Rainbow Alliance hosts AIDS forum

Mongezi Sefika wa Nkomo believes there is a deadly problem plaguing Africa. But it isn’t just… Mongezi Sefika wa Nkomo believes there is a deadly problem plaguing Africa. But it isn’t just the AIDS pandemic that is ravishing the continent. It’s something Nkomo calls “PAIDS.”

“The issue is not only AIDS, it’s ‘PAIDS’: Politically Acquired Ideological Deficiency Syndrome,” Nkomo said.

According to Nkomo, many African leaders are too influenced by American policy and capitalist ideology. For example, he said the United States and organizations such as the International Monetary Fund push too much for small governments. According to Nkomo, increased government spending on social programs could reduce problems such as AIDS.

Nkomo, a veteran anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, is currently the president of Azania Heritage International. The Pittsburgh nonprofit group is dedicated to promoting African heritage and economic change.

Pitt’s Rainbow Alliance sponsored Nkomo as the final speaker in its AIDS Awareness Week that ended Friday. Other speakers focused on AIDS prevention and the discrimination that HIV-positive people face. Nkomo’s lecture covered more general problems present in the political and economic systems that have allowed AIDS to spread.

Nkomo said that by 1990, it was apparent that AIDS would become a major epidemic because of poor sanitation, low income levels and a lack of health care access. He believes that many African governments deliberately neglected the issue because they did not want to spend the money to prevent the AIDS outbreak.

Nkomo suggested that because AIDS is spreading, governments must spend money on AIDS education and to provide drugs to cure people who already have the disease.

However, Nkomo said that African governments receive too much outside pressure to reduce social programs. He added that although South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, “is a hero,” Nkomo believes “the [capitalist] system he is trying to justify is just wrong.”

He cited a law the South African government passed that would reduce the price of AIDS drugs by 50 to 70 percent while retaining a profit for drug companies. American pharmaceutical companies “went up in arms,” and as a result, the law was not implemented.

Nkomo said that “the question of the 21st century is class … in the long run, the goal is to overthrow capitalism.”

“You need to be a radical. You might not be popular; your parents might even kick you out,” Nkomo said. “Lucky for me I had a large extended family … and in America, you have shelters and halfway houses to go to if you get kicked out,” he joked.

Rainbow Alliance President Josh Ferris said that while the Rainbow Alliance is “not a communist group,” the lecture was well-received. According to Ferris, “We hear horrible things about people not getting AIDS medicine in Africa, but we rarely hear about the economics behind it.”