S van der Merwe: HIV and AIDS candlelight memorial

22 May 2006

Colleagues
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

May I first of all take this opportunity to thank the Employee Wellness
Centre (EWC) for arranging this Candlelight Memorial as we remember those who
have died from Aids related diseases from our own families, from our Department
of Foreign Affairs (DFA) family, in the country and indeed in the world at
large.

With our frantic and busy schedules it is easy to forget some of the things
that matter most in life. Often, our physical, mental and spiritual health is
neglected in the course of chasing deadlines to finish this or that task.
Eventually however, this neglect catches up with us. The tragic consequences of
the HIV that affect all of us, starkly reminds us of our limitations as
mortals.

Our mandate as the Department of Foreign Affairs is to promote our country's
domestic interests abroad. We do not do this in a vacuum. We rely on the
collective skills and talents of our officials here at Head Office and our
diplomats all over the world. Given the increasing challenges in an
ever-globalising world, the scourge of HIV and AIDS poses a serious challenge
to our ability as a country and as an organisation, which already faces human
and financial resource constraints.

A key pillar of our foreign policy agenda is the Consolidation of the
African Agenda. We regard our region, Southern African Development Community
(SADC) as our gateway to the continent. Yet according to United Nations
Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to have just
over 10% of the world’s population, but is home to more than 60% of all people
living with HIV - around 25.8 million. Southern Africa is regarded as the
epicentre of the global AIDS pandemic. Naturally, this is a cause for concern
for us as it affects our human capital, which is essential in ensuring that we
are able to implement our country's and our continent's development programme,
as well as to meet the Millennium Development Goals by the 2015 target.

Two years ago we celebrated ten years of freedom and democracy and last
year, the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Charter. This year we celebrate a
number of key milestones in our history as a country. These include the 10th
anniversary of the adoption of our constitution, the Women's March to the Union
Buildings 50 years ago and the 30th anniversary of June 16th Soweto Uprising,
Youth Day as we have named it. The significance of mentioning these events is
that all of them were sustained human rights campaigns aimed at ending
apartheid and creating a society in which everyone's inherent dignity and the
right to respect are protected.

We are reminded that the joint actions of millions of South Africans and
indeed millions of our friends across the world, working together, enabled us
to bring about our freedom. Again joint effort is required in the quest to rid
our global society of HIV and AIDS.

We are also reminded about how resilient South African's have been and
continue to be in the face of adversity. However, time is against us and we
must act now and act decisively. Experience has shown that decisive action,
backed by political support, can radically improve the outlook.

Since 1994, the current government has made many strides towards its
transformation and setting in place the necessary legislative and policy
frameworks to deal with this challenge.

In the workplace our government has affected legislative and policies
measures to align ourselves with international trends in preventing
stigmatisation and discrimination on the basis of HIV infection. This applies
to staff recruitment and promotion, to employment and benefits.

The Department of Public Service and Administration is responsible for
implementing employee health and wellness programmes that include a
comprehensive strategy for the management of HIV and AIDS. This strategy
supports initiatives to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS in the public
service. In our own department this work is lead by the EWC.

As already indicated, there is no single solution to this problem and our
campaigns will be multifaceted. Legislation and policies alone will not be
enough to overcome the problem. We need to give these initiatives life by
involving South Africans from all sectors of society; from the cities and
towns, to the farms and rural villages; the wealthy and poor, from every aspect
of our civil society and from government. We must harness and use this social
capital as a formidable force towards victory over HIV infection and the impact
of AIDS.

Thus we are marking this campaign here today, this candlelight memorial.
This is an international campaign, which was initiated by the Global AIDS
Council in 1983 when the cause of AIDS was unknown and no more than a few
thousand AIDS deaths had been recorded. The organisers wished to honour the
memory of those lost to this mysterious disease and to demonstrate support for
those living with
HIV and AIDS.

We in the dfa have developed an HIV and AIDS policy as part of our wellness
services intended to assist staff members who experience problems associated
with HIV and AIDS and that impact on their work. This is in recognition of the
profound threat that the pandemic poses on our activities, but more importantly
also the recognition of the devastating personal consequences of the syndrome
on us as human beings. The Department has thus, in an effort to mitigate the
effects of the pandemic, initiated a proactive HIV and AIDS workplace policy to
ensure that a conducive environment is created to deal with the concerns of all
its employees.

While we observe the Candlelight Memorial once a year, we also have the
Employee Well-being Centre where we provide sustained employee services
throughout the year to take care of the well being of our staff. This Centre
does not only provide HIV and AIDS related services, but seeks to deal with all
other aspects of health and well being, including physical, mental and
spiritual.

The Centre also regularly arranges events to raise awareness and educate as
well as support national initiatives such as the Khomanani project, which is
aimed at strengthening social mobilisation and generating greater ownership and
involvement in the prevention activities by communities. The Department also
commemorated World Aids Day (5 December 2005) and our officials committed
themselves to work for a caring and supportive environment for HIV infected and
affected people in the society.

The Department, through the EWC, collaborates with other departments such as
Health and Social Development on HIV and AIDS matters. The EWC has created a
network system with external help centres such as Home Based Care, Hospices and
other health centres for referral purpose.

I am pleased to say that the Departmental programme was regarded as one of
the best programmes by the Department of Public Service and Administration
(DPSA). To this end, the department was included in the DPSA study on best
practices. The Department was also requested to exhibit the programme at the
AIDS Conference held in Durban in 2005.

So I believe that the dfa has begun in various ways to become part of the
solution. We do not have all the answers but we wish to be part of that
solution through our collective efforts. There are a number of actions that we
as colleagues in the Department can and have taken to contribute to the fight
against HIV and AIDS.

Perhaps we can say that our starting point understands that we are people
first before we are anything else. What we make of the future depends on what
we take from our past. All of us who are present here today share a common past
based on racial discrimination which, through a collective and sustained
campaign we were able to overcome. The scourge of AIDS today affects each of us
here because we know of someone infected with the HIV or dying from AIDS.

We know HIV and AIDS do not discriminate. It is not limited to a particular,
race, gender, nation, social class or geographical location. The United Nations
Secretary General captured this very well when he said that "We must make
people everywhere understand that the AIDS crisis in not over; that it is not
about a few foreign countries, far away. This is a threat to an entire
generation, that it is a threat to an entire civilisation."

The nature of the challenge before us, therefore, requires that we act
collectively to make an effective impact. We should remain constantly alert
therefore, that as we go about our daily activities to meet deadlines and busy
schedules, to the seriousness of HIV and AIDS and take care of our health.

To those of you who will go out to our missions abroad as diplomats to
promote our foreign policy objectives, do so cognisant of our joint commitment
to the creation of better Africa and a better world. In this regard, we need to
align ourselves with key international efforts such as the decision taken by
the African Ministers of Health taken last year to develop country specific
strategies to accelerate the prevention of HIV and AIDS.

We as a Department also need to look after our human capital and must from
time to time engage with each other on some of the problems that our people
encounter on a daily basis.

To the memory of those who died of AIDS, may they rest in peace and to those
living with the disease our thoughts, support and prayers are with you?

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Foreign Affairs
22 May 2006
Source: SAPA