all sick. Everybody around here is sick. This epidemic is taking one person after another, they're all Black, and they're all humiliated and queuing up for Western medicine."
And he was desperate to find an indigenous cure. He went to one traditional healer after another. For him, this illness really represented just another layer and another act in the drama of racial humiliation.
Tavis: What does - two questions. What are the lessons to be drawn from Sizwe's denial about needing to get tested, and what are the broader implications of so many men in South Africa, males in South Africa, taking the same route that he takes, which is that I don't want to get tested?
Steinberg: Well, I'm glad you say men, because it is a male issue. Out of the 480-odd-thousand South Africans on ARVs, 70 percent are women. So it's mainly men who are staying at home and dying or not getting treatment, and I think part of it's got to do with the fact that HIV is not just carried in the blood, but in the semen.
It's something that you're going to transmit to your descendents. Sizwe comes from a place which is very poor. The most meaningful thing in his life is to leave a legacy through children, between marriage and children. So he experiences this as an attack on his masculinity in that way. This is about instead of generating a legacy, you poison the next generation.
And I think men feeling that sort of shame. Treatment programs need to understand that men feel that sort of shame, and need to construct a treatment environment which his conscious of shame and which is gentle and private and low-key, and really tries to routinize the epidemic, routinize the disease in saying this is just another chronic illness like any other.
It's been so politically loaded, it kind of needs to be deflated and normalized.
Tavis: I would think, back to our earlier conversation about Jacob Zuma, perhaps the next president of South Africa, I would think that if there are those who think that there is shame in this, that there is a racial dimension to this, that if Black South Africans of stature were giving a different message, then these persons might listen.
I'm trying to figure out a way to take the racial element out of it to say that this is an issue of health, first and foremost, not an issue of somebody trying to demonize, trying to kill off, trying to use AIDS or HIV as some genocidal weapon to wipe Black people off the face of the planet or kill off every Black in South Africa.
How serious is the issue being taken among Black leaders who have that kind of stature in the country/
Steinberg: Some take it very seriously and are outspoken and do good work. Others are embarrassed and don't, others are ambivalent and don't. I guess the point is what sort of Black role models (unintelligible) and what sort of messages are sent. Because the messages are really difficult. The messages are about sex and about sexuality, and about what sort of sex young people have with whom, how often.
And those are very, very sensitive and very tricky questions, and in a society which had generations of White domination, talking to Black men about those issues is hard. It's experienced as an assault. In Lusikisiki, there was a strong, strong rumor - more than a rumor; it was a truth - that condoms were produced in America and carried the virus, and was another attack on men. So these are really hard issues.
Tavis: I got 30 seconds left right quick. Tell me why an issue like this, speaking of America, should matter to folk outside of South Africa, people like us watching here in the United States.
Steinberg: Well, for two reasons. Firstly, because 800 people dying a day anywhere in the world is a lot, and it's everybody's concern. And another reason is that this is a universal question of this epidemic takes various forms, but it's with us here in this country too, and the issues are very similar.
Tavis: He's a celebrated writer in South Africa. His name is Jonny Steinberg. His new book is called "Sizwe's Test: A Young Man's Journey Through Africa's AIDS Epidemic." Jonny Steinberg, nice to have you on the program.
Steinberg: Thank you.
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