Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - Sunday 05 May 2002
Phylicia Oppelt

This 26-year-old woman had the sass of a Brenda Fassie; the sharp, sly grin of someone who knows she is attractive.

But her beauty will not survive much longer since a variety of illnesses plague her. She is losing her sight, the gauze on her finger hides the wound left after doctors removed an abscess, and she recently had a rash on her face.

Mawe, who qualified as a teacher last year and who wants to teach accountancy and business science, is not likely ever to be an educator. She will remain in her mother's house, sitting around in a cotton wrap in the middle of the day. She has Aids.

But I should not tell Mawe's story, or any of the stories I recently learnt about women, children and men dying of Aids in Southern Africa. I should not tell about Laura Zita who will leave behind three children in Maputo or about Daphne and her six-year-old son, Johnson, in Nyanga who will both die of Aids.

I should not share these stories because people are suffering from Aids fatigue.

They - and I assume "they" are the healthy South Africans, unaffected by the pandemic - are tired of reading yet another tale of trauma and suffering, of poverty and disease and utter hopelessness.

That last protracted round between Aids campaigners and the government over its Aids policy and the provision of nevirapine has exhausted all of us.

And now that the government has capitulated on antiretrovirals for pregnant HIV-positive women, there's nothing really more to say unless a new crisis develops.

Aids has become a turn-off. Readers, when they open newspapers to find yet another story of disease, almost automatically switch off. But, someone contradicted the other day, it's not that South Africans don't care - it's just that they have had a surfeit of Aids stories.

This fatigue does not apply only to Aids. It applies to just about every issue that fills newspapers and dominates television screens.

Within weeks of the September 11 attacks in the US, we began tuning out. It was not that the outrage at the wanton loss of life mattered less. Rather, as global broadcaster CNN realised, even its most patriotic American viewers were overloaded with images of hurt.

Slowly, over the days and weeks, the news lens widened again beyond New York and Washington DC.

Similarly, our newspapers carried a glut of pre-election Zimbabwe coverage. Robert Mugabe's actions were analysed in great detail, while the plight of those who opposed him were lauded for their courage. The tribulations of Zimbabwean and foreign journalists who were thwarted by the Mugabe government in writing the truth were published with gusto.

Next week, it will be two months since the presidential elections and we have moved on. Never mind the fact that the same conditions exist as before the election and talk of a food crisis persists. Zimbabwe is now just not sexy enough.

And while the world might be focusing its attention on the Middle East, the attention will not last. The fear sown by suicide bombers and the repression visited upon the Palestinians by the Israeli state will, too, become old hat.

Each day, we are exposed to competing issues - the caste system in India, female circumcision in Africa, female infanticide in China, racism, child soldiers, global warming, cloning, globalisation - that demand our attention. Aids, unfortunately, is but one of the issues that concern healthy middle-class lives. We have only one mind to think with and one heart to feel with.

And, Aids fatigue, as well as any other kind of issue fatigue, is certainly a middle-class phenomenon. People like Mawe don't have the luxury of wondering why others grow tired of reading and hearing about Aids.

As far as this woman is concerned, the battle is never-ending. The disease will not leave her alone any time soon. With no cure in sight, this sassy woman will never be able to tune out, be turned off by Aids. For her, unlike for many of us, there is no letting up of the disease and something like Aids fatigue does not exist.

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