Who cares about the African aids pandemic?

No matter what Stephen Lewis says, it just doesn’t concern voters

MELISSA HIEBERT STAFF

Stephen Lewis, former United Nations special envoy for HIV/ AIDS in Africa and the founder of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, made a rather large and perhaps unsubstantiated assumption (one that most if not all adovcacy leaders tend to make) when delivering his speech at the U of M recently: we’re all “good” people.

In his speech, Lewis touched on a number of topics pertaining to the HIV/AIDS crisis, including the high cost and unavailability of treatment, gender equality and the substantial difference in the rate of HIVpositive women versus men, and the (preventable) transmission of the virus from mother to child. He mentioned that there are five women that test HIV positive for every one man, and how only nine per cent of pregnant women have access to the drugs necessary to prevent the transmission of the disease to their unborn child.

While Stephen Lewis’s speech was interesting and even moderately inspiring, for the most part it included nothing new. Riddled with phrases like, “this isn’t some abstract statistical data, this is people struggling to live,” and “is the life of an African child worth less than the life of a western child?” Lewis delivered the same “inspiration with a dash of guilt” recipe that is characteristic of most advocacy speeches.

Overall though, the message that Lewis consistently stressed during his presentation was imploring people to put pressure on the government in order for any significant changes to take place.

In a press interview that occurred after the lecture, however, one key question was asked: whether or not politicians could be persuaded to take initiatives against issues like the AIDS crisis in Africa, if those initiatives did not translate into votes.

“My sense is that the public is way ahead of the politicians,” Lewis replied. “I think that if you took a poll of Canadians, they would very much want the government to be involved, and are frankly disappointed that the government is not involved.”

But would the people vote for it?

“I think that if the government took bold initiatives . . . I think that the Canadian people would applaud that.”

But would they vote for it?!

“Yes, I think they would vote for that. I’m not sure that that would be the determinate of their vote . . . but I think that it would factor into it.”

OK, so in other words, no.

Lewis’s theory is simple, really. If we put pressure on the government, then it will be in their best interests to change policy, as this will win the hearts of the voters, thereby causing an overwhelming landslide of support for the government. The only thing he forgets is that when it comes right down to it, a meaningless one per cent cut to the GST means more to Canadians than the lives of millions of people around the globe.

Yes it is true: if the government noticed tens of thousands of people (and by “people” I mean people falling within key voting demographics) throwing all their money at NGOs, protesting outside of the Legislature, and demanding that politicians take stronger stances on the HIV/AIDS crisis, then maybe the government might throw more of its resources into putting these injustices to an end. But naturally (at least at this point in time), this is neither plausible nor realistic. I could keep going on about how moronic we are for not giving a damn, but that will merely provoke a split second of guilt, quickly followed by the same old sense of apathy and indifference. So why bother?

v We can blame the government all we want for taking weak or nonexistent action against these kinds of serious global problems, but inevitably the ball stops with us. And the average Canadian simply isn’t all that interested in what’s going on overseas. Sure, we might shed an obligatory tear every time a World Vision commercial comes on television, but in the end, if our daily latte wins out over sponsoring a child, then who really expects us to prioritize foreign aid over things like health care, job security, and tax cuts?

Of course this is a generalization, but the people who would decide their vote based on how much would be spent on foreign aid are few and far between. Maybe politicians should engage in a guilt campaign of their own: they should make us feel like horribly selfish people for not giving a damn about overseas issues and sway our vote that way. Because really, when it comes right down to it, selfish is what we are.

Melissa Hiebert is a third-year philosophy student and the Manitoban’s culture editor.