The AIDS pandemic is a tragedy that is sweeping the African continent like wildfire. Every 20 seconds a person dies of AIDS related illnesses. That is 2,500,000 (two and a half million)a year. The numbers are staggering.
In cemeteries there are multiple funerals each and every day. The cemeteries are filling at such a rate that the Governments are considering other forms of burial to cater for the burgeoning numbers.
That the infrastructure of entire countries is crumbling is unfathomable. There are villages where there are no men left alive. Young woman are dying and the society is being held together by Grandmothers, many of whom are also dying of AIDS or old age.
Homes are being left to be held together by these Grandmothers or, in many cases, very young children in what are called "child headed" homes.
There are more than 13,000,000 (thirteen million) AIDS Orphans and there is no structure to support them.
It is likely that the number is in fact significantly greater than this as, although there is an identity registration system for people living in South Africa, many do not have identification as they have either come across the borders illegally or were born in such circumstances as registration was not possible or desirable.
Children left to fend for themselves are open to be preyed upon. Their food (if any) is taken and young girls are raped. As this happens during the night, many of the victims never actually see the perpetrators of this vile crime. Young girls are either left pregnant or with AIDS or both.
Young children are committing suicide rather than face the terrible death that they have seen their entire families suffer. There was a startling reported incident of two young boys drinking acid rather than suffering protracted and agonising death through AIDS related illnesses.
The African Aids Foundation of Australia, of which I am a Director, tells of a village where there were 15 graves around a mud brick home. A teenage girl had buried her entire family, as it is too costly to use the cemeteries. When visited they found that the young girl had also died and was left with no one to bury her. The Foundation arranged to bury her with her family.
Prostitution, stealing and murder are rife but perhaps the greatest crime is the growing incidence of child rape.
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