At the age of twenty-nine, Sizwe Magadla is among the most handsome, well-educated, and richest of the men in his poverty-stricken village. Dr. Hermann Reuter, a son of old South West African stock, wants to show the world that if you provide decent treatment, people will come and get it, no matter their circumstances.
Sizwe and Hermann live at the epicenter of the greatest plague of our times, the African AIDS epidemic. In South Africa alone, nearly 6 million people in a population of 46 million are HIV-positive. Already, Sizwe has watched several neighbors grow ill and die, yet he himself has pushed AIDS to the margins of his life and associates it obliquely with other people's envy, with comeuppance, and with misfortune.
When Hermann Reuter establishes an antiretroviral treatment program in Sizwe's district and Sizwe discovers that close family members have the virus, the antagonism between these two figures from very different worlds -- one afraid that people will turn their backs on medical care, the other fearful of the advent of a world in which respect for traditional ways has been lost and privacy has been obliterated -- mirrors a continent-wide battle against an epidemic that has corrupted souls as much as bodies.
A heartbreaking tale of shame and pride, sex and death, and a continent's battle with its demons, Steinberg's searing account is a tour-de-force of literary journalism.
Autorentext
Jonny Steinberg
Inhalt
A Note on Terminology and Names
List of Illustrations
Preface
Sizwe
Ithanga
Sizwe and Jake
Testing Day
His Father's Child
A Mother's Boys
Igqira
A Grandson
A Gangster
Another Shop
Thandeka
Garden and Home
Magic Pills
On the Outer Edge
The Fence Around AIDS
Kate Marrandi
AIDS Needle
Voting Day
Nomvalo
Testing Day
Support Group
Ithanga's Kate
Mabalane
Nombulelo
Sizwe and Nwabisa
Of Oxen and Men
Progeny
Leaving
Good-Bye, Dr. Hermann
New Year
"Sizwe Magadla"
Sizwe and Hermann
Epilogue
Notes
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Index