LAST weekend, prominent figures commented on the theme of leadership in the fight against HIV/ AIDS. Apart from discussing leadership in institutions such as family, community and state, these people gave absolutely no consideration to the area of personal leadership.
Indeed, the stalemate in the strategies used to minimise the spread of HIV infection is the failure to deal with the issue at the personal level. Personal leadership gives the motivation for behaviour change – the ability of the person to decide changes.
Behaviour change deals with the realm of psychology, and less to do with sociology and medicine. And if the AIDS Council is serious about dealing with the issue of leadership in preventing the spread, it should employ psychologists, and not only sociologists and medical experts, to deal with aspect of personal leadership.
Personal leadership is intrinsic to the idea of lust management. In any strategy that we devise, the creation of a mindset is significant. Likewise, in dealing with HIV prevention, the creation of an appropriate mindset is imperative – a more positive message than the one propagated that raises fear, discrimination and ostracising, and destroys long-held social and moral values.
Hence, I have found the description of AIDS given by an African nurse very helpful for this discussion. Her view that AIDS is a “chronic but a manageable disease” should be propagated as a new mindset rather than that it is “contagious and deadly”.
The mindset itself would create a shift in paradigm, from understanding the spread as behavioural rather than medicinal. There are many chronic diseases affecting human beings, however, the ability for the HIV to register high infection rate depends heavily on people’s attitude and behaviour their own sexuality.
There are two areas where personal leadership and management are needed in dealing with the epidemic that is chronic but manageable.
First, the manner of dealing with prevention of the spread is through lust management. Thus far, the strategies used in AIDS prevention is appropriate but it only deals with the surface levels.
The ABC method will have no impact if lust management is not considered as a strategy dealing with the issue at the deeper level. At the outset, however, we should also admit that despite the attempts of the ABC method in reducing the rate of infections, statistics speak otherwise.
This was the very concern raised by Romanus Pakure, the acting director of the National AIDS Council secretariat, who feels that despite the efforts put in place, the infection rate never decreases. We can infer that HIV/AIDS advocates only deal with the surface levels, using propaganda mindset that has been predominantly negative.
Despite the intervention of the ABC method, other exterior factors may have contributed to its ineffectiveness. There are no statistics available to the public on how effective the ABC methods are.
However, if there is still an increase in the level of infection, we may then look at other factors that may overpower and render those approach ineffective.
The issue of poverty, urban migration, the collapse of authority and social order, delinquent behaviours, consumer attraction and a host of other things may devastate the HIV response. The Government and donor agencies should employ sociologists to look at the bigger social issues, rather than the narrow concentration on the ABC method.
Lust management will be able to deal with both the interior motivation and the exterior attraction regarding the use and abuse of one’s sexuality. To do that, we need personal empowerment and leadership.
Human sexuality is such a torrent and wild force that at times, it blinds or overwhelms any good human sense. Sexual energy is just like aggressive energy; once finding its prey, common sense evaporates.
The management of these wild and blind forces is necessary in the strategies dealing the HIV prevention. People need to deal with sexual energy at its roots. Just like anger management, it is imperative that sexually-active people should undergo training and therapy on personal leadership and lust management. It is not only content knowledge, but a process leading to a change in sexual behaviour.
People in position of authority think that HIV infection can be controlled by doing awareness and knowledge dissemination are far from right. Producing school syllabus and information pamphlet will make no difference, be-cause they deal with content knowledge.
Without giving the people the tools to work with and manage the forces of lust, there is no way of reducing the infection rate. The concept we are advocating is not only content information on prevention, but the process towards prevention itself.
Traditionally, our tumbunas were smarter than all the minds in the AIDS business. With less content knowledge, the tumbunas knew how to deal with and direct powerful energies such as aggression and sexuality into outlets and where able to channel those forces.
Those channels were ritual outlets, powerful myths and prohibition that formed a formidable unit in unleashing and directing sexual energies for the good of society. Those tumbunas will be laughing at all the follies and blunders that prevailed in HIV prevention strategies.
Getting a little knowledge and experience from the tumbunas and reading into depth psychology would be a real starting-point to develop a strategy in lust management. It is not only a programme or strategy to combat AIDS, but a strategy to control rape, incest, child sexual abuse, prostitution and pornography.
The second area deals with managing the chronic disease caused by this virus. Medically, with the availability of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, the disease could be controlled and help people live longer, with the resolution that they be faithful in taking the drug.
Despite the side effects, ARV drugs are the only means of giving hope to people living with HIV/ AIDS. Also another useful manner of managing that chronic illness is for those contacted to cultivate a positive attitude to life which has shown to prolong life – 20 years the most.
We can also affirm that love, beauty, good and truth, if cultivated to its true essence can unleash super-conscious energies that can aid the chronic management of AIDS. Those energies can work along with ARV drugs for supporting our conviction that AIDS is no longer contagious and deadly but rather chronic and manageable.
We can all work and support each other knowing that AIDS is just like any other disease confronting us. A sympathetic understanding with patience, as well as employing the right strategies will eventually lead to total eradication of this virus.