Aids denial costs lives

25 September 2004

Three experts in Aids research, Tony Barnett, Gwyn Prins and Alan Whiteside, say that Rian Malan has placed lives in danger with his sceptical approach to the epidemic

Of course in one disingenuous sense Malan is quite correct, which brings us to the final question. Africa is not dying of Aids only, but from poverty. Poverty helps the virus in a vicious spiral via pre-existing non-HIV poor health and poor diet; and, crucially, poverty constrains life choices. That puts people at risk, especially from cruelly vulnerable constructions of sexuality: male machismo as a means of coping with danger and powerlessness; young women driven to sell unprotected sex for mere survival. But Africans have weathered the slave trade, hostile environments, rapacious forms of colonial government such as that in the Congo, unbalanced terms of trade and tariff regimes, leaders like Mobutu or Mugabe who are mad, bad and dangerous to know. Malan — and President Mbeki — are correct: Africa will not die from Aids alone, but its peoples will be grindingly injured by the epidemic.

Through his bizarre interviews last May in Insig and in the Washington Post, Malan answers our third question. ‘I’m waiting for the meaning of my life to be revealed,’ we read, and are sorry. ‘I’ve lost the plot. Seriously,’ we read and can only agree. But neither circumstance relieves Malan of responsibility for the consequences of his actions, which are that he has strengthened those who would deny the acute nature of the Aids problem today and into the future. If, in his ‘sport’, Malan, a journalist, does not speak truth to power, he fails in his professional duty. Mbeki’s denialist agenda is more profoundly sceptical and influential, hence tragic and serious, than is Malan’s; for the President is on record as doubting whether HIV actually causes Aids.

Rian Malan recanted handsomely over getting the new South Africa wrong — and the President read out his recantation in his state of the nation address. Since President Mbeki reads Malan attentively, perhaps he might be impressed by an apology also for his even graver errors over Aids? Helping to change the President’s mind would be a meaningful penance for Rian Malan.

Tony Barnett is ESRC Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE, a member of the LSE Aids Group, an adviser on Aids to many governments and NGOs and co-author with Alan Whiteside of Aids in the 21st Century (Palgrave-Macmillan 2002). Gwyn Prins is Alliance Research Professor jointly at the LSE and Columbia University, New York, a member of the LSE Aids Group and author most recently of Aids and global security (International Affairs, October 2004). Alan Whiteside is a Professor and Director of the Health Economics and HIV/Aids Research Division at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Commissioner on the UN Commission on HIV/Aids and Governance in Africa. All three participated in the Pugwash Conferences’ workshops on ‘Threats without enemies: Aids and security’ in South Africa in February and June 2004. The fee for this article has been donated to the Waterford/ Kamhlaba School Trust.