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The fourth estate

By Willemien Brümmer

It’s strange how our hypotheses never seem to work out the way we planned. And how inherent judgments about the world always find a way to sneak into the stories we construct. So called fourth estate journalism is certainly not exempt from this.

The story I constructed in my head about men and HIV starts about five years ago when I conducted in depth interviews with ten women at the paediatric HIV service based at the Groote Schuur hospital.

Most of these women talked and easily shared intimate details about their families and how the virus had changed almost every aspect of their lives. They spoke to me about love, abuse, loss and death. But what I remember most vividly is that most of them were single mothers who would do almost anything to keep themselves and their families alive.