Photo voices

On World AIDS Day today, I’m posting the images and words of a few people who speak for themselves.

The photos below are from the exhibit Photo-Voice: HIV and AIDS Education for Young People in Africa, presented by UNESCO and the Virginio Bruni Tedeschi Foundation. The photos in Photo-Voice were taken by young people, parents and teachers from Angola, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland.

The photographers focused on two themes: students and teachers affected by HIV and AIDS, and young people, sexuality and HIV.

Here are a few of the photos, along with captions written by the photographer who took each picture. (Photos are courtesy of UNESCO.)


© UNESCO/SWANNEPHA, Welile, female student, Swaziland - This is my teacher, she is also HIV positive, like me. She made my life easier by disclosing her status to us in class. She has restored my self esteem. I just love her. She is my pillar.

 

© UNESCO/SWANNEPHA, Kehtsiwe, 14 years old, female student, Swaziland - I am living with HIV and have been on antiretroviral treatment since 2002. I got sick early in my childhood. At school I faced challenges of being stigmatised and discriminated against by my teacher. She told other children not to play with me and also told me in the face that she was ‘tired of teaching a sick child’. I confronted her and told her that I could not change the situation. She then accepted my situation and wrote a note to apologise to my mother. I pray that other children never get to experience such injustice. I aspire to be surgeon; I already perform operations on frogs.

© UNESCO/RNP+ Angola, Cristovao, 14 years old, male student, Angola - My parents and two of my brothers are HIV positive. Very soon, as a result of their condition, our income started to decrease and I went to study at community school. HIV and AIDS is taught and openly discussed in schools managed by NGOs which have specific activities, but now that I am in public school I don’t hear about HIV and AIDS anymore, with the exception of the biology teacher... It would be good for schools (from primary schools to universities) to speak not only about HIV and AIDS but also about other sexually transmitted diseases. I would like to join a group of activists in my school in to fight HIV.

© UNESCO/LENEPWHA, Peete, 23 years old, male student, Lesotho - Sometimes when I think back on my life for the past ten years, I realise that I did not have enough knowledge on the pandemic to take care of myself. My young friends remind me that life should be enjoyed, and yet I worry that unless they are protected from contracting HIV they will soon have the virus like me and may not enjoy life as they do now. They deserve to be happy and live life with no worries. I believe that they should be adequately prepared now at a very early age so that they will grow into young adults competent enough to take care of themselves and protect others from HIV.

Photo-Voice is part of a UNESCO project funded by the Virginio Bruni Tedeschi Foundation (created by Marisa Bruni Tedeschi in memory of her son Virginio – Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s brother – who passed away of AIDS-related complications in 2006). Photo-Voice organisers say the exhibit uses the power of images to enable participants to "to bear witness" and to raise awareness.

These photos are by African photographers -- but AIDS is a global issue. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 22 million of the 33 million people living with HIV, but HIV incidence has fallen over 25 percent in 22 Sub-Saharan African countries since 2001, while it's increasing in other parts of the world (such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia). In North America and Western Europe, an estimated 100,000 people were newly infected in 2009 compared to 97,000 in 2001. We're in this together.

HIV and AIDS is a human rights issue, and dealing with it is a joint responsibility. It doesn't call for pity; it calls for empathy, solidarity and action.

Memory

Sam Nzima is a South African photographer whose work for a long time went unrecognized – but he also has a place in history.

On June 16, 1976, Sam Nzima was in Soweto working as a photojournalist for The World newspaper. On that day, thousands of school students in Soweto took to the streets to protest the introduction of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools. As the children gathered, police used tear gas to stop them, then started firing.

Sam Nzima took several photos that day, but one captured a moment that hasn’t been forgotten. The photo shows a young man carrying a child. The child is limp, and the young man is crying. A girl, pain etched on her face, runs beside them. The child being carried is Hector Pieterson, twelve years old and one of the first children to have been shot and killed that day. The boy carrying him is Mbuyisa Makhubo, while the girl running beside them is Hector’s sister Antoinette.

Sam Nzima’s photo was published by The World and then flashed around the world on news wires. It made people realize what was happening in South Africa, and helped prompt greater international action against apartheid. Yet Nzima was forced to hide from the police and he declined further work as a photojournalist because of concerns about his security. It also took him years to regain copyright of his famous photograph. He ended up opening up a shop, serving as a homeland member of parliament, and then opening a school of photography in Bushbuckridge.

I’m privileged to say that I once met Sam Nzima. I was in Johannesburg in the late 1990s, visiting projects for the development organization I was working for. I and a colleague from Ottawa took some time to go to a spot in Soweto near where the Hector Pieterson Memorial, which opened in 2002, is now.

We entered a three-sided structure housing a display of photographs. Some of the photos showed scenes of Soweto. Others were of then-President and Hillary Clinton in a recent visit. But the photo which caught my attention was black and white. I recognized the image immediately. It was the photo of Hector Pieterson, his friend and his sister.

As I stood taking it in, a man who had been standing near the display came over. He said, quietly, "I was the photographer who took that picture."

As his words sunk in, I realized that he had taken this famous photo; he had been at this scene. He was the person who had informed the world about Hector Pieterson and the other schoolchildren who had been so brutally killed. I gathered my wits enough to begin to ask him questions about the circumstances of his being at this place on that day.

Overhearing our conversation, a fellow visitor came closer. She was an American woman who had been commenting loudly on everything in the area so far. She piped up with what I imagine was her most pressing question: "Were you here when the Clintons came?" Yes, answered Nzima. "Did you meet them?" she was desperate to know. Then, "What was Hillary Clinton wearing?"

At that moment, I saw the chasm between this woman’s world view and mine. For me, the history of deep injustice that pervaded this soil, and the profound changes that had taken place to allow us to be standing as tourists on this spot, were what was significant. That we were meeting the photographer, Sam Nzima, who had galvanized the world to take notice of South Africa was an enormous privilege. For her, the meetingwas a way for her to get a closer glimpse of her own celebrities.
As I looked into this later, though, I realized that the Clintons’ trip to South Africa was the first by an American president. To an American, the experience of meeting Sam Nzima might well have symbolized a bridge between South Africa and her own country. I guess we each have our own markers of significant events and people in our lives.

For me, one significant person will always be Sam Nzima. You can see a short BBC video of Sam Nzima and an exhibit of his photos here. You can also read more about him.