Hon Deputy Speaker and Members of Parliament, I greet you all. Approximately 30 years ago, health professionals were perplexed by a disease that was killing people. It was not the actual virus that was killing people but the other infections that were deemed not lethal that were killing people. What was found was that this actual disease was causing people to have an immunodeficiency, which they termed, at that time, as an autoimmune deficiency, because they did not know what was causing it.
It was not very long after that they found out that it was because of a certain virus that had peculiar tendencies compared to the well-known viruses. Unfortunately, the main area that this virus was transmitted through was the area we use for procreation, which means that it was so difficult to control, since we still had to procreate.
To date, the virus has infected more than 35 million people in the whole world, and 5,6 million infected people are in South Africa. If you look at those that are infected and you take it that the average family consists of about five people, you would say that five people per homestead are affected. And if you then multiply that five by 5,6 million, you will find that 25 million people in South Africa are affected. If you look at the population of South Africa, which is about 50 million, you would say one in every two people is affected by HIV and Aids. By any standard, this is a lot to contend with.
The emergence of this virus with its peculiar tendencies has been further compounded by other factors. The first is that mobility of people is very common. You could be having breakfast in the morning in South Africa and, in the evening, sleeping in Britain. This goes with tendencies of temptation, attraction and doing things without protection. The emergence of this virus occurs at a time when a lot of people feel very entitled. A lot of men feel that if they are married, they can have sex without a condom even if the wife wants to use a condom. They feel entitled to having sex without a condom if they don't want to use one. People have that attitude of entitlement. This happens at a time when people neglect to know that rights go with responsibilities. A lot of us think that we can do anything because we have rights, but forget that the consequences of what we do are going to be felt by somebody else. Obviously, this affects the scourge of HIV and Aids.
This happens again at a time when our cultures are affected by globalisation and are being diluted. At the same time, some of our cultures have stopped being practised without analysing whether they were good or bad. This comes at a time when the use of intoxicating substances causes us to make irrational decisions. This increases the possibility that when you are intoxicated with dagga, alcohol or any other substance that affects your brain, you do things that you regret afterwards, like having sex without a condom because you were intoxicated at that particular time.
This comes again at a time when most of us, not everybody, but most of us, are controlled by our emotions instead of us controlling our emotions. If we are controlled by emotions, there is no way we can think we can control things like HIV and Aids. Once again, this comes at a time when the physically strong and the rich use some of those things for those who are vulnerable and poor, because they know that they cannot say no to some of the things that they are saying. This comes at a time when in some areas, especially in rural areas, there is no equality: females are still regarded as lower than males and are regarded as subjects of other people.
I mention this solely because I want to say that HIV/Aids is a societal problem, not that of an individual. We cannot make the Minister of Health answer a lot of questions when it is a societal problem; neither can we say it is the Deputy President who is supposed to answer questions.
Hon Speaker, may I digress a little bit. I have said before that anything that we mismanage results in health problems and death. As all of us would remember, we are born in hospitals and we die in hospitals. Our entry and exit is actually in the Department of Health's hands. I say this, just to digress a little bit, in that there is something that we call climate change, which I am sure is going to affect all of us if we don't manage it very well. If it is managed well, there probably won't be problems. But I want to go further and say that we know that climate change is going to affect people. They are going to die because of hunger, heatstroke and chemical problems.
In terms of health, that there are micro-organisms, like the virus we are talking about, about which there are many theories as to how HIV came about, although nobody actually knows. The micro-organisms, coupled with climate change - most of them when their space is threatened - are going to mutate and change their ways of doing things. If that happens, most of those micro-organisms that have been harmless are going to become harmful. Even those that were less virulent are going to be more virulent because of climate change and the fact that their space is being threatened, either by heat or whatever changes that are going to happen with climate change. So, if we don't deal with climate change now, we must be prepared, as a people of the world, with new vaccines and new medicines that will change time and again. As you know, a new virus comes into being and you don't know where it came from. This is because of these mutations. This is all as a result of the fact that we are in a situation where things are changing. I want to go on and say this virus has had a very negative impact on us. Besides paying taxes that are paying for drugs and paying hospital bills because of this virus, it unfortunately affects those people that are not economically strong or viable. When those people develop immune system problems, they are off work more than at work, and yet organisations have to continue paying for them even if they are not at work. A lot of people have been boarded from work because of the fact that they are sick and they don't contribute to the economy but, at the same time, they are getting money out of the economy because their immune system causes them to be sick more often than well.
I don't think there is any language, as far as I know, that has a name for somebody who had kids that have died. If a male loses his wife, we call that person a widower; if somebody has lost a husband, we call her a widow. And if kids have lost parents, we call them orphans. But there is no name given to somebody who has lost kids. It tells you that this was not supposed to happen, but is happening with HIV/Aids. Many elderly people are looking after their houses. Many elderly people are looking after their grandchildren, because the parents are not there, owing to HIV/Aids. This is something that is abnormal, and we think should be changed.
As I said, it has been 30 years since HIV and Aids were discovered. And this government, led by the ANC, has only been in power for 17 years, but it has managed to put policies and strategies in place to make sure that this is going to be curbed. [Applause.] Not only have they managed to put strategies in place, they have managed to drop the price of drugs by 50%, and they have managed, as has been mentioned by the Minister here, to lower the mother-to-child transmission rate. All of this tells you that the ANC- led government has done something to make sure that HIV and Aids should be curbed.
This obviously tells us that we should not lose hope, and we should be more vigilant to make sure that we manage this disease and curb it so that nobody dies from it or gets sick with this disease. We must not lose hope, and we must make sure that we assist each other and unite in fighting this disease. If we don't do that, we will all be killed. We should not use this for political gains, but rather to make sure that everybody has a better life. Thank you. [Applause.]