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Ex-leaders endorse Aids project
28/09/2002 16:57 - (SA)
Darren Schuettler
Johannesburg - With movie stars in tow, former US President Bill Clinton swept into Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg on Saturday to join Nelson Mandela and a band of giddy teenagers in the fight against Aids.
The two retired statesmen dazzled about 1 000 young people crammed into a community centre in the township, where they stressed the need for safe sex and HIV prevention among young people worldwide.
"I am here today because I want young people to take responsibility for themselves and turn the tide against HIV," Clinton said.
"The HIV/Aids problem is the most heartbreaking problem in the world because nobody has to die."
Africa is the hardest-hit continent, with 28 million of the 40 million people worldwide infected by human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Aids).
South Africa is the country with the highest number of people living with the disease. One in nine people, or 4.8 million of the 43 million population, are infected - and that will at least double within 10 years under current rates of infection.
More than 40 percent of the population is younger than 15 and mostly still not sexually active.
"You young people and every single one of us have a personal responsibility to protect ourselves and those we love from HIV," Mandela told the crowd. "HIV doesn't just happen like getting a cold; it's a consequence of unsafe sex," he added.
Mandela said Aids was "an even heavier and greater fight" than apartheid.
Clinton and Mandela were attending a ceremony to help unveil a new partnership between the Nelson Mandela Foundation and loveLife, an HIV prevention programme for youth.
LoveLife uses innovative and provocative billboard advertising and youth-focused radio and television spots to convey its safe-sex message to teenagers.
Hollywood comes to Orange Farm
Amid deafening cheers, the two former leaders entered like rock stars, arm in arm to American hip-hop music - prompting one local VIP to complain there were "no South African tunes".
The teenagers roared in approval when Hollywood actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker waved to the audience, and a beaming Spacey snapped pictures of the crowd with his digital camera.
Clinton, dressed in a blue jacket and tie, wrapped his arm around Mandela as they waited to speak. Mandela's daughter Zinzi introduced Clinton as America's first "African President".
Both men touched on the issue of Aids drugs, an emotive subject in South Africa because the government has refused to provide antiretroviral drugs through state hospitals.
"We have not done enough to demand leaders like me to give the people the medicine and the care, the treatment they need," Clinton said to loud cheers.
Mandela is a critic of President Thabo Mbeki's refusal to supply the drugs, because of cost and safety concerns, and his reluctance to prescribe them to limit mother-to-child transmissions of the virus.
Mandela cited figures from a soon-to-be-released survey of HIV-affected households that showed fewer that 16 percent had access to available government grants, and just 20 percent were getting any kind of assistance in home care for Aids patients.
"This situation will not be allowed to stand," Mandela said.
But he praised companies in the private and public sectors that have agreed to supply drugs to thousands of their workers and their families and said other firms had no excuse not to do the same.
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