“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” The famous speech by John F Kennedy sums up exactly what I believe every single South African should be asking themselves right now.
However, as a lowly journalist/writer opportunities to change the world are seemingly few and far between. As I’m sure the John Pilgers of this world will tell you, writing and hoping that your prose will inspire some people to stop what they’re doing or others to start doing what they should be doing is hard work: telling the world about the atrocities happening on the other side of the conflict in Afghanistan doesn’t mean that those atrocities are actually going to stop.
Writing for 46664 (Nelson Mandela’s HIV/AIDS charity), however, means that at least you’re trying to make a difference.
In South Africa one in seven adults in infected with HIV, while according to an article on health-e, of every 1-million children born in South Africa 300 000 are at risk of contracting HIV from their mothers, despite the availability of drugs which help to limit the spread of HIV from mother to child. HIV/AIDS is a global disease; it is, as the 46664-commissioned play Khululeka spells out, “a democratic disease”. If you’re sexually active you’re at risk and if you engage in risky sexual practices, unprotected sex, or multiple partners there is a significant chance that you will contract HIV. HIV/AIDS is still an incurable disease and despite massive advances in care and anti-retroviral treatment (ART) people still die as a result of the disease. Take Thembi Ngubane, for example.
“Writing for 46664 means that even if I’m not speaking to the people most affected by the disease, I’m at least helping to raise awareness of it. And that’s the point: helping to change perceptions and providing good reasons to protect yourself.”
It’s for these reasons that the work of 46664 is so important, from the concerts 46664 holds to raise awareness to the Sis’ Lebo functionality built into the website to answer personal questions about sex, love and HIV/AIDS. Through this work, 46664 is trying to halt the spread of the disease on a global scale.
Writing for 46664 means that even if I’m not speaking to the people most affected by the disease, I’m at least helping to raise awareness of it. And that’s the point: helping to change perceptions and providing good reasons to protect yourself.
I may never change the world by writing for 46664, but the hope that I may change one person’s life because of what I’ve written makes me keep writing.