Oh, Africa

Brad Plumer, who I suspect has a severe case of racing brain syndrome as incurable as my own, describes Helen Epstein’s article God and the Fight Against AIDS in the New York Review of Books as “one of the most fascinating—and horrifying—things” he’s read in awhile. I totally agree with his assessment.

The struggle against the unyielding AIDS crisis in Africa is being crippled by religion—and religious people who want their slice of the $1 billion pie of US funding earmarked for abstinence-only AIDS prevention programs in Africa. Evangelical Christians in America were hardly concerned about the AIDS crisis until recently; indeed, many of them welcomed it in its earliest stages as the wrath of God, seeking to rid the world of sexual deviants—a turn of heavenly events that seemed to justify the hatred against homosexuals and sexually revolutionized feminists which had been their stock in trade for years. Then came the serendipitous confluence of an evangelical Christian revival in Africa, as African men sought to control increasingly independent women, on whose shoulders the problems of Africa was squarely placed, and the pledge of a new American president, a born again American president, to earmark funding for abstinence-only programs. The opportunistic among American evangelicals saw the AIDS crisis in Africa as an unprecedented missionary opportunity and a possible payday to boot. In the end, neither God nor money is helping stem the tide of AIDS infections in Africa.

Condoms alone aren’t the answer, either, but they are a better answer than abstinence-only. The best solution, however, is best represented by a campaign developed in Uganda by Ugandans themselves, who better understand the unique social constructs of their sexual culture (shared by much of the continent), including both informal and formal polygamy—a tradition which will not be eradicated, is uniquely troublesome in terms of halting the spread of infectious diseases, and cannot be adequately addressed with either abstinence-only or safe-sex only programs alone. Why has this program been abandoned? Well, it certainly wasn’t funding the work of any American or other western groups who were sure that they had the best ideas for Africa, so it was summarily abandoned. Bringing it back is now not an option, as it definitely doesn’t appeal to American evangelicals, including our president, who hold the funding on which they depend and would prefer not to acknowledge that even the godly born-agains in Africa, pious counterparts in the cradle of civilization, aren’t, in fact, free from the sins of the flesh. As it turns out, the compulsion to denounce the depravity of others whilst carrying on the same purportedly condemnable activities behind closed doors is hardly a uniquely American trait. From here, through Africa, straight to the ends of the Earth, there is simply no shortage of those who are willing to sacrifice the lives of those addicted to their snake oil, inveigling each lost soul in need of an answer to live the kind of life they are not willing—or able—to live themselves.