Death and a Funeral
By Melissa Meyer
4 September 2009 | AIDS Denialsm | Healthcare | AIDS Politics
The newly appointed Minister of Home Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s public grieving over the suicide of a young man who took his own life after the Department of Home Affairs refused to issue him with an ID, has made for truly moving copy this week.
The sincerity of her actions aside, considerable credit is due to the minister for her level of involvement. At a time when some cabinet members are alienating themselves from the general population, splurging government funds on luxury cars, Dlamini-Zuma has shown her ability to identify with ordinary citizens when she attended Skhumbuzo Mhlongo’s funeral.
But there is something disconcerting about this ministerial display of empathy. If only Dlamini-Zuma had been this moved by the deaths of the many South Africans who perished from AIDS-related illnesses under her watch as Minister of Health, the South African epidemic may have taken a much less dramatic toll.
Opportunities for her to show empathy and bereavement in this context have certainly not been lacking. During her tenure as health minister from 1994 to 1999 there were more than 180 000 AIDS related funerals at which she could have announced:
“He was a sacrifice, but how many more do we have to bury before we can turn around this department and make it what is expected of it? Why do we have to meet under such circumstances before we can say something has to be done?”
And yet she only uttered these pensive, crucial words this week, at the funeral of Mhlongo. Regrettably, the department she was referring to was the Department of Home Affairs, not Health.
According to a 2006 study, the cumulative AIDS death toll rose from 10 133 in 1994 to 194 620 in 1999. As then Minister of Health, Dlamini-Zuma could choose from over a hundred funerals a day to give a tearful “never-again” speech of this nature.
Yet the minister was quiet. And the press, whilst dutifully taking the government to task for its bewildering policy and treatment lethargy, only rarely spoke about the death and the dying. There were no dramatic headlines with last words from the deceased or captivating photos of a crying minister that drew public attention to these deaths.
The health system failed these people the same way the Department of Home Affairs failed Mhlongo, yet they were never declared “a hero” in the struggle against AIDS the way he was made out to be a hero in the struggle for an Identity Document.
Whilst the minister’s tears this week may have been moving, her emphatic display was too little, too late.
