Remembering Jason Wessenaar-Moloatsi
I heard the news that Jason Wessenaar-Moloatsi had been killed when I was sitting with a group of friends at my home in Pretoria around the middle of December 2011. One of his best friends called me to say that Jason had been stabbed to death in his home, under circumstances which are still not clear. Our gathering, all of whom knew Jason in one way or another, was shocked into silence. I could not believe it and felt numbness and disbelief. I called some others, received one or two shocked calls and went to bed feeling empty and flat. It was only the next day that sadness arrived, and on a number of occasions that day I experienced bouts of crying and grief.
Over the next few days many calls followed, Facebook buzzed with disbelief, shock and sadness, and I called Jason’s friend Sheila Wise in the US to tell her what I knew. The last time I had visited Jason at his home had been earlier in 2011 when Sheila was visiting – we had a rollicking evening of fun, laughter, drink and food. Understandably, Sheila was bewildered and unable, too, to make sense of what had happened to Jason.
Jason was not Jason when I first met him as a skinny kid from Soweto who was volunteering in the field of HIV. He was also not HIV positive then (or if he was he didn’t know or was not open about it), when I was already working in a Hillbrow HIV programme, but his passion and enthusiasm for life, and an interest in getting stuck in, was already evident. He went by the name David then, and over the years he reverted to one of his other born names, Jason, and then subsequently added Moloatsi, from his mother’s side, to his surname. While the motivation for these changes was never revealed to me, it seems that they mirrored an inner journey of exploration, a desire to find an identity, purpose and place in a society which was not only homophobic and stigmatising of people living with HIV, but which challenged all South Africans around questions of roots, identity and belonging.
So we were friends for many years, and I watched Jason grow into a media star, taking on a key role in the Siyayinqoba - Beat It! series with aplomb. Other jobs and portfolios were added to his considerable array of talents and ventures. He worked with GNP+, and local PLHIV organisations, he contributed to many aspects of stigma work, he was a gay rights activist and more recently he worked for JHPIEGO in a programme which promoted HIV testing and awareness in the workplace. As a young, gay, confident black man who was out about being HIV positive, Jason’s contribution to building a more inclusive South Africa cannot be underestimated. For many people, he symbolised hope, survival, success and self assurance. He had truly transcended internalised stigma.
Jason’s association with the CSA was during an important phase of the organisation’s growth, and he came into our space to consolidate the work of the stigma-focused project, Siyam’kela. His contribution was extremely important and he brought an urgency and focus to the centre’s work with people who were living with HIV, or affected in some way. Always willing to step out of the limits of a job description, Jason brought energy, passion and a dogged sense of purpose to his work here. He made a profound impression on everyone, even if his enthusiasm sometimes saw him rub some people up the wrong way. Prickly and proud at times, and I saw these as important defences against being exploited, Jason always won people over with his warmth, kindness, broad and toothy smile, and sense of humour. He loved music and was always playing it in his office – I remember when Brenda Fassie died he was devastated, perhaps seeing in her something of himself, a survivor who refused to conform to anyone else’s expectations. Even after he had moved to JHPIEGO, the CSA continued to work with Jason, teaming up with him in our work with justice-sector stakeholders to promote openness, tolerance and a deeper appreciation of life as a person with HIV in South Africa. And we at the CSA certainly appreciated Jason, and he continued many of his friendships and connections he started here long after he left. Many staff members were devastated to hear about his death.
In love, Jason was not as successful as he would have liked, but there was always enough to go around for his friends and family. He truly cared about people, and if he was on your side, then you got his 100% support. In everything he did, a zest and love for life was evident. I remember seeing Jason at a gay pride fair in Johannesburg in October 2011 and I took a few pictures of him with my new camera. One of the best one’s is the one that accompanies this tribute and it seems to sum Jason up: jaunty, funny, warm, cheeky, alive! Jason will be missed by all who cared for and loved him – he was unforgettable in life and will be unforgettable in death.
The 5th Durban AIDS Conference – a reflection
It is now 30 years since AIDS-defining illnesses were identified in gay men in the United States and it is 11 years since the first international AIDS conference was held in Durban. Both these milestones deserve a reflection at the conclusion of the 5th South African AIDS conference in Durban on Friday.
The discovery of a new disease, first called Gay-Related Immune Deficiency because the gay community was first vulnerable to HIV in the west, led not only to personal despair and community fear, it was also accompanied by very high levels of social shame and internalised blame. In the 16 years until a combination of anti-HIV drugs was found to prolong life and empty hospices, many, many people died, lives of friends and caregivers were profoundly changed, and the epidemic took on the dimensions of a genocide. As it became clear that AIDS was a world-wide phenomenon, and our continent bore a heavy burden of disease and death, it seemed that the only way to frame this was in the language of hopelessness and loss.
Yet as combination anti-retroviral therapy (ART) began to change this picture, South Africa became embroiled in a new battle, where the link between HIV and AIDS was challenged, the efficacy of ART was questioned, and AIDS programmers scrambled to continue their work without formal blessing from the state. This was a dark time for South Africa’s AIDS establishment, and the state had to be forced, through legal interventions, to provide drugs to prevent maternal transmission of HIV to babies, and ultimately to roll out what has become the largest ART programme in the world.
The conference in Durban in 2000 marked turning point, because even though the then president was dabbling in dissidence and his presidential panel of “experts” from the dissident and orthodox camp were given the impossible task of trying to reconcile completely divergent points of view, a young boy with AIDS, Nkosi Johnson, gave a moving speech to remind delegates that AIDS was not abstract, but real. And scientist after scientist chipped away at doubts about the HIV-AIDS link, and activists, policymakers and clinicians began to form a broad alliance.
Today, there is a unique consensus between government and civil society about AIDS plans, programmes and policies. The current minister of health has won support across many sectors and there is urgency, political will and funding for AIDS work.
But as the latest Durban conference has shown, there are still vestiges of the past in the way we talk about AIDS. Of course an HIV diagnosis, even in the context of excellent treatment, is still traumatic and life changing. Yes there has been an extraordinary disease burden in South Africa, and even today many people go undiagnosed and untreated. And it is still true to say that stigma, shame and silence are common.
But without glossing over these challenges, or disrespecting the hurdles many people, often the poor and less resourced, face every day in relation to AIDS, it is also possible to find a new language that can shift the debates and reconfigure how we frame the epidemic.
In short, AIDS has the power to reveal the fault lines in society, providing us with insights into problematic gender power relations, our discomfort with sexuality and people who have different sexual orientations and practices, the shortcomings and possibilities of the health care system, the way that our social glue has become unstuck, and the stark differences in access to power and resources between poorer and more well off communities.
Using these insights to re-engineer the health care system, invigorate the education sector, rebuild the stability of communities, and challenge hypocrisy at personal, social and political levels means that AIDS is also about possibility and change. Rather than focusing only on the tragedy of AIDS, as tragic as aspects of it still are, it is possible to see how it has enabled us to have new and interesting conversations about the kind of South Africa we are trying to build.
This article was first published in the Sunday Tribune on 12 June 2011.
