SANDF s Aids policy is self defeating

SANDF s Aids policy is self defeating

Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - June 15, 1995

THE South African National Defence Force's claim that its refusal to employ people who test HIV positive is "non-discriminatory" beggars belief. Not only does it violate the Constitutional principle that no South African may be discriminated against on the grounds of disability, but it also flouts the Guidelines on Aids and Employment issued by the World Health Organisation and the International Labour Organisation. Furthermore, the policy contradicts the principles outlined in the National Aids Plan as adopted by the Cabinet, and puts the Minister of Defence at odds with his colleague Dr Nkosazana Zuma, who has declared her implacable opposition to pre-employment HIV testing to Parliament. The SANDF may now expect a challenge to its discriminatory policy.

The assumptions behind a policy of testing all prospective employees for HIV are irrational and self- defeating. Nothing prevents a recruit from contracting HIV on the day after he/she has been employed by the SANDF. Not permitting HIV positive troops to enter combat is as irrational as not permitting HIV positive traffic officers to ride motor bikes, or HIV positive people from using atrociously driven minibus taxis.

Ultimately, every employing body in South Africa is going to have to confront the reality of Aids within its workforce. To create a new underclass of marginalised people who, though healthy, are now also unemployable is very shortsighted. We are faced with the real prospect of a quarter to a third of the nation's workforce (and electorate!) being HIV positive in the next five to ten years.

The SANDF's decision makes one wonder whether their strategic planning includes the possibility of one day being called upon to defend the uninfected against the new menace from within: the infected, enraged at being marginalised in their land of birth merely because of the presence of a virus in their blood. -- Geoffrey Taylor, National Aids Council of South Africa (Western Cape Committee)

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