Title of the book: LOVE IN TIMES OF AIDS
Author: Dr. Mark Hunter: Assistant Professor of Social Sciences/Geography at the University of Toronto.
Publisher: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press
Reviewer: Bhekisisa Stalin Mncube
AIDS transmission: UBUFEBE (MULTIPLE SEXUAL PARTNERS) HIERARCHY IN SOUTH AFRICA
LOVE in the times of AIDS is a valuable ethnography of the Mandeni, a peri-urban people in the northern part of the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The city epitomizes the devastation wrought by the aftermath of HIV/AIDS. According to 2008 HIV/AIDS prevalence figures, 39% of women tested positive for HIV in KwaZulu-Natal. There are still no perceptible changes to the stats since then.
The book presents arguments for why the AIDS epidemic emerged so quickly in South Africa. It combines ethnography and history to illuminate the deep connections between political economy and intimacy, a broader term than sex that broadens the analysis to fertility, love, marriage, and genital pleasure.
The book lays bare the devastation of families wrought by HIV/AIDS amid disintegrating communities fueled in part by rising unemployment, poverty and hopelessness. This book is a powerful manuscript that offers a glimpse of that twilight zone between courage and fear; love and death; and hope in the mist of despair. The story is deeply harrowing; however, one finds solace in its powerful narrative, scholarly analysis, and engaging manner that includes the author’s personal anecdotes about his time at Mandeni.
Mark Hunter spent more than five years living and working in an informal settlement in Mandeni. As part of the in-depth study of him: Hunter conducted interviews, surveys, collected love letters, cell phone text messages, oral histories, and archival materials. This allowed Hunter to detail the daily lives and emotions of those infected and affected by the virulent epidemic. In the process, he learned the IsiZulu language and developed a deep understanding of its nuances: thus, he used over a hundred IsiZulu words to express the emotion and cultural significance of the words spoken by his subjects in a way that offers them dignity while enriching the reader’s experience.
The central argument of the book: AIDS is a social problem that is rooted in uneven development, skewed allocation of resources, rapid urbanization, housing accumulation in emerging cities, apartheid urban design, rising levels of unemployment and poverty. Hunter argues that to explain the rapid rise in HIV prevalence in South Africa, we must note that intimacy, especially what he calls the materiality of everyday sex, has become a key junction between production and social reproduction in today’s era of chronic unemployment and capital-driven globalization. In other words, as unemployment has cast a cruel but uneven shadow over the country, certain aspects of privacy have come to play a more central and material role in the “meaty, messy, indeterminate things of everyday life.” Through the study of Hunter’s history and his training as a geographer, he is able to draw a link to how first apartheid and then chronic unemployment have become entangled with ideas about femininity, masculinity, love and sex that have created a sharing economy (death cocktail) that perpetuates the transmission of HIV/AIDS.
It tells us strongly that the drivers of the epidemic are deeply rooted in the fault lines of society, and it is these fault lines that need to be addressed. Hunter suggests that AIDS is a symptom of all the evils rooted in colonialism and apartheid that have not been transformed since the dawn of democracy in 1994. It is an indictment against the new South Africa, 16 years after its birth.
To explain the connection between political economy and intimacy—what I call: the ubufebe hierarchy of multiple sexual partners—Hunter’s study reveals shocking antics of both men and women in Mandeni. She talks about the classification of multiple lovers: a main boyfriend/girlfriend is known as heterosexual. The heterosexual sometimes has the right to have sex (no prior HIV test required) without a condom and that right extends less to ishende (secret lover) and, or, isidikiselo (secondary lover).
Another fascinating finding in Hunter’s fieldwork is the special role of sugar daddies (traditionally men who sleep with younger girls). He describes these girls’ relationship with sugar daddies as more than just “casual” or “secondary,” but as providers of material support. One of Hunter’s interviewees explains: When he comes to me, he’ll ask me if I’m involved. So I will tell him that I am single or in a relationship with someone and he will be second. So I will not tell the third that he is the third; I will say that he is number two. In this hierarchy of ubufebe (referring to the sexually relaxed woman; or Isoka lamanyala for a man), each man is tied to specific expenses (eg, “one for money, food, and rent” or “ministers of finance, transportation, and entertainment). On the other hand, some boys may provide sex with men for material rewards. Urbanization of women, chronic housing shortages, and unemployment to seamlessly fuel AIDS transmission.
To this end, Love in the Time of AIDS offers an outlet for expression, contemplation, and a deep understanding of the failures in the transmission of AIDS. It is also a moving obituary to those who succumbed to the virus while former South African President Thabo Mbeki wavered. This book is a model for authorities to understand AIDS beyond the biomedical approach: AIDS as a social problem. The book is a must read for policy makers, AIDS activists, and all those who care about the future of our country.
REVIEWER’S NOTE: All material facts have been verified by the author.
Bhekisisa Mncube is an independent media consultant based in South Africa.