TC | Vision | Sound | |
00.02.04 | Cemetery Supervisor | I am the supervisor of the cemetary and I am waiting for a wife for over 19 years. In the old days we used to bury about 4 a month but now we are burying a lot around about 17 and 18 a month | |
00.02.24 | Interviewer | Are they young people? | |
00.02.25 | Cemetery Supervisor | There not just young people | |
00.02.28 | Young Boy | Every weekend when I say every weekend, every Saturday and Sunday, there are funerals around here and almost all of them are of young people. | |
00.02.46 | Researcher Aids stats. | We kept on collecting and collating the data since 1989 and just to give you my view. In 1989 we identified 30 new HIV positive carriers and we became aware of 5 aids related deaths..last year for 1997, we reported 5234 new HIV carriers and we recorded 448 deaths. What we have learned from our experience in the area that we are looking after, statistically speaking, is the slow steady increase and the fact that in the rural area there is not a town that is not affected or infected. | |
00.03.27 | Researcher
Aids stats. | Port Elizabeth is by no means the worst in South Africa. I think if you look at the Port Elizabeth fact, if you look at the factual aids cases, the factual growth rate in aids cases, aids deaths, factual aids deaths...last year 414, this year 130 up till May, projections of up to 600 by the end of the year. Not significant in their own right, not huge numbers but it's the growth rate that its important to look at. If you take a look at those, you have some idea of what's coming down the road...the levels of HIV infection are higher than even of those horrifying projections of 10 years back. | |
00.04.11 | Narrator | A group of academics from Rhodes University's East London Campus analysed the data. They found a typically African path of infection, the virus spread by heterosexual sex or by desent from HIV positive mothers to their babies. They found stark regional concentrations of HIV. As in places like Warma? township, hemmed in by suburban areas and the airport and close to an army base. | |
00.04.37 | Professor | In this particular case, the prognosis is poor, there is already a fairly high level of incidence of HIV and unable to say how high because the exact estimate is....but I am able to tell you that in some streets there are more HIV cases than there are rate payers. The children are going to be heirs to this and how are we going to deal with this. We are going to have to have big orphan villages, orphan centres... | |
00.05.13 | Narrator | Not all children will be left behind, one local picture of the disease is that little girls also die of aids. | |
00.05.18 | Professor | All over Africa there have been studies about virgins and the belief that you can have a cure for HIV if you sleep with a virgin | |
00.05.31 | Narrator | The African studies show that 9-15 year old girls are 6 times more likely to have aids than boys of the same age. | |
00.05.39 | Professor | And what I have found in this study, in this region, is that we have a figure which is closer 8 times more likely | |
00.05.47 | Narrator | With all of this information around the level of ignorance is something to behold, everybody here talks the talk, they know about condoms and testing and not sleeping around but no one knows anyone whose HIV positive. On some of these streets every other family has someone who is facing the prospect of aids...they all keep chip still. | |
00.06.08 | Local Woman | Aids is not good...because if somebody has got it they are going to die..yes....ahh, I made up...I don't want it...even HIV I don't want any of it. | |
00.06.25 | Local Woman 2 | If they hear they have aids, he or she don't want to die alone, they spread it | |
00.06.31 | Interviewer | They've told you ...they want to spread it? | |
00.06.34 | Local Woman 2 | Mmmm, yes..because if I hear about it, that I have aids, I don't want to die alone | |
00.06.45 | Interviewer | So, you won't tell your spouse? | |
00.06.47 | Local Woman 2 | I'll tell my husband and my boyfriend and what I'll do secondly is I'll go to another boyfriend. | |
00.06.55 | Narrator | In these parts, dying in company is a sure thing, virtually because of the absolute secrecy surrounding aids. This is a very rare document it is the only one in Warma's ? burial pile that lists aids as cause of death, although many others almost certainly took this knowledge to the grave. | |
00.07.14 | Local Man in Pool Room | If you see someone go to the clinic, if he or she is HIV Positive, the nurses mustn't hide it from others... the nurses or the government should have a place for them to go away from the community | |
00.07.28 | Interviewer | Like a village? | |
00.07.30 | Local Man | Yes, or a camp. | |
00.07.34 | Aids Sufferer (Lawrence) | They think of aids, they think aids is about death, which is why they treat people like us as less than human beings. I am HIV positive, having been diagnosed in 1991, when I was diagnosed I was looking for employment and I was told I was going to die in 3 months and that I couldn't get the job I applied for. I am supposed to be in the face of aids now because I am in my 7th year of being HIV positive and my cell count is about 300..but I don't regard myself as ill, I read, I write I exercise, I work, I do everything. | |
00.08.33 | Narrator | Lawrence runs a support group for people with aids. Ther are 10 members from Warma? and 9 of them are school kids. The tell him stories of being forced to eat alone and sleep apart from the family.. and above all they've been told to keep their illness secret. | |
00.08.47 | Lawrence | I don't know exactly why we have these devastating statistics here, people have been saying "no, it belongs somewhere else, not with us, not with me, not in this town, not in Johannesburg, or in Durban or our township..." | |
00.09.12 | Researcher | There are other African societies which are much more aggressive in confronting HIV and we've had unfournuate projects, like Serephina 2, which are a distraction rather than a help in promoting HIV awareness. So, what I would suggest is that we must just begin again with HIV awareness until such time as HIV has a face for the South African population and for its policy makers. | |
00.09.43 | Lawrence | What I witnessed today is a very sorry state, in that, some families are run by 15 or 16 or 17 year old kids, because their parents have died of Aids and there is a lot of ....people are beginning to care for people with aids because they have now witnessed the devastating effects it can have. | |
00.10.13 | Narrator/Interviewer | So,we haven't started to do that? | |
00.10.15 | Lawrence | We haven't started to do anything of that sort and in fact in our communiites in South Africa we have lost a lot because it was traditional especially for African people to care for a person who has a problem. |
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00.10.34 | Young Boy | Every weekend and when I say every weekend I mean every Saturday and Sunday, there are funerals around hereand almost all of them are of young people and in most of them people don't know what he person has died of...he just went sick and lost weight and died |
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00.11.02 | Researcher | 15% of people die before their 5th birthday...the remainder, the average age of death is about 32 for males and 34 for females. This is the decade of HIV, the next decade will be fully blown aids decade. |
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00.11.23 |
| When it started off in 1989, we were told, don't dramatise, don't frighten the people, well I'm sorry but we are actually frightened. |
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00.11.31 | Burial book full of names |
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00.11.43 | Cemetary Supervisor | Before it was not like this, it was not like this time. |
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