Home / 2008 / Zweli Mkhize at the 2008 TAC National Congress

Zweli Mkhize at the 2008 TAC National Congress

Singing  Mandla Ngawethu, Viva TAC Viva.

Zweli Mkhize: President of the TAC, comrade  Zackie  Achmat and the leadership of the TAC, Comrade  Sdumo,  Acting President of Cosatu and the Cosatu delegation. My colleague comrade Nozizwe Madlala (applause), Members of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, representatives of the International bodies present here. Friends and Comrades, ladies and gentlemen, good evening to you all. I would like to apologies for most of the members of our committee because we have an NEC (National Executive Committee) meeting in session. We are not all able to come and join you. And so I have to apologies for that. But I want to thank you for the invitation and I bring to you greetings from the African National Congress on this very important national congress that we are holding today. The ANC wishes you everything of the best and hopes that your deliberations will take the struggle against the pandemic forward. And at the end of it, we will be able to strengthen the partnership between the ANC, TAC and other bodies that are involved in the fight for better health as well as the fight against HIV and AIDS and all the associated complications.

It is most hardening to join you and see so many young people full of energy full and full of enthusiasm for life and the future. It tells us that it is a very important campaign that you are involved in because it's a campaign which is about saving the lives, the lives of South Africans, the lives of young people in particular. The lives of vulnerable groups, particularly women and children. It is the kind of campaign that we must commend you for.

HIV and AIDS and all the complications that are associated is a very serious campaign, it's a very serious infection that requires a very energetic campaign to fight. And the campaign has to be fought on many different fronts and I am glad to say that long ago TAC acknowledge that the issue of HIV and AIDS and all its complications is far beyond a health and medical issue, but it is also a social issue. It's got economics implications and it's all about the country, the economy of the country, the future of the country. It is about different aspects of our lives and it's therefore important that people should be involved in the campaign. They should not only be members of TAC or of some the PWA bodies, but it should be a campaign that all of us should participate in (applause). I therefore would like to say from a point of view of the ANC we believe that the campaign that's waging is a necessary campaign. We also believe that it is a campaign that needs to be able to draw in all sectors and structures of leadership and communities. It's a campaign that should be waged in different parts of the country, should not be restricted only to those who might be living with the virus at the moment or those who are related to those who live with the virus.  It's therefore a campaign that all of us must be party to. (Applause)

Having said so, I do want to indicate that the ANC in the last conference, I heard a lot about the ANC conference in Polokwane on the stage here. I must say that looking at you, you do remind me of Polokwane. But one of the decisions that the ANC took in Polokwane in December was a decision that we need elevate health issues and HIV and education issues to be top priority. Then of course the ANC went on to take a decision that we need to ensure that we strengthen the comprehensive strategy against HIV and AIDS. And the strategy to deal with, really the comprehensive approach, towards fighting the epidemic/pandemic, and move it beyond health institutions into the community by way of information of what services are available. By way of information about the disease; its causation, its prevention, its treatment and what else people need to do to stay healthy with or without the virus. The issue then of HIV prevention, treatment and all the associated aspects that of is part of the concrete resolutions that the ANC has endorsed and was specific to even say we need to move further, to go the communities and talk to communities and conduct campaigns about the issues of sexuality, sexual awareness and healthy lifestyles, starting from behavioral change.  A kind of conduct that will help society to then the rapid spread linked to the infection. Link to that of course is a campaign to deal with some of the communicable diseases such as TB, particularly the extremely resistant tuberculosis as well as other forms of tuberculosis and other associated opportunistic infections and go further to even deal with other diseases of lifestyle disease such as cancers. Most of which are spread and actually create a lot of difficulties for people, more because of lack of information of how they could have been prevented.

So, I therefore say to you the ANC is actually embarking on that campaign. It is a campaign where we are hoping that the structures the leadership the ANC, at ANC level together with government at different levels will be conducting a campaign at the grass root level. Talking to people about the importance of healthy lifestyles and the importance of sexual awareness and the importance of prevention of diseases. In particular we also want to be focusing very strongly on the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS. Some of the members of TAC leadership, that one has come across we have shared this that the ANC is making a call that when we embark on that campaign on a grass root level we want to appeal for a partnership and want to appeal to that kind of joint operation. That is going to make TAC and other PLWA associations and any other organizations, NGOs to work together with us and the communities to get them on to this campaign. And as far we will concerned there is quite a lot of skill, a lot of capacity and information that is general knowledge to members of the TAC that we believe could every useful at the ward level when we begin to conduct a campaign from ward to ward.

Talking to people at different levels, leadership levels, religious leaders, traditional leaders, our alliance partners, the workers in different non governmental organizations. Working together to ensure that the level of awareness of the diseases is pushed to the highest possible level. But not only just a question of awareness, but to look at the level of services that are being offered by government, pointing out where we feel that there might be short falls and pointing out new deeds to be done and how we can insure that the services are adequately able to address the kind of challenges as we see the disease manifesting itself. We are looking at a level of partnership at a grass root campaign wherein people will be moving around talking to people to the extent to which they would be able to try and create a new culture of conduct. That will ensure that those who are vulnerable are actually protected from the infection. And therefore it does become an important campaign because it goes much beyond the issues of health. For an example the issue of how the problem of HIV and AIDS in terms of transmition from one person into the other is quite often a function of ignorance, a function of unequal power relations, it's a function of people who are not able to negotiate a healthy sexual relationship between the two of them. And this often happens when we have a situation where there are poor people who are very dependant on their partners for sustenance. As a result they are not then able to challenge some of the unhealthy behavior that the partners might be involved in. At the same time it's also a challenge when you've got particular younger girls either under pressure or under the need to access certain resources as well and they end up getting themselves exposed. I am sure we are all very familiar with the fact that the numbers of women who became HIV positive is usually earlier than the boys of the same age. And that is more of a result of the inequality of power relationship between those who are involved. But also it's an issue, you know, when we sit and talk about equality it could work well in a platform and a forum like this. It works well in a slogan; it works well in a policy document, but once two people are together, male and female, a lot of those slogans, policy positions, everything like that tends to take the back seat whilst the two people have to face each other. This is not an issue that is a phenomenon of South Africa, it's a phenomenon that has happened - I recall a study that was done somewhere in some of the African countries, I think in Uganda, Kenya and some of the countries. Where the study shows that in fact women need not be of a lower level in terms of societal structure but in fact women who are in leadership level; managers, women in charge, actually did reflect that they do experience certain reservations in family negotiating safer sexual conduct from their (partners) for various reasons; cultural traditional, religious etc. And therefore it's an issue that is a lot more serious for us to deal with. Because it goes right to the core of the dynamics of our society. More from the patriarchal kind of society that we have been brought up in and therefore when we are dealing with this campaign we need to deal with a campaign from the point of view that says it's not just about one person who is infected today, it's more about changing the culture of society into the future. There is a culture that we will need as we move into the future. I used to hear about how in Netherlands they dealt with the problems of teenage pregnancies - which was a very, very heavy problem - which was among the top highest in the world. They actually invested in the knowledge and giving information to younger people to the extent, for an example that it was normal thing. It was a normal culture for a young girl in the early teenage years to keep a condom in the pocket, the boy or girl keeps a condom. And the reaction was simple in case you need it you must have it. But in case you don't need it you might give it to a friend who might be desperately in need it of it (applause). And as a result it was like a cool thing to keep a condom. It was a new culture and it actually assisted quite a lot. I always say to our children now, last week, a few weeks back a premier in our province was talking about teenage pregnancies at school and recorded in our province about 5 000 who were pregnant every year. I can tell you now as a doctor it's far more difficult to fall pregnant than to get an infection, because the infection does(n't) rely on a particular cycle of the month. To a greater extend many young people they get involved in unprotected sex and hit or miss  not get pregnant, but the infection can settle in the first time and the only time there is sexual exposure. And therefore it's an issue that is important for us to deal with as society in general.

Having said so, I was aware that there was quite a lot of strain between TAC and government, and I said to some of the members I hoped we could bury that as a chapter of the past. So that some of the energies that were spent fighting and criticizing each other, sometimes quite excessively to quite close and personal levels, which I think are things that in a society like ours, there are ways we could avoid that. I believe that our committee also, our role is to assist, to ensure that we don't have those kinds of rough encounters, but instead we can reorganize all our energies, to focus on the things we can make together as partners acting against a common enemy. That for me is what I believe is important, hence therefore, when I said in the beginning it is quite inspiring to see so many young people. Young people, one good thing about them is that they have got energy. Half the time they don't quite know what to do with it, but when they decide to do something with it they put their energies into it. Now, I get very envious to see so much energy that is spent when we are actually fighting amongst each other, instead of actually fighting together against a common problem. Which I quite believe that if we are to work together we would be much closer to defeating that when we are actually scattered.  It is an important issue to me to say to this house that a vision is a lot more powerful than any force that you can have. Therefore, for looking forward, into the future of an AIDS free generation, looking forward to a future where anyone who is infected get live a long life with the virus, I think that's a good and powerful vision for us to invest our energies on. Now I am saying so because I can see most of you with all the slogans. A lot of you were part of that whole liberation struggle that we invested a lot of lives and energies on. Last week we buried one of my friends and comrades,  comrade (Nozizwe unclear)... you know which one. One of the things that I said was striking, this comrade we were working with for the past 24 years. Now you can imagine how young I was then, and he was even younger than me, and I looked around and I said, you know looking at the ages at which this comrade was, that - all of us were prepared to die, we didn't even care, we wanted this new South Africa and this democracy here, and be prepared to fight and to defy anything, irrespective of what risk and dangers came, but I said, you know, I wonder what we would have done if I was a father of a child that age and seen that determination to fight. It is a frightening thing, and I am saying that I can see that you have got the amount of energy  that we can do a lot with as a country. May we then invest it in dealing with the issues that we can change in our communities, in society. The issue of the attitudes towards people who are HIV positive they need to change, they need to be changed so that everybody must understand.

There is a lady, I am not sure whether she is here, or where she is. There is a lady, her name is Mercy, so of you know that early days of the fight against HIV. I got terribly embarrassed. She went with me to address a church organisation in Darconia, now those of you in KZN would know that there is a very conscious leadership of the church who a present. And she told the whole story of what had happened to herm her husband and the children and she was left with one child, and one lady, it was the end, and she just said "oh, um, it's such a sad thing you know, you've got the virus, what is going to happen to your child?" And then of course, the way that she had answered the question I was quite embarrassed and if it was my meeting I would have ruled her out of order, but of course this lady just stood up and gave an answer which was very instructive to me. She said "you know, my son is eleven years old, I have told him that I am HIV positive and I have told him what happened to his father and his sister and I have told him everything, what to expect and how to prevent it. You see, I no longer worry about him, I think he know enough to take care of himself. What I worry about is when my son meets your daughter who is HIV negative and she therefore has not been prepared and has not been told anything and who meets my son who would have done everything to stay safe, and just because your daughter has not been informed, then again my son contracts the infection, that will be the saddest part."

That is why I always say that the problem of HIV infection is a lot more a problem of people that are HIV negative than for those who are positive. Because if you are positive you are very conscious of what you are going through. If you are negative you think that you will never be positive. That is the challenge of the problem that we have to deal with in society and it is a lot more of a problem because the numbers of HIV positive people is increasing, simply because more of the people who are HIV negative are turning positive, and yet they are aware that people are positive. It is a challenge that we have to deal with, and I am simply saying that I hope that within the process of your discussion you will find a way of how we can network and strengthen the fight at the local level so that we can deal with those who believe that the problem of HIV is somewhere that side, the other side of the hill and not infecting them, because at this stage nobody is free from being affected by the infection, whatever we may think, but there is no way now that we can turn around it. And I think that this is no longer an issue that requires a very philosophical approach, it is a straight forward issue. From the point of view of government  we want to increase the resources available, at least increasing the number s of people who are on treatment. We have also, as you are aware, agreed as governments point of view on the point of improving the treatment, the prevention, medication for prevention of mother to child transmission. I do know that there was quite a lot of discomfort about some of the things that have happened around it. But I think that we have found ways of ensuring that those can be dealt with in such a way that slowly we can get everybody to get ready to actually dispense the medication as it is now scientifically proven that it is necessary to do so. And therefore as we move forward we hope that we will find mechanisms to reduce all the tensions and reduce any need for antagonistic kinds of relationships and bring us to a point where we will move forward as one army attacking one enemy.

With that we wish you everything of the best and we look forward to the conclusions of you deliberations. Siyabonga (we thank you).