South African Organization Goes Door-to-Door to Talk About AIDS Prevention
SESAY: Welcome back. Former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma is to resume his duties with the African National Congress. This after he was cleared of rape charges earlier this month. But during his trial, he acknowledged having sex with an HIV-positive woman, and then showering in a misguided attempt to prevent infection. That misinformation has caused some AIDS activists to work even harder to provide the real facts about prevention. CNN's Alphonso Van Marsh reports.</s>ALPHONSO VAN MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ouma Rampou is a foot soldier in South Africa's fight against HIV/AIDS. Rampou and her orange shirt-wearing colleagues go door to door, teaching the country's poor and underserved about AIDS and other diseases.</s>OUMA RAMPOU, KHOMANANI COMM. ACTION PROGRAM: It becomes easier as you speak to a person face to face, and it becomes easier because we use the language they understand.</s>VAN MARSH: Rampou works for Khomanani, the government's HIV prevention and communications campaign. The goal is to educate and in the process counter-criticism over South Africa's handling of its AIDS crisis: (on camera): South Africa has one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalent rates in the world. And while the world on HIV is out there, government feels that in rural communities like these they can do more to stop the spread of the disease.</s>VAN MARSH: In this township, talking publicly about sex and HIV can be taboo. That's why the recent death of a Khomanani community activist here hits particularly hard. Rampou not only mourned the lost of a friend, she mourned the loss of a colleague who helped Khomanani reach out to nearly 2 million people in the last year. Rampou says it's difficult to find people who are willing to fight on the frontlines against HIV/AIDS. So she hopes this government health clinic will help Khomanani reach more people. It offers testing, counseling and nutritional advice. The clinic also treats people for everything from arthritis to the common cold. The lines are long, and dependable workers are in short supply.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Today we're there, and we can see (inaudible) only four. That is why the lines are so slow and they cannot help a lot of people.</s>VAN MARSH: The patients who need treatment for HIV/AIDS, they may not find it here. The day I visited the clinic, there were no life-preserving antiretroviral drugs. Even the condom dispenser is empty. Rampou says the clinic may not be perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. Meanwhile, she and her foot soldiers will continue to pound the pavement and deliver potentially life-saving information to those who fear leaving home to get it. Alphonso Van Marsh, CNN, Parais (ph), South Africa.</s>SESAY: Each year, the sportswear company Reebok gives out human rights awards to young people advocating for their own countries. This year, Otto Saki, a 25-year old human rights lawyer from Zimbabwe was among the recipients. He received the award earlier this week in the United States, and I spoke with him about his work with the group Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights. We began by talking about the situation in his homeland.</s>OTTO SAKI, ZIMBABWEAN LAWYER: I think with the economic collapse, the political and the social strife, it has really become a challenge for the ordinary citizenry to sort of fend for themselves and have a normal life, worth of human -- which is a dignified life. It is very much difficult. There are so many issues that they have to struggle on a day-to-day basis to provide for their (inaudible), to provide for their family, and to even send their children to school.</s>SESAY: Explain to us how you came to be involved in human rights activism.</s>SAKI: Well, I think it was - it became - it came about as a result for the quest to see a dignified Zimbabwe, after realizing that what we were going through was more or less a reverse of the gains that were so called - the gains of the liberation struggle, where we thought that we were now independent and had majority rule.</s>SESAY: And what specifically do you do?</s>SAKI: With the human rights defenders, we've been trying to offer emergency legal services to activists, (inaudible) activists, women's group, student rights and trade unions, insomuch as we provide them with the legal cover that they need. Most of the time, they do get arrested, they're detained, they're shuttled from one police station to the other. So that's what - that's what I specifically do as a lawyer in Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights.</s>SESAY: You're working with people who are themselves on the frontline. What are the challenges you face in this job?</s>SAKI: Sometimes you - you face - you come to a situation where you feel that you've reached the extent where the law can no longer be useful. Where, for instance, you - you get to a police stations -- we hear so many lawyers reporting that to us -- that they report to a police station, trying to seek audience possibly with the officer in charge or to render assistance to their clients, and they're chased away from that police station. You get instances where you get court orders, favorable court orders. They're defied by police officers; some of them using the most unheard of excuses, such as that I cannot read a court order or something like that. Or I listen to political, not judicial orders. Those are the difficulties that lawyers do face on a day-to-day basis, and chances are some of them do get targeted individually. They're targeted in the government-controlled papers. They're criticized day in, day out.</s>SESAY: The Zimbabwean government made the headlines once again last year for a campaign against people living in shantytowns. You've been fighting with thousands of families that were affected by Operation Murambatsvina. Tell me about your - your role in this battle.</s>SAKI: When it became - began a year ago on the 17th of May 2005, there were many reasons that were thrown in the public media, the state- controlled media, why the government had embarked on such an operation. One of the reasons was that they wanted to rid the country of criminal elements, and they even said of maggots. So, we - we found ourselves in a situation where our government and the leadership, for that matter, comparing those that are of a lower status in economic-wise to being filth, to being rubbish, you know, and (inaudible) in our vernacular means human waste. So, it was more or less like trying to fight the crime of poverty. That was their only crime. It is - it was quite - quite a challenge for us, because we didn't have the numbers to respond adequately to what was happening. We're talking about 700,000 people being directly affected. We're talking about 2.4 million people that were indirectly affected. And this was a country- wide scale operation, which targeted areas that they deemed to be illegal, squatter camps or shantytowns, to which we still believe and hold strongly that they were not. For in many of the instances, these people were properly legal entities and entitled to the various structures that they were staying in.</s>SESAY: Would you like to see more overt international pressure placed on the Zimbabwean government?</s>SAKI: What we want is to see institutions, such as the African Union, having a more proactive approach to issues in Zimbabwe. We're going to see countries such as South Africa speaking out more clearly rather than this so-called quiet diplomacy, which is not being diplomatic at all.</s>SESAY: Otto Saki. Unfortunately, there we must leave it. We're out of time. Apologies for that. But I want to thank you so much for joining us today on INSIDE AFRICA. And once again, to congratulate you on the Reebok human rights award.</s>SAKI: Thank you so much.</s>SESAY: Otto Sake with Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights there. There's more to come on INSIDE AFRICA. Just ahead, more on Zimbabwe. A play performed abroad that examines the notorious leader of that nation.