madness

so here i am, innocently watching the news. there is a story about a guy who gets sentenced to twelve consecutive life sentences for raping some young girls with the clear knowledge that he is hiv positive. at the end of the story they mention, almost in passing that the girls were all virgins.

now why do i blog this? the news did not talk about the point of the story because it is not pc in the present day south africa. the news writer probably wrote it but it was edited out by the power seekers. the writer did manage to leave one line in that gets to the point. the girls were all virgins.

the point that those in this line of work in our country will immediately click onto is that our great and wonderful sangomas some time ago propogated sex with a virgin as a cure to hiv. i kid you not. the reasoning is something along the lines that you get the virus from sleeping with a not-so-pure woman. therefore you can get rid of the virus by sleeping with a pure girl.

so this man is an example, hopefully, that the modern south africa will no longer endure this. i doubt it though due to the importance the community attaches to these wonderful healers otherwise known as sangomas.

a few questions. what are twelve life sentences? how do you serve that? which girls will not truly get justice? and they conveniently don't mention how many of his victims ended up hiv positive. besides will anyone ever know how many virgin girls he actually raped. (it's interesting to mention that quite recently parents encouraged their children to hide their virgin status because of this belief)

but i wonder who is the real culprit here and who is the scape goat, especially bearing in mind that our ministry of health has put more emphasis on integration of so called traditional medicine to counteract aids than antiretrovirals. not that i would bat an eyelid at the extermination of this particular scape goat.