“I think World AIDS Day is a really curious event,” said Mary Crewe, former founding director of the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS & Gender at the University of Pretoria (UP) during the centre’s commemoration of World AIDS Day on 1 December. “It’s a very important event. It’s a lovely day. It’s a day of reflection and action. However, I’ve worked in the field for 30 years, and I can say in truth that I remember none of them.”

“In a time of reflection, we can look back and think: ‘Did any of these calls to action make a difference? Were communities, states, funders and politicians inspired by them? And I think the brutal answer is ‘no’,” she added. “It was a rallying cry for a day, a month, and then forgotten, rather like the 16 Days of Activism.”

The lunchtime event at the centre was a collaboration with UP’s Employee Wellbeing Programme, the UP Archive and the Centre for Human Rights.

Crewe quoted from the Human Sciences Research Council’s recently released report, which stated that the percentage of people living with HIV in South Africa has decreased from 14% in 2017 to 12.7% in 2022, presenting a drop of about 7.9 million to 7.8 million people. The report stated this was “significant progress toward the UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets:  that by 2025, 95% of all people living with HIV should be aware of their HIV status, 95% of those should be aware of their status to be on antiretroviral treatment (ART), and 95% of those on ART who also know that that they are living with HIV should achieve viral load suppression”. 

Crewe was less impressed.

“Millions of rands later, hundreds of programmes later, many NGOs and school-based interventions later, working with young people and key populations, and we manage a 2% decrease. We have failed in our imaginations. For me, a report like this with those kinds of figures would be the biggest reason to think that what we are doing is wrong, not that what we are doing is to be commended.

“The really depressing part is that we go on doing more of the same. Yet again, we hear programmes that are to be targeted and geo-specific five-year plans. What does that mean? What we’ve learned in our work here at the University is that the results of our work only really started to show up after 10 years, maybe after 15 years.

“How on earth is it possible that after 40 years, we do not have a different story about HIV and AIDS in South Africa?”

Pierre Brouard, Acting Director of the centre, said he agreed with Crewe’s comment that a world without risk is a dead world. Building on Crewe’s ideas that we need to ask new questions, construct new narratives and acknowledge the complexity of human life, he said: “You have been a risk-taker and I really admire that about you.”

Professor Sandy Africa, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, to which the centre is affiliated, said: “We must be reminded today that globally in 2022, an estimated 1.3 million people were newly infected with the disease.”

The centre was kitted out for the occasion. Photocopies of anonymous, colourful paper prayers adorned one wall. Inspired by the Japanese custom of offering decorated strips of paper to loved ones in times of ill health, these were part of a project that the Johannesburg Art Gallery initiated in 1995, later becoming an official fundraiser for people living with HIV. 

UP Archives created posters outlining the work of the centre, as well as quotes from people at UP, such as “More needs to be done to remove HIV/AIDS shame and discourage individuals from maintaining and protecting themselves or others who can pass as secret carriers of HIV/AIDS” – Ruth Mampane, Department of Educational Psychology.

Music student Abigail Coetzee kick-started the event with some tranquil sounds on the keyboard. The Foundation for Professional Development supplied the documentary The President Needs More Time, which features South African and global activists. There was a white board on which one could write comments to be added to the archives, and a timeline of projects was displayed on the centre’s interior steps. Below a large beaded red AIDS ribbon, a large pile of books on offer, published by the centre’s Just Gender partnership with the Embassy of Ireland, noticeably decreased as attendees took copies.

Prof Karen Harris of the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies and Dr Bronwyn Strydom and colleagues at the UP Archive curated the exhibition.

Besides the visual display endorsing the centre’s work, Crewe said UP had provided a haven and a laboratory to try out ideas and “get people to tell you things where it was absolutely safe”.

Prof Frans Viljoen, Director of UP’s Centre for Human Rights, said it had created a sense of solidarity for the many different disciplines at UP working on HIV/AIDS. The centre represented part of the transition of the University from a conservative institution to a more compassionate one, and had helped “solidify the move away from a medicalised understanding of HIV to a much more socially embedded one”.

Prof Charlene Carbonatto of the Department of Social Work and Criminology spoke about “mainstreaming HIV on campus”. She said the centre had given her the opportunity to participate by giving staff workshops so they could see opportunities to build the subject into their modules and make students “HIV-ready” for their personal and post-university professional lives.

Abongile Mcoteli of UP’s Employee Wellbeing Programme concluded the event with a poem, attributed to an unknown monk, about how changing the world starts by changing oneself.

“As the UP community, let us start making the changes ourselves to challenge the stigma that is surrounding HIV,” she added. “If we challenge the stigma at a personal level, then we can influence our family members and those people within our close community. As the small community changes, we are part of a global community, and little by little, we will deal with the stigma, and we will somehow, whatever it needs to defeat HIV and AIDS, we will somehow defeat it.”