HIVEX Continues

It is grey autumn London. My house is cold. Unheatable – the house needs big building works. It was built in 1880, and survived quite nicely until a few years ago when weather changes , prolonged lack of rain, caused the underlying clay to crack, and then the building itself. There are gaps around windows.  The insurers accepted liability around 7 years ago, but so far, no work has been done.  I have had mixed feelings – haven’t wanted to disturb my children’s education,  wanted to have work done when I could afford extras – but I am so fed up of this… Durban’s warmth beckons. I wish my children were not such Londoners, and would come with me.


Today, a new group begins treatment.  Gradually, people are learning about us. The treatment which began on 20th has gone well. Cameron, who was worried about the move of equipment from his apartment, is happy.  The new place is great. It feels good. One person, another Londoner, a lovely gay man, tells me that it needs some softening.  My own tastes are for utter simplicity, verging on the bleak.   And I know that he is right.  It is a conference facility.  I ask him please, to go out and do what is needed – plants, softening.  Michaela would be good at that.  But she too is here in London, shipping possessions back to South Africa, where she has a long term volunteer visa. And Durban isn’t her place.  She loves Cape Town.

Where Michaela lives now, in Hout Bay, there is trouble. Hout Bay is a Cape Town suburb. Beautiful, with a fishing harbour. It has a lovely bay, and a pretty centre, around which one can actually walk.  Nice restaurants. I ask myself where it reminds me of, and it is New England, Massachsetts, Martha’s Vineyard. And yes, so much is not that – the steep  hills, the  sun- perhaps the scale of the bulldings in the centre, the water, small boats.




Michaela in Hout Bay

  Around the edge of Hout Bay there are informal settlements – one right opposite her building. One of these is in the news.  It tells us a lot about South Africa today. Shacks build alongside an overflowing community of council flats on the side of the Sentinel mountain. At first the government objected, and then, in what was a ground breaking initiative, agreed a shack-upgrade programme, provided there was no new building. But it hasn’t delivered, and people have built new shacks on the firebreaks, and part of the mountain has been sold for property development.  When demolition crews arrived, there was a riot. Petrol bombs and rubber bullets.  





Shacks being destroyed down in Hout Bay

  The ANC General Council, which takes place every 5 years, has just finished in Durban. President Zuma has been asserting his authority, and has promised to interview each of his ministers in turn to quiz them about delivery.  Things often take a very long time in South Africa, and there is a great deal of corruption. I hope that we will find a way through with our particular issue whilst maintaining our own integrity and that of HIVEX – not letting any of those who might have the power to do so influence the company away from what we want – the delivery of affordable help to those to whom ant-retroviral drugs are not available.

HIVEX is with me everywhere. At a Crouch End party I talk to a friend about work he has been supporting. at Tsholofelo Community. My friend has been working with Sister Georgina Boswell and Brother Joseph Kiely .  They were part of Catholic missions which were bombed during apartheid because of their support of the local black population.  The two of them stayed, and worked with squatters – workers at the nearby platinum mines, often illegally in South Africa from Mozambique, Lesotho or elsewhere. People were dying – this was before the full impact of HIV was realised, and since they could not provide what the community most wanted – water – they provided the most important thing they could – care for those with HIV. Children of 6 or 7 were looking after dying mothers – you have seen all of that on TV.  After a while, the mines provided test kits, and it was found that 40% of mothers were HIV+. The Bafokeng people helped, and  permission was given to build, as long as the structures were not permanent. So there is an adobe hospice, and shipping container clinics, http://tsholofelocommunity.com/freedom-park-squatter-camp.php

My friend tells me that one of the communities – 12,000 people, still has just a single tap. He employed geologists, water diviners, hired equipment.  With much excitement, they sank two boreholes in the ideal spot– there is a lot of water in that area, underground.  The water should have been 60m underground – but they went 120 m before abandoning the project.  The water has been diverted by the mines. And this is typical – do not shout “Bad mine! Wicked employer!”  It is not so simple. I have no doubt that the mine owners are helping in many ways. And it can take so long to get messages through. Sometimes, when you take things in hand, as Georgina and Joseph did with their clinic, it works.  And sometimes, as with my friend did and the boreholes, it doesn’t. But waiting around for things to happen in the way that they should, always takes a very long time. Tsholofelo

The Tsholofelo Community’s supply of anti-retroviral drugs has been cut – there is less money from PEPHAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has funded a huge amount of treatment as part of the global initiative for universal access to HIV treatment.  PEPHAR is estimates to have saved 3.28 million adult lives.  Actually, President Obama has continued with high PEPHAR funding, but the amount to individual countries has been cut, and in South Africa, clinics are refusing to enrol new patients, turning away patients. 





Freedom Park Squatter Camp Clinic

  Because money is limited, people are often not treated until they are quire ill – the average CD4 count when a person is first prescribed  anti-retroviral drugs is 87 – well below the UN definition for AIDS _ a CD4 count of 200 if asymptomatic, 300 with symptoms. One fifth of people put onto a waiting list for anti-retroviral drugs in South Africa die before they get them. Of course I think of the difference we could make. If it was no longer financially beneficial to delay treatment. If we could simply keep people well for longer. And I think we could do much more. I think of Tsholofelo’s adobe hospice, and imagine us treating there, and the difference we could make to those communities. I want that chance.