AIDS, ETHICS AND SOCIETY IN AFRICA:
EXPLORING THE LIMITS OF AN ETHICS OF SUSPICION
http://aidsmyth.addr.com/articles/Katongole.htm
Emmanuel M Katongole
Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi.

INTRODUCTION: ETHICS AND SOCIETY

It is becoming increasingly clear that discussions surrounding the status of HIV/Aids cannot be isolated from, and in fact, often do end up invoking a wider discussion concerning the politics, economics and science of origin, discovery and determination of HIV/Aids status. Such discussions however, cannot themselves make sense if they do not, in the final analysis, invoke or lead to a discussion of the ethical implications associated with HIV/Aids. We must be aware from the very start of the wider conception of ethics at stake here. For, quite often discussions of ethics are dominated by questions and/or debates about what is right and wrong, say concerning sex and or/condom use. And so, it is generally assumed that ethics is primarily a prescriptive discipline, whose objective is to set guidelines for what is right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable by society in general, communities or groups of individuals.

Whereas ethics no doubt contributes to clarifying the above questions, we need to move beyond these narrow ethical concerns, and engage a discussion concerning the sort of people that we become as we make particular decisions and choices, even as these are a response to the crises, anxieties and tensions within our day to day life struggles. What this means is that ethics is not just about the decisions and actions we perform, but the sort of people we become through our decisions and actions. For, without question, the choices and decisions we make, the anxieties we face, the expectations we hold, the fears we bear and the actions we perform do not leave us unchanged, but gradually shape us or help us to become individuals and communities characterized by particular dispositions and identity. In other words, there is something like the ‘moral character’ of individuals and of societies, which is constantly being shaped through our actions, fears, anxieties, hopes — in a word, through our concrete agency in the world. But if this is the case, then the task of ethics is more determinedly descriptive or narrative. This is not just in the sense of telling stories, but in the critical sense of offering interpretative frameworks and descriptions that help us to understand and critically assess the sort of people we are becoming through our actions.

Surviving Aids: ‘What Sort of People Are We Becoming?’

The argument I develop in this paper is fairly simple. For the last 20 years or so we in Africa have increasingly come under an Aids blanket. To date, everybody in Africa is either infected with or affected by Aids. We have tried to comprehend its magnitude as well as its uncertain origins and modes of transmission. We have tried to absorb its fear and as well cope with or survive its deadly seriousness. What sort of people have we become, or are we becoming in the process? What sort of resistance have we built up? What sort of negotiations have we been forced to make, not just in the understanding of sex, but in the way we look at ourselves, at others and at our relations with others?

I suggest that one important effect of the Aids blanket over Africa is that it has succeeded in making us Africans highly suspicious people. But since society is built on the key virtue of trust, then Aids continues to undermine the very fabric of our societies. This I consider is going to be one of the very lasting legacies of the Aids pandemic in Africa. For, even long after Aids has been wiped off the face of the globe, we shall find ourselves struggling to cope with the playful nihilism and cynicism generated by the suspicions surrounding Aids. I develop the argument in three parts. In part One, I argue that the Aids pandemic is succeeding in pushing the suspicion of the West by Africans to its radical extreme. I do this by showing how due to the Aids pandemic (especially in the uncertain conclusions about its origin, the science of its determination, and the claimed advantages or spurious promotion of the condom), the suspicion of the West which in the past used to be the reserve of a limited group of African intellectuals is increasingly becoming a cultural pattern for many Africans. But suspicion, just like cynicism soon or later turns onto itself. This is the argument I develop in the Second Section by showing, using the transformation within the understanding of sex as a paradigm, how the radical suspicion generated by Aids gnaws at the very core of our self-understanding, and thus threatens the basic trust on which our individual and societal existence is based. In the last Section I show how the current spate of condomization is both an expression of, and response to, this suspicion but which in effect transforms all of us into free-floating postmodern individuals, lacking any serious commitments and attachments, but driven by forms of nihilistic playfulfulness.

I. THE WEST AND AFRICA

a. Salvation Comes from the West: an Intellectual Suspicion

When it comes to looking for the origin of viruses and new diseases (HIV, Ebola, White Nile Fever etc), Western imagination seems to quickly or immediately turn to Africa. The reason might be related to the fact that from around the 15th Century onwards when the West began to exercise a dominant influence and control over Africa, the standard images have continued to depict Africa as a ‘Dark and Savage continent ravaged either by disease, warfare, famine, and untamed instinct. The German philosopher Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of History) would accordingly easily dismiss Africa as the "land of childhood which, lying beyond the day of self-conscious history," is devoid of any positive manifestation of history, culture or Spirit, but remains tragically "enveloped in the dark mantle of the night." Any positive development on the continent must therefore, in the view of the West, be accounted for in terms of outside influence in general, Western influence in particular. Salvation for and in Africa must (and has) always come from the West whether in various forms of ‘Discovery’, or respectively under the aegis of Evangelization, Civilization, Development etc..

More recently the Congoleese scholar Valery Mudimbe has shown how these standard image of Africa as a ‘Dark’, Pagan, Primitive, Savage or Undeveloped continent are in fact a construction, an ‘invention’ by the West, meant in great part to bolster the West’s own self-understanding as a Christian, Developed, Civilized continent. His work is collaborated by others (McGrane), and is finding more echoes in the growing circle of post-liberal, post-modern or post-colonial African scholars. These have increasingly come to suspect that behind what has hitherto passed as objective disciplines of Theology, Philosophy, Anthropology, Sociology, and even Science lies various Western interests through which the West has continued to exercise control over the economic, political and intellectual heritage of the non-Western societies in general, Africa in particular.

To be sure, such suspicion may just have recently become widespread, but it is not completely new within the circles of African scholars/intellectuals. Among the latter, there has always been a lurking suspicion that the descriptions and categories which the West employs in talking about Africa are misleading at best, outright racist at worst. Such suspicion would over time amount, on the part of these African intellectuals, to an increasing mistrust not only of the human sciences, but also of Western inspired ideals of ‘Civilization’, ‘Enlightenment’, ‘Progress’ and even ‘Christianity’.

Genuine as its concerns were, this limited group of African scholars was for a long time unable to exercise any significant persuasive power within intellectual circles, and could not accordingly effect any marked cultural patterns. On the contrary, given the hegemony which Western intellectual disciplines and ideals of civilization continued to enjoy, the limited group of African scholars who questioned it could very easily be dismissed both by the West and their African counterparts in the orthodox as either eccentric, extreme, Marxist, and/or disfranchised scholars. Intellectuals after all (many of us would be warned if we asked too many questions in the classroom ... "Do not waste our time"), tend to suffer from an acquired hallucination syndrome which predisposes them to see ghosts where there are none. This meant that for the rest, the average African continued to have a quasi-religious faith and trust in Western intellectual disciplines of Theology, anthropology, philosophy, sociology and science, as well as Western institutions, ideals and goodwill for Africa. After all, the education system, the social and economic infrastructure, as well as the humanitarian and religious interventions on the continent all seemed to depend and presume this trust and conviction that if we did as the West did and/or told us, our own societies would be transformed into developed and rich societies.

b. AIDS and its Origin: Signs of a Growing Suspicion of the West

With the incidence of Aids however, the picture has rapidly changed, especially as there still remains lots of unanswered questions concerning the origin, determination, status and possible causes of HIV/Aids. Concerning the origin of HIV/Aids for instance, although as a matter of scientific evidence, Aids was first described among homosexual men in the United States, it is not clear why over the years, ‘orthodox’ scientific opinion has increasingly focused on the deep forests of Africa as the origin of HIV/Aids. No doubt this ‘orthodox’ view has increasingly become controversial even within the scientific community, as more and more ‘dissident’ scientists have shown how the evidence about te African origin of Aids is at best inconclusive, at most mere science fiction, motivated by a racist ideology. More recently, President Thabo Mbeki’s has rightly questioned the determination of HIV/Aids incidence in Africa which so narrowly focuses on ‘viral infection’ and overlooks the wider economic and political and general health conditions in Africa. No doubt Mbeki’s views tend to be dismissed as ‘irresponsible’ utterances by a leader who should know better. In fact, in the wake of increasing ‘dissident’ voices, there has been a tendency by ‘orthodox’ scientists to dismiss any further questions concerning the origin and/or determination of HIV/Aids as ‘idle speculation’ whose effect is to distract from the more urgent challenge of controlling the spread of the HIV/Aids.

Call it whatever you wish, the ‘idle speculation’ has not only gone on, but it has greatly captured the imagination of many Africans, who are hardest hit by the Aids epidemic. Could it be that Aids was that HIV/Aids was the result of some vaccination experiments in Africa? Or even perhaps the result of some scientific conspiracy against unsuspecting Africans? For many, even the coincidence between homosexuals, drug addicts and Africans (include Hippies and Jews and you will have the full ‘hate’ list of Hitler’s Nazi machinery) as the groups most affected by HIV/Aids lends itself to high speculation.

One may dismiss these suspicions as unfounded and/or unscientific, but these are, in principle, suspicions about science itself and its claimed objectivity, and about the intentions and goodwill of the West over Africa. In other words, Aids has helped to push the suspicion of the West by Africans to new extremes, spilling over into the general culture what used to be the reserve of a limited group of intellectuals. Already in the discussions leading to and following the 1994 UN Cairo Conference on Population and Development, even ordinary Africans were very distrustful of the main premises (and intentions) on which the Conference was based, namely that the poverty of the so called Third World, Africa in particular was due in great part to the growing population (high fertility rates) of these countries. If these countries could limit the size of their families, so it was argued, not only would the income of the families, the general development of the Third world would ensue. In short, the U.S led coalition of Western/Developed countries sought to empower women in the developing countries with ‘Reproductive Rights’ which would allow them the right to determine (control) the number of children they produced. If the Third World in general ‘resisted’ the drift of this conference it was not just because of the force of Islamic and Catholic fundamentalism (the two groups most accused of sabotaging the conference), but because they rightly suspected the conference as an attempt by the West/Developed countries to avoid confronting issues of economic justice. Exactly the point Thabo Mbeki is raising in the case of Aids: ‘Please do attempt not de-economize, or de-politicize the issues’.

But perhaps the distrust was no more obvious than the 1997/1988 Polio vaccination campaigns. It was amazing to see a number of mothers in Uganda for instance, and I suspect in a number of other African countries, stubbornly refusing to take their children for the free vaccination against polio. Behind such explicit resistance by which many mothers intentionally hid their children away from vaccination centers, one can detect a distrust of not just Western (UNO) inspired vaccinations, but of the ‘generosity’ and/or Western humanitarian concern in general. For, to many it was not clear why polio would receive so much ‘funding’ and publicity, when in fact, polio was not, by many African mothers’ reckoning, a real threat to the health of their babies. Suppose similar attention and funding were to be directed to the control of malaria or measles, and the improvement of nutrition, sanitation and the general health within Africa, what would be the total effect? And how would that affect the incidence of Aids? In the wake of suspicions associated with the Aids pandemic, these are not ‘idle speculations’, but indicate how the distrust of Western science, of the intentions of Western humanitarian intervention, and of the goodwill of the West toward Africa in general has been pushed to its extreme. I suspect that this distrust will become even more widespread as a result of increasing marginalization of the rural poor in the wake of economic globalization. So much for the dreams of cementing international cooperation, indeed of building a global society.

II. SEX, AIDS AND SUSPICION: ON LOVING ‘CAREFULLY’

It might as well be that as human beings we need a certain measure of suspicion as part of the practical wisdom of everyday life and survival. The challenge of course is to ensure that such suspicion is kept within moral bounds, or as Aristotle would say, is part of an enduring disposition or character which allows the individual to direct the suspicion to the right object and in the right manner. However, cut loose from these moral limits, suspicion easily turns into cynicism, which is the self-justifying and chronic distrust of the good intentions of others and of one’s own intentions. Such cynicism is not only self-justifying, it gnaws at the core of one’s individual and societal existence. This is exactly what I see happening to us in Africa in the wake of the suspicions surrounding Aids. Accordingly, one of the lasting legacies of the Aids blanket over Africa will be its capacity to undermine the trust which is the basis and fabric of social existence. For, it might be that even long after HIV/Aids has been eradicated off the face of the globe, we shall continue to experience the distrust and cynicism generated by the Aids pandemic. That such radical suspicion is already upon us, is evident from the transformations within our understanding and management of our sexual relations and partners.

a. Sex and/as Total Trust

Under normal circumstances, sex is both an expression of and involves total trust. For, after all sex is not just the pleasure of the groin. It is communication of love and the feeling of total trust. For, in that naked embrace we call love-making, what is communicated between the partners is not just sparks and fluids but the helplessness of surrender, total-self-giving, and total trust. In here lies both the depth and vulnerability of conjugal friendship or love, which makes marriage not just a community based on trust, but the epitome of all communities.

b. Sex and Aids: From ‘Love Faithfully’ to ‘Love Carefully’

With the Aids pandemic, such total trust has increasingly become strained. This is already obvious in the transformation within the publicity/awareness campaigns meant to warn the general public of the dangers of Aids. I remember in the early 80's when, at least in Uganda, billboards warning against the spread of HIV infection carried the picture of what was obviously a married couple with their three young children, and bore the caption: ‘Love Faithfully to Avoid Aids’. This recommendation was soon replaced by the Uganda Aids Commission with what was seen to be a more potent picture: two young lovers in embrace, with the caption: : ‘Love Carefully’. What the Uganda Aids Commission might not have realized, but what in fact it was confirming was the realization that with Aids even lovers cannot (or is it, should not) trust each other fully (love faithfully), but must learn the art of loving ‘carefully’, that is, suspiciously. Apparently it did not take a long time to realize that such ‘careful’ love involves regarding the partner as potential danger from which one had to ‘protect’ oneself. Thus, by mid 90s the captions had changed again, this time from ‘Love Carefully’ to ‘Use a Condom’ to Avoid Aids.

c. Sex, Aids and Radical Suspicion: the Consolations of the Condom

What is evident is that the change in the pictures and captions is not just about the adoption of new and perhaps more adequate strategies to fight against Aids, but reflects an ongoing (de)evaluation of the depth of the trust and commitment necessary to sustain sexual relations in particular, society in general. Viewed in this manner, the last recommendation to ‘Use a Condom’ is at once an expression of, and a way of managing the radical suspicion which has already instituted itself at the core of conjugal friendship.

To be sure, there seems to be much more at stake in the aggressive way in which condom use - as a way to save Africa from the of Aids pandemic is promoted, particularly in Africa. It might as well be that such ‘condomization’ is just another clever way of covering up the suspicion and cynicism that is already upon us. However, to the extent that this is the case, then condomization is not just about a strategy against Aids, but the promotion of a culture of nihilistic playfulness.

III. CONDOMIZATION AND/AS NIHILISTIC PLAYFULNESS

a. Condomization and Its Many Faces.

Elsewhere I have argued that condomization seems to be an appropriate metaphor for the incursion of postmodern culture in Africa. At present the word ‘condom’ seems to be if not the most popular, certainly one of most currently used word in many African countries. A ten year old boy or girl in many African countries will be able to tell you the names of at least five different brands of condoms: Protector, Life Guard .... these are the subject of endless commercials on the many FM radio TV stations, and on the billboards towns and along highways in the countryside. In many African countries, condoms are readily available everywhere. They are sold in supermarkets, by hawkers on the street, on makeshift candle-light stalls in the suburbs where they are placed next to ready-to-go meals; in the countryside, the single-shelf kiosks may run out of sugar and paraffin, but not of their supply of condoms, clearly displayed.

The issue of course is not whether condoms do or do not protect against the spread of AIDS, even though one may question the validity of some of the statistics that are often cited as a confirmation of the success of this anti-Aids drive. The issue is not even the narrow ethical concern of whether it is right or wrong to use a condom; and certainly not whether condom use is sanctioned by God, or a clear violation of God's will. The issue is about the sort of culture which "condomization" promotes, and the sort of people we become as a result.

(i) Disposability: One reason why the use of condoms is so popular, I suspect, is their disposability, which makes condoms just another item of the same consumer culture of coca-cola cans, disposable diapers, and throw-away shaving sticks. Such disposability, however, fits quite well with the postmodern culture which announces itself as a culture of endless ‘progress’ without any stable or permanent base. Disposability, not simply of goods, but of relationships and particular attachments of any kind, is the hallmark of postmodern society. If this is the case, then "condomization" is not just about the convenience of disposable condoms, but more importantly it is about the popularization of a certain form of sexual activity, i.e., one detached from any serious attachment or stable commitment. In other words, condomization encourages one to view sex, and one’s sex partner(s) as essentially disposable, while at the same time parading such lack of attachment as a high mark of freedom and accomplishment.

(ii) Freedom. "Condomization" thus seems to promote a misleading view of freedom, namely that freedom comes naturally and without training. Straight Talk programs which are currently in vogue in many African countries, bombard their young audiences with the message that they have a right to decide if and when (or not) they are to have sex, as long as they make sure that sex is "safe" or protected (by the condom). Behind such recommendations is the assumption that young people are naturally capable of making the right choices as long as they have the relevant facts (which Straight Talk is meant to provide). Of course, the real target of these recommendations are those family, Church or tribal traditions which insist that freedom does not come naturally, but is a result of training into the relevant virtues of chastity, fidelity and self-control. Now, by summarily undermining the requirement for training as both archaic and authoritarian, Straight Talk encourages young people to believe that one can be free simply by making the right (informed) choices. This not only helps to undermine the authority of the traditional institutions of the family, tribe or church, but also creates free-floating individuals who easily become prey to their own whimsical needs and choices.

(iii) Feels Good (Protector) Playfulness. A lot can also be said about the playfulness that "condomization" promotes. This not only has to do with the promotion of sex as play, but also the way in which the playfulness is detached not just from any stable relationship, but from any meaningful form of material or economic production. Is it not amazing that the most popular images associated with condom commercials are: baggy jeans, coca-cola, rap music, and a pale skin -- not the images of an "ordinary" African life? Behind such images of course is the promotion of a certain "it feels good" culture, typical of American MTV. One wonders, however, whether we in Africa can afford the playfulness of such "it feels good" culture, which in the West is not only made possible by the economic infrastructure of advanced capitalism, but also masks the deep frustration and nihilism within postmodern affluence.

To put the issue bluntly, sex, not even protected (‘condomized’) sex will save Africa. On the contrary, the argument here has been an attempt to show that behind the condomization of Africa lies the promotion of a deeper set of practices (call it a certain politics) whose effect (goal?) is to transform Africans into free-floating individuals, incapable of any deep attachments, but who are characterized by a certain superficial feeling and playfulness. To the extent that we are becoming/have become such individuals, we lose not only the possibility of locating ourselves within any meaningful material economic practices and history, but even more crucially, we become increasingly prey to the manipulations and misrepresentations of the media and market forces.

No doubt such condomization is not only a response to, but tends to perpetuate itself into a culture of cynicism and nihilism, which however has learnt to mask its frustration through forms of superficial ‘feeling good’ playfulness. It may not be a long shot to see a connection between this form of nihilistic playfulness and the various forms of desperate violence with many countries in Africa. Such violence may just be an indication that the extreme form of cynicism namely, fatalism is, for many Africans, just around the corner.

The ethical challenge and task ahead us is enormous -- to realistically confront, indeed to survive, the cynicism, nay playful nihilism generated by the Aids blanket over Africa. If condomization is about transforming us into playful individuals without any sense of attachment or commitment, I suggest that our best hope of survival lies in the the opposite direction of "condomization", i.e., in the ability to find appropriate re-location within some forms of community which are able to build up forms of resistance against cynicism. More than ever, there is great need on the part of our leaders for the conscious construction and dissemination of positive images and aspirations through which we as Africans can recapture a sense of dignity and worth. Of course, the success of this re-imaging greatly depends, just like much else, on the creation and availability of chances for meaningful economic activity through which Africans can direct their aspirations and energies.