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The good, the bad and the ugly: A highly personal view of AIDS in the media in Southern Africa
Mercedes Sayagues
Extracted from: Osisa - Openspace - The Media: expression and freedom
December 2006

http://www.osisa.org/node/7460

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"Have you had sex with this lady?" screamed the headline splashed across a newspaper in Botswana. The photograph showed a woman in a short skirt, a souvenir from happier times, in 1994, before getting sick, "when she was sexually active", said the caption. She told the reporter that she was dying of AIDS - one of the first Motswana to be open about being HIV+. The story - far more sensitive than its title - was published one week after her death.

That was a few years ago. Both the headline and the caption are a microcosm of how the media reported AIDS then: horror, stigma and death. And sex. Commercial sex. Secret sex. Illegal sex. Same-sex sex. Death through sex. Today, Beata Kasale, the journalist who wrote the article, is the publisher of a weekly in Gaborone, a consultant and a media trainer specialised on - surprise, surprise - HIV and AIDS. Kasale works with the newsrooms of the daily newspaper Mmegi and of Botswana TV and Radio to produce better stories on AIDS, TB and malaria. She is a trainer with Maisha Yetu (Our Lives, in Kiswahili), a project to improve health reporting in Africa. She teaches reporters how to spot prejudice and stigma in their copy; to diversify sources, instead of being fixated on government officials, and to seek the voices of HIV+ people. Like Kasale, the media in Southern Africa has come a long way in reporting AIDS.

Hits and misses

There are, however, big differences in the region. Countries with old epidemics, like Zambia and Zimbabwe, have been dealing with AIDS for 15 years. Their coverage reflects a familiarity with the topic, an adequate grasp of issues, and a sense of the magnitude of the problem. In other countries, AIDS is a newer issue. In Angola, with a younger epidemic, AIDS emerged as a topic only after the civil war ended in 2001. The coverage reflects this. In many stories there is a whiff of complacency, even gloating: at four per cent, our HIV prevalence is much lower than our neighbors, we are so lucky. Another trait is passing the blame to others for spreading the virus. It is the Congolese traders, the returnees from Zambia, the peacekeepers from Zimbabwe, the European gay aid workers, the sex workers, the oil workers, anybody but ordinary Angolans. An example from a story about AIDS in Moxico province, bordering Zambia and the DRC reads: "There is plenty of movement of Angolan refugees coming home and immigrants from DRC into Angola. This fact explains why Moxico has one of the highest HIV rates of infection." Besides being inaccurate
(the border zones with Namibia have the highest infection rates), the statement is biased against foreigners and refugees. AIDS belongs to "the other."

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