- Email: [email protected]
Tapologo
Media Watch
Film Tapologo For more on Tapologo see www.tapologofilm.com For more on the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival see www.hrw.org/iff
Tapologo has its UK premiere at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, London on March 21, 2009, with a further screening on March 22. There’s something post-apocalyptic about the Freedom Park Squatter Camp in South Africa’s Northwest Province; 10 000–20 000 people living in prefabricated huts with no running water. Women are strongly advised not to venture out after dark. One resident tells of how a 2-year-old child died after being raped by her father; she says that such abuse is not uncommon. Half of the camp’s women are infected with HIV. The squatter camps were born out of greed, explains Joe, the Irish co-founder of the Tapologo Education Programme. The operators of Rustenburg’s platinum mines discovered that individuals who “lived-out” made more efficient employees. They started to offer a living-out allowance of between 500–1000 rand. R100 pays for the tin shack, 100 covers food, and a third 100 pays for a sex worker. The miner would even have a little cash left over for beer. Platinum, incidentally, currently sells at US$1045 (R10 356) per ounce. Gabriela and Sally Gutierrez Dewar’s punchy, if occasionally meandering, documentary Tapologo is split into two parts. The first focuses on Freedom Park, broadly setting the camp within the historical and social circumstances that renders South Africa’s AIDS pandemic particularly intractable. Poverty, misogyny, and ignorance are neither peculiar to South Africa nor more pronounced than in other African nations, but apartheid did help to entrench a culture in which black women were dependent on men. Besides, pandemics can be self-perpetuating: children whose parents have died (or are dying) from AIDS-related illnesses will often have to look after younger siblings. Those
without legal documentation can find it difficult to access state assistance. In these circumstances, females of all ages frequently fall victim to exploitation. “The only way to get help from a man”, notes one of the film’s participants, “is to sleep with that man, so that he might give you the money”. As for protection: “if he gives me R3000 cash, I can’t use the condom”, she says simply, “I take the 3000 and I take the virus too”. The issue is succinctly addressed in the second part of the film, which follows the efforts of the community-led care worker network established in Freedom Park to minister to those with HIV. Thembi—a home-based care-worker, herself HIV positive—outlines the situation for women in the camp: without a “boyfriend” there is no shelter, no food, and no water, “so you must do that [find a boyfriend] every day”. The care-worker organisation was set up by the women of Freedom Park. The care-working system quickly gathered momentum. Today, they operate ten clinics and a hospice, and administer antiretroviral therapy. Previously, young children had been attending to sick parents. “People had been dying on the floor”, recalls Georgina, director of the ARV programme. A Catholic community—of which Joe is a member— also offers support, as does the unorthodox Bishop of Rustenburg, Kevin Dowling. According to Dowling the Catholic church is in danger of becoming irrelevant. Abstinence, at best, is a naïve and implausible aim for the women of Freedom Park; at worst, the Church’s stand heaps blame and guilt onto those whose shoulders already bear crushing burdens. “The Church has got to change its position so that condoms can be used effectively in all Church programmes”, contends Dowling, “and I firmly hold to this stance even though it is against the official stance”. Although it does brush up against the overarching issues of South Africa’s fight against HIV/AIDS, Tapologo remains securely fastened to Freedom Park. A few interviews with policymakers and the operators of the mines would not have gone amiss, adding context and pushing the discussion towards the vital question of who should assume moral responsibility for the inhabitants of the sprawling camp. Still, as a portrait of poverty, an exploration of how hope can flicker and flare in the most desperate of circumstances, Tapologo works extremely well. Outside one of the platinum mines stands a billboard. “Be careful”, it reads, “it is hell to be a cripple”. True enough, but those who live in the squatter camps need more from the authorities than cautionary words.
Talha Burki [email protected]
218
www.thelancet.com/infection Vol 9 April 2009
Film Tapologo For more on Tapologo see www.tapologofilm.com For more on the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival see www.hrw.org/iff
Tapologo has its UK premiere at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, London on March 21, 2009, with a further screening on March 22. There’s something post-apocalyptic about the Freedom Park Squatter Camp in South Africa’s Northwest Province; 10 000–20 000 people living in prefabricated huts with no running water. Women are strongly advised not to venture out after dark. One resident tells of how a 2-year-old child died after being raped by her father; she says that such abuse is not uncommon. Half of the camp’s women are infected with HIV. The squatter camps were born out of greed, explains Joe, the Irish co-founder of the Tapologo Education Programme. The operators of Rustenburg’s platinum mines discovered that individuals who “lived-out” made more efficient employees. They started to offer a living-out allowance of between 500–1000 rand. R100 pays for the tin shack, 100 covers food, and a third 100 pays for a sex worker. The miner would even have a little cash left over for beer. Platinum, incidentally, currently sells at US$1045 (R10 356) per ounce. Gabriela and Sally Gutierrez Dewar’s punchy, if occasionally meandering, documentary Tapologo is split into two parts. The first focuses on Freedom Park, broadly setting the camp within the historical and social circumstances that renders South Africa’s AIDS pandemic particularly intractable. Poverty, misogyny, and ignorance are neither peculiar to South Africa nor more pronounced than in other African nations, but apartheid did help to entrench a culture in which black women were dependent on men. Besides, pandemics can be self-perpetuating: children whose parents have died (or are dying) from AIDS-related illnesses will often have to look after younger siblings. Those
without legal documentation can find it difficult to access state assistance. In these circumstances, females of all ages frequently fall victim to exploitation. “The only way to get help from a man”, notes one of the film’s participants, “is to sleep with that man, so that he might give you the money”. As for protection: “if he gives me R3000 cash, I can’t use the condom”, she says simply, “I take the 3000 and I take the virus too”. The issue is succinctly addressed in the second part of the film, which follows the efforts of the community-led care worker network established in Freedom Park to minister to those with HIV. Thembi—a home-based care-worker, herself HIV positive—outlines the situation for women in the camp: without a “boyfriend” there is no shelter, no food, and no water, “so you must do that [find a boyfriend] every day”. The care-worker organisation was set up by the women of Freedom Park. The care-working system quickly gathered momentum. Today, they operate ten clinics and a hospice, and administer antiretroviral therapy. Previously, young children had been attending to sick parents. “People had been dying on the floor”, recalls Georgina, director of the ARV programme. A Catholic community—of which Joe is a member— also offers support, as does the unorthodox Bishop of Rustenburg, Kevin Dowling. According to Dowling the Catholic church is in danger of becoming irrelevant. Abstinence, at best, is a naïve and implausible aim for the women of Freedom Park; at worst, the Church’s stand heaps blame and guilt onto those whose shoulders already bear crushing burdens. “The Church has got to change its position so that condoms can be used effectively in all Church programmes”, contends Dowling, “and I firmly hold to this stance even though it is against the official stance”. Although it does brush up against the overarching issues of South Africa’s fight against HIV/AIDS, Tapologo remains securely fastened to Freedom Park. A few interviews with policymakers and the operators of the mines would not have gone amiss, adding context and pushing the discussion towards the vital question of who should assume moral responsibility for the inhabitants of the sprawling camp. Still, as a portrait of poverty, an exploration of how hope can flicker and flare in the most desperate of circumstances, Tapologo works extremely well. Outside one of the platinum mines stands a billboard. “Be careful”, it reads, “it is hell to be a cripple”. True enough, but those who live in the squatter camps need more from the authorities than cautionary words.
Talha Burki [email protected]
218
www.thelancet.com/infection Vol 9 April 2009