The scars of apartheid are visible everywhere in South Africa. Driving from the airport into the affluent center of Cape Town, one encounters the ugly reality of the poverty left behind by decades of repression.
Metal shacks and shipping containers line the highway and expand out for miles. This is where millions of Africans live, shackled in poverty, isolated from the commerce of Cape Town.
Situated in a shallow bowl between Table Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean sits the beautiful city center of Cape Town. The affluent homes and businesses could easily be mistaken for a city in Southern California or Europe.
But a closer look reveals barbed wire fences, armed guards and tall gates. These extreme measures of security reflect the extreme economic inequality of the country, which breeds very high crime rates.
Things are certainly looking up in Cape Town and across the country these days as democracy takes root where repression reigned for decades before. The change isn't as rapid as some would like, but the African National Congress is moving the country towards equality and away from the brutally oppressive days of apartheid.
A silent killer, however, is serving as a stark reminder of the inequalities that still exist. AIDS is killing between 600 and 1,000 people in South Africa every day, according to the United Nations.
The virus is almost a biological manifestation of the evil of apartheid - AIDS overwhelmingly affects the poor, disadvantaged citizens of Cape Town. Africans living in the margins of South African society, without access to health care or education, are particularly vulnerable to AIDS.
Traveling though the crowded townships outside Cape Town, I saw a makeshift cemetery where the residents of the township buried their dead. The cemetery was arranged in chronological order - that is, the burials started at one end of the cemetery and progressed forward as people were buried.
The pattern of the headstones in this improvised cemetery revealed the startling acceleration of AIDS - at one end of the cemetery, the graves were fairly spaced apart. But as one looked farther along, the density of the headstones rapidly increased. By the other end of the cemetery, the graves were practically on top of each other.
The acceleration of AIDS in South Africa reflects the poverty and inequality that still exists there, and the life-and-death urgency of addressing those problems.
Africans are still living on the margins of society because they were forced there for so long - apartheid advanced the idea of "separate but equal."
The word "but" in that popular phrase reveals that people who advance it know inequality naturally thrives under separation. It's not separate and equal, it's separate but equal.
AIDS is no longer a problem confined to Africa. It could exist here on this campus, and certainly it exists in our area. Just as in Cape Town, the virus is a manifestation of the ills of Buffalo society - 67 percent of the AIDS cases in Buffalo occur in African Americans, according to the Buffalo News.
The East Side of Buffalo, where the African American population in Buffalo is centered, is our version of the townships.
Marginalized by dominant society, blacks experience a lower quality of life on the East Side. Poor access to health care and education make residents more vulnerable to AIDS, and the virus thrives in this section of town.
There are simple steps to be taken to reduce the spread of AIDS and soften its impact - throwing money at the problem for prevention education and medicine for those already infected really does help. Abandoning the Bush administration's ridiculous abstinence-based approach to preventing AIDS and widely distributing condoms will also help.
But on a deeper level, stark economic equalities need to be addressed. Blacks in Buffalo live with a lesser quality of life than whites. It's one of the most segregated cities in America, and the vicious spread of AIDS in our city is a reflection of that inequality.
Everyone in Buffalo knows blacks and whites are largely separated, and maybe some people say "it's separate, but it's equal." We know that's not true - statistics on AIDS deaths reveal the reality of the situation.
Being complacent with economic inequality in Buffalo has life and death consequences. AIDS, along with violence and drug use, will continue to claim victims in impoverished areas.
As members of a system that produces such inequalities, we are responsible for resulting casualties. And we are responsible for fixing the problem.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
