From: Nathan Geffen [ngeffen@cs.uct.ac.za]
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2000 5:04 PM
To: list@tac.org.za
Subject: Treatment Action Campaign: Urgent Press Release

Importance: High

Urgent Press Release August 23, 2000: From the Treatment Action Campaign

MOURN MPHO MOTLOUNG! 
CHANGE HIV/AIDS MESSAGES TO SHOW HOPE NOW! 
FALSE MESSAGES INCREASE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN! 

On Monday night, August 21, 2000 A young teacher and wife, Mpho Motloung (25) was shot through her head in Meadowlands, Soweto. On her body was a note written in brown paper with the words: "HIV Positive Aids". Next to her was her mother, also dead. Her father is in a critical condition in Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. In the next room was her husband, Singer Motloung—dead. According to the police, the husband, also a teacher killed his wife, her mother and himself. 
Gugu Dlamini was murdered in December 1998 because she was open about her HIV status. Tragically, on the same day as Mpho Motloung was murdered the SAPS failed to turn up at the Gugu Dlamini inquest in Durban and they did not subpoena the witnesses that the state needed. The inquest has been postponed to December 2000. Is the message sent to the public one that says the state sanctions murder against people with HIV/AIDS because of its inaction? 
Now with the Motloung tragedy, government needs to show more than a lukewarm commitment to the lives of women with HIV/AIDS. A community will grieve, pupils have lost two teachers and an entire family has been disrupted through murder and sucide. Why? Reports indicate that the couple had both tested positive for HIV recently. No-one will ever know why Singer Motloung murdered Mpho and then committed suicide. But the words on her body are a clue. Everywhere we go, we hear: "HIV/AIDS is a death sentence" or worse, "There is no cure—education and prevention is the only protection". 
From these primitive HIV/AIDS messages, millions of people learn fear, hopelessness, loneliness and anger. These messages promote fear and anger that result in prejudice, discrimination and violence against people with HIV/AIDS. Government messages fail to tell the millions of people living with HIV that it is possible to live fully and productively for many years. They don’t explain to people with HIV how to live healthily or that opportunistic infections like TB can be prevented and cured. Above all, they ignore the fact that millions of lives could be saved if people with HIV/AIDS had access to treatment with anti-retroviral drugs. 
In countries with affordable medicines and strong governmental commitment to provide care for people with HIV/AIDS, this disease has become a condition that can be managed and survived.
The depressing messages – "HIV is a death-sentence. There is no cure. Prevention is the only cure" -- also add to the burdens of inequality and violence faced by women. Men often blame women for the transmission of virus. Counsellors across the country report abuse and violence against women based on such blaming. This is the burden of the Dlamini and Motloung families and women throughout our country. TAC extends its condolences to the families of Mpho and her husband Singer. They died needlessly.
TAC calls on 
* all civil society organisations to join the campaigns against violence against women and children; 
* immediate action against the SAPS failure to investigate the murder of Gugu Dlamini. 
* government and health care professionals to change their HIV/AIDS messages to include people with HIV and to promote affordable and quality treatment rather than the myth that "HIV/AIDS is a death sentence"; 
* government to dramatically increase its budget to provide safer sex options to women including femidoms and increased research money for microbicides; 
all men to accept personal responsibility for safer sex including the use of a condom; 
* supporting the right to reproductive choices for women and men with HIV that will also allow them to have healthy children—this includes implementing a national programme to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child; and 
government and health care professionals to ensure that all women with HIV are treated for their condition and that their rights to dignity and privacy are respected.
Government, health care professionals, and all men must accept the challenge to end the violence against women and to stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Issued by TAC: August 23, 2000
(text by Zackie Achmat)

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