THE OUTSIDER
Minister tries to shame officials into action
By Kurt Shillinger, Globe Correspondent, 10/13/99
JOHANNESBURG - The prospect of a straight-talking minister from Dorchester prodding African leaders with a new gospel that casual sex is tantamount to violence meets skepticism from Cape Town to Kampala.
It is the aim of the Rev. Eugene Rivers to stir the waters rather than still them. Angered by the ravaging of Africa by AIDS, he is launching a campaign to shame African governments for doing and spending too little, and prominent black Americans for watching in silence as millions of Africans die each year.
``It is time to embarrass the ambassadorial representation of African countries in Washington,'' Rivers says. ``If they could mobilize around the issue of apartheid, why don't they do the same for AIDS?''
The blitzkrieg approach might work on American politicians in Washington, where confrontation is the norm in politics and the Clinton administration sympathizes with issues such as the need to ease Africa's debt burden and break the corporate grip on anti-AIDS drugs.
But Africans may be harder to influence. As leaders like South African President Thabo Mbeki promote their vision of an African renaissance, they are increasingly impatient playing the junior partner in North-South relations. They reject implicit assumptions that the West has all the answers for Africa.
Against this backdrop, Rivers raises thorny issues. He argues that the AIDS epidemic is a symptom of a cultural collapse in Africa, and wants to make abstinence a human rights issue. But Africans are traditionally reticent talking about sex. Most find it difficult to discuss the subject even with their own partners, studies have shown, let alone outsiders. At a church conference in Zimbabwe last December, when Rivers first floated the idea that in the age of AIDS male promiscuity is a form of violence against women and children, his pleas for open discussion were met with shocked silence.
``It is dangerous to bring in outsiders to talk about sexuality,'' says Patricio Rojas, representative of the World Health Organization in Namibia. ``The field is so complex. If you talk about changing mores, mores in Boston are very different from mores in Namibia. We try to promote a strong interchange of experiences within Africa. That is more useful. Closeness is fundamental to the success of the message.''
But John Caldwell, an expert on Africa at the Australian National University in Canberra, has grown impatient with the light-handed approach. In his latest book on the AIDS epidemic, he argues that ``government silence is partly explained by the surprising fact that overseas donor governments have not put sufficient pressure on political leaders to speak out and do so continuously, and to organize against the disease.
``There have been no inducements, such as massive help to the health system and to programs to curb AIDS given on condition of sustained and high-profile leadership.''
If donor governments have the clout to attach conditions, however, smaller players probably don't. Mark Ottenweller, an American doctor who runs 12 AIDS support groups in Soweto in a partnership between local officials and the US organization Hope Worldwide,says that engaging African leaders often is a matter of tact and tone.
``Frequently it's out of guilt that they get involved, as long as you're not too critical,'' he says.
The same rule applies at the street level. Ottenweller, who still carries the Bayou accent of his Louisiana upbringing, holds informal workshops on marriage in his free time. The way to break through silence, he says, is to establish a sense of common experience.
A health official in the northern Namibian town of Rundu, where AIDS is taking a particularly grim toll, agrees. ``If you just walk in and start talking about sex, you will make people resistant,'' the official says, requesting anonymity. ``People must feel you're not an outsider. You must use `we' and not `you,' and have an entry point into the community like a school or a church.''
Adds Bart Cox, director of the AIDS Committee at the Anglican Diocese in Johannesburg: ``It is the interdependence of people that matters. Stories of, `Oh, you too?''' he says. ``We have to create bonds of compassion through human experience.''
Still, as the epidemic swells, it is creating an increasing ``compassion burden.'' More people are falling sick and dying, more families are losing breadwinners, more children are left parentless. Governments must be held more accountable, AIDS experts say, but it is also critically important to get new players - notably churches - involved in building community-based care networks.
``One of the main objectives over the next couple of years is to bring churches on board,'' says Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, a joint program of several agencies in the United Nations. ``To be blunt, orphanages will mean tremendous business for churches.''
The outsider question doesn't deter Rivers, who models his initiative after the Biblical story of Joseph. Sold into slavery by his brothers, he later saved them from famine and ruin.
``Until Africans in Africa confront their complicity in the slave trade, they have no moral standing to challenge blacks in the US who challenge them regarding the same indifference that they now express toward the holocaust in Africa today,'' Rivers says.
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Part 1
