Book title: LOVE in times of AIDS
Author: Dr. Mark Hunter: an Assistant Professor of social studies/geography at the University of Toronto.
Publisher: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press
Reviewer: Bhekisisa Stalin Mncube
AIDS transmission: hierarchy of UBUFEBE (multiple SEX partners) in South Africa
LOVE in times of AIDS is a valuable ethnography of Mandeni, an urban near town in the northern part of the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The city symbolizes the destruction of the aftermaths of HIV/AIDS. 2008 HIV/AIDS prevalence figures, 39% of the women tested positive for HIV in KwaZulu-Natal. There is still no noticeable change in the statistics since then.
The book presents arguments on why the AIDS epidemic appeared so rapidly in South Africa. It combines ethnography and history to highlight the deep connections between political economy and intimacy-a broader concept than sex that extends the analysis of fertility, love, marriage, and female pleasure.
The book contains bare destruction of families produced by HIV/AIDS among dissolved communities are driven in part by rising unemployment, poverty and hopelessness. This book is a potent manuscripts that provide a glimpse of the twilight zone between courage and fear, love and death. and hope in the mist of hopelessness. The story is deeply distressing, yet find solace powerful tale, academic analysis and engaging manner, including the author's personal anecdotes of his stay in Mandeni.
Mark Hunter spent five years living and working in an informal settlement in Mandeni. As part of his in-depth study: Hunter conducted interviews, questionnaires, collected love letters, cell phone text messages, oral histories and archival materials. This allowed Hunter to describe the feelings of the infected and affected by the virulent epidemic and everyday life. In the process he learned languages such as IsiZulu, and developed a deep understanding of its shades: therefore he used more than one hundred IsiZulu words to awaken feelings and cultural concept of the words spoken by his subjects in a way that offers them dignity while enriching the experience of the reader.
The book's central argument: AIDS is a social problem that is embedded in uneven development, skewed resource allocation, rapid urbanisation, housing backlogs in new towns, urban apartheid, rising levels of unemployment and poverty. Hunter claims to explain South Africa's rapid increase in HIV prevalence, we must note that intimacy, especially what he calls the materiality of daily sex, has become a vital crossroads between production and social reproduction in the current era of chronic unemployment and capital-led globalisation. As unemployment has thrown a cruel but uneven shading on land, in other words come certain aspects of intimacy to play a central and essential role in the "fleshy, messy and indeterminate stuff of daily life". By Hunter's study of history and his training as a geographer, he can map a link on how the first apartheid and then chronic unemployment have become entangled with the ideas of femininity, masculinity, love and sex that has created an economy of exchange (lethal cocktail) that maintains the transmission of HIV/AIDS.
He says specifically to us that the drivers of the epidemic is deeply rooted in the fault lines in society, and is the fault lines that need to be addressed. AIDS stands, Hunter suggests, as a symptom of all evils rooted in colonialism and apartheid which have not been changed since democracy in 1994. It is an indictment of the new South Africa, 16 years after his birth.
To explain the link between political economy and intimacy-what I call: the hierarchy of ubufebe multiple sex partners-Hunters study shows shocking antics of women and men in Mandeni. He tells about the classification of several lovers-a main boyfriend/girlfriend is known as istraight. Istraight is right, sometimes to the queue (no previous HIV test is required) without a condom and that right extends less with ishende (secret lover) and, or, isidikiselo (secondary lover).
Another fascinating search Hunters field work is a special role for sugar daddies (traditionally men who sleep with younger girls). He describes these girls compared to sugar daddies as more than just ' casual ' or ' secondary ', but support for suppliers of materials. One of the Hunters interviewee explains: when he comes to, he asks me if I am involved. Then I will either tell him that I am single, or that there is no I am involved with and that he will be the second. Then say the third which I am not he is the third, I will say that he is number two. In this hierarchy of ubufebe (refers to sexually Loose woman, or lamanyala for a man Isoka) each man is related to specific costs (e.g., "one each for money, food and rent" or "Ministers of finance, transport and entertainment). On the other hand, some boys get six men for tangible rewards. These suppliers can entirely differ istraight, ishende and isidikiselo. It is this economy of Exchange that enables historical inequality between the sexes, apartheid male oriented economy, rising women urbanisation, chronic housing shortages and unemployment that seamlessly fuel the transmission of AIDS. Unless the book seems to suggest, the South African Government tackles structural economic stagnation, along with its gender blind social services delivery-bypass, be faithful and Condomise maxim (ABC) of AIDS will remain a non-starter.
To this end offers Love in times of AIDS an outlet for expression, contemplation and a deep understanding of fault lines of AIDS transmission. It is also a moving obituary of those who succumbed to the virus, whereas the previous South African President Thabo Mbeki rasterized. This book is a blueprint for the authorities to understand AIDS beyond the biomedical approach: AIDS as a social problem. The book is a must for decision-makers, AIDS activists and all those who care about the future of our country.
REVIEWER'S Note: all material facts have been checked by the author.
Bhekisisa Mncube is consultancy freelance/media in South Africa.
Bhekisisa Mncube is consultancy media in Durban. He is the former KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government (Department of Transport) spokesman and former senior reporter (policies) at newspaper witness in Pietermaritzburg, capital of the province is a town in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He holds a journalism national diploma from Technikon Natal and a post-graduate degree in journalism from the Durban University of Technology. He has written extensively for the South African press, including articles in The mercury, Sunday Tribune, independent on Saturday, the daily news, Good Magazine and The Sunday world. He has written a column for The Witness community newspaper Echo right "notes from tomb No. 2," in particular, concern the inconsistencies as a result of changes in South Africa.