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Pumeza Runeyi (Cape Town, 1983) is not one of those that add to the statistics of HIV positives in South Africa, which with 7.8 million infected in 2021 - almost 14% of the population - has the highest incidence in the world.
But their involvement in the fight against AIDS is as legitimate as that of those who start activism after discovering that they have contracted the disease.
The trigger for this South African with voluminous dreadlocks was not the unexpected result of a test, but something much, much worse: the murder of her cousin.
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“She went out with her friends and was gang-raped. When she said she was a carrier of the virus, her attackers beat her and stoned her until she died. She was murdered in her own community ”. Runeyi goes back to December 13, 2003 to speak of Lorna Mlosana, who was 21 years old and had a four-year-old son when she was killed. During the trial against the only defendant, Ncedile Ntumbukwana, a witness assured that she was executed because of the fear and fury that he must have felt when she revealed her condition to him and he understood that she could have been infected.
With serenity and without fuss, Runeyi points out that crime as the trigger for his activism. In 2021 she is an established community leader in Khayelitsha, one of the largest suburbs in Cape Town. Its fame is associated with adjectives such as miserable and dangerous, but it has also made a name for itself thanks to the courage of its inhabitants, world pioneers in defending the right of HIV patients to have free access to diagnosis and treatment. Here the citizen movement began with the organizations Treatment Action Campaign or TAC (Campaign for Access to Medicines) and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which were the first to provide free antiretrovirals.
Also in this settlement the first voices against discrimination were raised.
And here a very young Pumeza Runeyi played a leading role: she was 17 years old when the murder of Mlosana lit the fuse of her engagement.
“For me this was the alarm that told me that I should stand up, I could not remain silent after his death.
We needed to stop people who killed others for living with HIV. "
I am a person without HIV, but who fights for the rights of those who do have it
Runeyi knew about TAC because Mlosana had belonged to its ranks, and she knocked on her doors, knowing that the underlying culprit for her cousin's death had been stigma. "The time had come to mobilize the community, but it was not easy because everyone knew each other and people preferred to support the perpetrators and cared less that my cousin had died," says the activist.
Her first assignment as a TAC member was in the awareness unit, just what she wanted to do: talk about HIV with each and every person in Khayelitsha when the very mention of it caused dread in the listener. "I started working with young people, because at that time there was nothing specific for them in South Africa." In fact, they are the most vulnerable, because, according to the latest data offered by the National AIDS Council of South Africa (Sanac), infections increase more in the 15 to 24 age group, with 38% of the 200,000 new infections in 2017. “Many had a hard time because they had contracted the virus and nobody was paying attention to them, so they could not understand what was happening to them. I encouraged them to go to the health center and start taking their medication and, of course,it helped them learn and understand that they could live happily and healthy ”.
Runeyi's job was by no means easy. At that time, the TAC and MSF had just opened a clinic for adolescents between 12 and 15 years old in Khayelitsha, mainly designed to make its users feel comfortable there. “They could just go to play ping-pong, or get condoms and walk away, or ask for family planning services. Or it could be sexually transmitted diseases or HIV ”, the interviewee lists.
But she and her classmates had set themselves a bigger goal: to distribute a million condoms in community colleges and institutes and to provide information on the importance of using them to avoid contagion during sexual intercourse. They had to first establish a forum with the teachers, as they could not reach the students without having the teachers on their side. Through workshops and training they explained why they wanted to work in schools.
They also came face to face with the rejection of the parents, "very skeptical" of the activists' intentions.
They also had to meet and work hard.
“It was very difficult to convince them that having condoms in schools was important.
Teens started dating while they were still in school.
So we wanted to make sure they had the information from the age of 12 so that later, when they were 14 or 15, they would find condoms available for them and they would like to use them, ”he explains.
Pumeza Runeyi talks with a young mother in Khayelitsa, Cape Town, South Africa.Alfredo Cáliz
Runeyi also wanted to make sure that they could stand up to their stories, that they were not afraid, a fear of what they will say was dominating society.
“My mission was for people to understand that you could have HIV and still enjoy a long life.
That they could still go back to school, study and become someone ”.
Rumors and stigma
His commitment to such an unpopular issue did not come for free, as well as the fact of pressing for an investigation into the murder of Mlosana, which ended up being very mediatic.
“I had to leave the neighborhood because I became a target;
But from the TAC they supported me and made sure that every time I had to go to court, I arrived safely ”.
Another added difficulty was that the false rumor spread that she was HIV positive. And they also began to comment that she was a lesbian. In fact, it is, and it is not intended to hide it. “I suffered double discrimination because no one wanted to talk about homosexuality or AIDS… So I decided to get up and speak for myself. I am a person without HIV, but I fight for the rights of those who do have it ”. Runeyi sighs, with a hint of the indignation that he must have felt back then: “In those years I realized how hard it was to live in South Africa, in Cape Town, in Khayelitsha… If you had the disease, you couldn't be free. Everyone was going to make sure you suffered. "
Despite the obstacles, his work became known and Runeyi has become a personality. In 2009 she started working with MSF and since 2014 she has exclusively dedicated herself to advising young people and adolescents. Today, in the modern cultural center Isivivana in the suburb, where the humanitarian organization has offices from which different projects related to the health of the neighbors are managed, everyone knows it. And they all want to tell you something, ask for advice, share a concern. She knows how to treat the most unruly adolescents, who see her as a comrade, because not in vain this woman forms and coordinates groups of boys and girls who go through high schools, passing on to the little ones the message that she has been spreading for 15 years.
When she looks back, Runeyi notices the change.
It is true that South Africa continues to have the highest HIV rates in the world, it is true that much remains to be done, but she is optimistic because she perceives a change in attitude.
“When I started, the young people had no power, they did not know anything about the virus;
they just thought it was death. "
As time has passed, those who have been through his talks have learned that there is hope.
Lorna Mlosana's case, on the other hand, was half solved.
Only one of the suspects, Ntumbukwana, was found guilty of the young woman's murder and sentenced to life in prison, but in 2009 he was released.
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