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Rudolph, the HIV+ reindeer
08/12/2004 08:12 - (SA)
For columnists around the world, Christmas is a time of extra good cheer. It's the time to write those silly columns that any columnist worth his salt can trundle out effortlessly.
About how much you hate hot food on a blistering summer's day, or how difficult it is to buy presents for women. Or about how men shop on Christmas eve, generally at a service station shop, and women shop the day after Christmas at the big sales, so they'll have stuff ready for NEXT Christmas.
It's easy stuff, and you've read it all before. And readers are very nice to columnists at Christmas time.
You never complain when columnists rehash this rubbish, because, hey, it's Christmas, and you're about to go on leave anyway.
Or maybe you treat these columns like "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer" and all the supermarket Christmas songs. Horribly irritating, but complaining about them is part of the joy of Christmas.
And for this I thank you, and I'm joined by my thousands of fellow columnists around the world. Well, the ones in the Christian-capitalist countries, obviously, not the ones in Saudi Arabia or China.
Today was going to be my Christmas column day, my little treat to myself for 26 weeks of having to wrack my brain for subject matter to entertain, enthral, and enrage you lot out there on the other side of this monitor. Alas. It was not to be.
This week in the news
There are just too many funny topics to write about this week. Like the Ugandan cardinal who has directed school chaplains to register virgin students who have promised to abstain from sex before marriage.
Or Die Burger's headline for the ongoing expose on The Unnatural Mating Habits of British Royals, which is something like: "Harry vry op strand." For our overseas readers, that translates as "Harry runs free on beach." (Ek's te skaam om die korrekte vertaling neer te pen.)
But blue blood isn't the cream of the news crop this week, it's red blood that dominates our headlines. Or rather, black blood.
Basically, the scandal is that the SA National Blood Service uses racial categories to establish the safety of blood. White blood good, black blood bad, to over-simplify.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang says this "smacks of racism", and would like them to eliminate this way of doing things. If they do, say the SANBS, the rate of HIV infections will go from one to two per year to "hundreds".
Several commentators have pointed out how odd it is that you can use race to determine affirmative action candidates, but not to control the safety of blood. Why is the one racist, but the other not?
Most South Africans have no problem with being unsuccessful at a job application because they're white. We're paying for history, and affirmative action is necessary to bring society back to an even keel.
So why should anyone object to the fact that the evils of South African history necessitate using race as a category in determining the safety of blood?
The fact that a black job applicant is preferred to a white one doesn't imply a pejorative judgement on the white person. And you'd think that the same logic would apply to donating blood.
It's not that simple, of course. For example, I hate the fact that in Britain, if a Briton has been lucky enough to have sex with a South African, he or she cannot donate blood for a year after the last sexual encounter.
Doesn't that irritate you? In fact, it seems that people from Africa aren't allowed to donate blood at all in America or Europe.
How much worse is it, then, to be excluded from showing that you're a good citizen, just because you happen to be black?
Still, as empathetic as we want to be here, the acid test is - if Manto Tshabalala-Msimang happened to be in a car crash, and was given the choice of blood that had undergone stringent safety checks, or blood that was politically correct, which would she choose? You're right, it was a trick question: the answer is Garlic.
And now to perform my writing magic, and to bring this column to a resounding conclusion, tying together Christmas, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, and blood transfusion. Tsk. It's easy.
During the holiday season, hundreds of people are going to celebrate the birth of Christ by crucifying themselves on the steering wheel of their car. We're going to need blood. Don't let this scandal stop you from donating blood. Rudolph would want you to.
Chris Roper is A+, tra, lala, lala la la.
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See Chris's previous columns on his blog The World.
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