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  • Hundreds test for HIV at Soweto Festival

    01/10/08

    “If you spread the message to just one or two people and they spread the message to one or two people, millions of people will get the message.”

    These words by singer Loyiso Bala, a 46664 ambassador, sum up the aim of 46664’s involvement at the Soweto Festival recently – spread the word about HIV/AIDS.

    Held at the Soweto Campus of the University of Johannesburg over four days – starting on Wednesday September 24 and ending on Sunday – the Soweto Festival attracted hundreds of people from the surrounding area and from further afield to a vibrant event filled with music, food and sunshine.

    It was to these people that 46664, through the play Khululeka – It’s in our hands and through the ambassadors, including Loyiso, Jozi and Jamali, was trying to spread the message of HIV/AIDS prevention.

    The play, a humorous but emotionally powerful piece, tells true stories of people who contracted HIV and now live with the virus.

    Stories of rape, of resistance to getting tested, of being discriminated against because of being HIV-positive, all ring too true in a country which, according to Interpol, has the highest rate of rape in the world and where HIV is still often seen as a gay disease, a black disease, a white disease, a whore’s disease or a punishment for immoral behaviour.

    On top of battling these social issues, as Ronnie Maphutha, one of the Khululeka actors, points out, the majority of South Africans don’t use condoms and don’t want to be tested, which means the virus is spreading unchecked through South Africa, destroying families and ruining lives.

    At one point during the play the audience was asked who among them had been tested – about 50% of the people raised their hands.

    A figure 46664 is out to change.

    “We’re here to celebrate our presence in this community and to get people tested,” says 46664 project manager Margaret Canca.

    The initiative is working. The free testing facilities at the festival, facilitated by 46664 and run by New Start, an HIV-counselling and testing organisation, allowed visitors at the festival to get tested and counselled confidentially. In the first 15 minutes, individuals go through a thorough pre-counselling session with expert facilitators, then on to the actual blood test (no more than a mere pinprick to the finger) and then about 10 minutes later, they are informed of their results and appropriately counselled.

    With members of the 46664 team setting the example, about 100 people a day got tested during the four-day festival.

    “People are happy to see the testing station in a social environment,” says Canca. “They can slip off during the day and get tested without anyone knowing that they’ve gone. People are worried about going to their local clinics in case people they know see them there.”

    Getting the youth to know their status and change their lifestyles is vitally important in order to win the fight against HIV/AIDS and, as Canca points out, it’s the sexually active youth who, statistically, stand the greatest risk of contracting the disease.

    That’s something the 46664 ambassadors Jozi, Loyiso, the C4C artists and Jamali pointed out during their performances at the festival.

    But while the youth are at the highest risk, as Khululeka actor Daniel de Lange points out: “AIDS is a democratic disease … It can happen to anyone, and it can happen to you.”

    With over 1 500 new infections a day in South Africa and with prevention still the only “cure”, it’s best to know your status.