In April 2010 the  President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, announced to the public that he is HIV negative.

“By publicising the results of his test, Mr Zuma said he hoped to promote openness, and to eradicate the silence and stigma that accompanies this epidemic.”

During  his 2006 rape trial he admitted to having unprotected sex with an HIV positive woman. He then explained  he had a shower afterwards “thinking this would reduce the risk of being infected”. While I admire Zuma’s openness and willingness to get tested in order to promote his “campaign” to “get 15 million people tested during the next year, and provide drugs to 80% of those needing them”, I still feel that the message he is sending out, perhaps unintentionally, is: lead a promiscuous life, have unprotected sex and at the end of the day your HIV test will be negative. While Zuma’s public campaign against the prevention of  HIV may be admirable, I feel his personal conduct totally contradicts and undermines his campaign. What message is he trying to send  to the public?

This entry was posted on June 23rd, 2010 at 3:03 pm by Leigh Worswick and is filed under Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.