ELANDSDOORN, South Africa, Nov 29, 2007 (AFP) - "Don't be silly, put a condom on your willy!" In South Africa, where AIDS remains a taboo subject, the billboard catches your eye on the dusty road in rural Mpumalanga.
"Women! Don't let men dick-tate you!" The slangy tone of the placards dotting the highway in the middle-of-nowhere township of Elandsdoorn highlights the absence of an official campaign to fight AIDS here.
"I invented them after two glasses of good wine," said Hugo Tempelman, 47. "We invite people to create new slogans. Our children participate too," added his wife Liesje, a year younger.
The Dutch doctor arrived in South Africa at the beginning of the '90s and started working in a hospital in KwaNdebele, a homeland integrated into the province of Mpumalanga when apartheid ended 13 years ago.
"Being a good doctor wasn't enough for me. I wanted to start contributing," he said.
"I am not afraid to be outspoken about the bad leadership of this country. They are provoking a genocide. It is morally so wrong."
Ahead of World AIDS day on Saturday, South Africa is the country worst hit by the disease. An estimated 5.5 million of its 48 million population are infected and less than a quarter of those sick enough to need treatment receive it.
With an infection rate of 32.1 percent, Mpumalanga is, after Kwazulu-Natal, the most badly affected province.
In 1994, Tempelman and his wife, a nurse, opened their own clinic in Elandsdoorn, about 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Johannesburg, in the heart of a valley of 120,000 inhabitants deprived of infrastructure.
Their centre named Ndlovu, meaning elephant in the Zulu tongue, is financed largely from Dutch government money.
It is on the frontline of South Africa's battle against AIDS and has succeeded in reducing mother-to-infant infection rates to zero.
Over the years, the clinic has grown exponentially: testing laboratories, a radiology chamber, a nappies factory run by HIV-positive women, a football field to occupy the young etc. etc.
Tobias Luppe, a collaborator in the project, explained the success of the Tempelman partnership. "He has thousands of ideas every minute. She is the one who put her hands in the dirt to see if they can make them real."
Luppe heads the mass prevention programme which is aimed at isolated, agricultural workers.
Educators, all from the township, travel from farm to farm to inform and provide free screening to workers, some as far as 250 kilometres from the township.
At Green's Greens, a 450 hectare commercial farm, at least one in three of the 420 mostly female workers are HIV positive.
The manager, Antoinette Erasmus, struggles to help them benefit from the free anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) as prejudices are ingrained and hard to displace.
The local hospital has in the past confiscated ARV drugs because of fears -- at times perpetuated by government figures -- that they are harmful, forcing Erasmus to pay a private clinic for them with vegetables from the farm.
"Some get under family or sangoma (faith healer) influence when they go back to their rural areas... because the minister said on television that ARVs are bad," she said, referring to Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
"On the farms, the workers are often isolated. They don't read newspapers, don't watch TV," said Selinah Madihlaba, who coordinates the educators at the Ndlovu centre.
"There is a lack of information, of education. The only way is to talk to them," she said.
But some Green's Greens employees understand and are spreading the AIDS message to their companions.
"I try to convince them to be tested. I act as a model, an example: in 2000, when I tested positive, I felt I could pass away the same moment. But I am fine now, they can see it," said onion grower Tshidi Phdo.
In the fields surrounding Elandsdoorn, cartoons and wordplay urge the young to protect themselves: "Don't be a fool, put a condom on your tool!"
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