The 10th Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates took place in Berlin on 10 and November in conjunction with celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall.  One of the highlights of the Summit was the presentation to the singer Annie Lennox of a special award for the work that she is doing to combat AIDS in South Africa and to help AIDS victims.  Annie Lennox presented a heart-wrenching video that she had made of the reality of AIDS in South Africa: emaciated bodies; faces scarred by lesions; dismal funerals; pinewood coffins with string handles.  She also showed what could be achieved with well-directed AIDS programmes.  For a brief moment, in a far-off corner of the world, opinion was focused on South Africa’s dominant tragedy.

Earlier that day I had watched the Sky News coverage of the funerals of six British servicemen who had been killed in Afghanistan the previous week.   There were photos of each of the victims and extensive interviews with their grieving families.  Their deaths brought the number of British troops who had died in the war to 229 - each of them covered by the media, each of them mourned by the nation.

The same week 5 000 people died of AIDS in South Africa.  There were no reports in the media and no interviews with grieving relatives.  AIDS deaths are no longer news - because 5 000 people have been dying each and every week since the beginning of this decade.  And yet each death is a tragedy.  Each death brings with it suffering and pain - not only for the victim but for the children, parents, brothers, sisters and friends that they leave behind.

Our problem is that we have lost all sense of the scale of the disaster that is afflicting our country.  More people die of AIDS every 18 days than were killed in the South African armed forces during six years of the Second World War.  More people die of AIDS every thirty-five days than were killed in political violence and conflict in the 34 years between 1960 and 1994.  We have already lost more than 2.4 million people in the nine years since 2 000 - compared with 491 000 that Britain lost in World War II.

Why has there not been the same degree of national mobilisation that we witnessed in South Africa, Britain and other countries that we saw during WWII?  The threat and the loss of life is far greater.  Why have we not mobilised every sinew of our resources to combat the enemy that is already within our gates?

On 30 November 2000, F W de Klerk made the following plea to a conference in Lagos, Nigeria:
“We know what causes AIDS.  We know how to stop it from spreading. We know how to protect our children and ourselves. We must spread the message of how we can defeat AIDS in all our communication.  We must discuss it in our homes and in our schools.  We must spread the message in our places of work and when we get together for recreation.   It must be sung in our songs and depicted in our paintings; it must be whispered into the ears of lovers; it must be shouted by children to one another in their games; it must be written on our walls and in our books. Only if we are all totally committed to this struggle will we succeed.   

“We must show the compassion of Africa to those who become the victims of AIDS – either those who themselves succumb to the disease and to the millions of orphans who will be left in its wake.   Where possible we must alleviate the symptoms and prevent the spreading of AIDS by making anti-retroviral drugs available to those who suffer from the disease and particularly to pregnant mothers.    We must ease the passing of the dying and ensure that they leave us and their families with dignity and with as little suffering as possible.   We must harness the spirit of ubuntu to open our hearts, our homes and our communities to the millions of AIDS orphans.  We must not allow them to grow up unloved and uncared for in the streets or in impersonal institutions.”

That was nine years - and 2.4 million lives - ago.  According to StatsSA there are 1.6 million people suffering from AIDS who require anti-retroviral therapy - but only 870 000 are receiving it.  Another 3.5 million are HIV positive.  There are 1.9 million children who have lost one, or both, parents to AIDS.  One in every five women between the ages of 15 and 49 is HIV positive.  Unless they receive treatment they will die within ten years of contracting the disease - which now accounts for 43% of all deaths in South Africa.   

We need the kind of national mobilization that countries like Britain and the United States mounted in World War II.  Annie Lennox is mobilized: she cares and is working tirelessly to help AIDS victims:  Shouldn’t we all be doing the same?

Issued by FW de Klerk Foundation