Youth takes charge

Secular Aids activism has evidently resigned itself to regarding the promotion of condoms as the only practical method of Aids prevention.

Yet, it is clear that as a strategy on its own, the campaign to “condomise” has failed to arrest the spread of infections.

In that light, the bishops of Southern Africa and their Youth Desk are to be commended for devising the ABCD Lifestyle Campaign, the launch of which coincides with Freedom Day on April 27 (as reported on this week’s front page).

The timing is apt. In his letter to the Catholic youth of Southern Africa, Bishop Zithulele Patrick Mvemve accurately observes that the youth “spearheaded” the struggle against apartheid. He now calls on the youth to take the lead in an even more momentous struggle–against Aids.

The campaign is an acknowledgment that little is accomplished by supposedly “out-of-touch” episcopal preaching on sexual abstinence as the only safe method of preventing HIV-infection, the truth of it notwithstanding. This message is most effectively delivered on a peer-to-peer basis, by youths to youths, persuading by example.

Crucially, the ABCD campaign is constructive and optimistic. Instead of comprising a manifesto of proscriptions, it encourages young people to empower themselves by taking charge of their own destiny. Thereby the onus on securing a better future rests on those who own it.

The campaign lends the Church’s Aids programme a whole new dimension. The Catholic Church in South Africa has been active mainly in addressing the results of Aids, with admirable efficiency. Now it has entered the arena of Aids prevention. In this, the Southern African Church is an innovator, perhaps even serving as a model for the Church worldwide.

Significantly, the ABCD campaign incorporates a lateral view in Aids-prevention. Central to the campaign is the inculcation of self-respect among young people, not only in sexual conduct but social behaviour in general– a moral renewal.

May the campaign inspire a social revolution.