by photographer Fanie Jason
2002 FiftyCrows PhotoFund Winner - Africa Region

The trigger for this project was a local news story I covered in December 2000. In Philippi township, near Cape Town a young mother, her husband and their three-year-old daughter, all died of AIDS-related illnesses within twenty-four hours of each other.

The dead man’s grief stricken father traveled over 1,000 kilometers from the Transkei to Cape Town to bury his family. The three had lived in a tiny shack in the squatter camp. Since their HIV status had become known, they had been shunned by the community and were too poor even to travel to a free hospital.

In the last four years, I have attended hundreds of such township funerals.

When I first started documenting HIV and Aids, it was clear that there was (and still is) a huge reluctance to speak openly about the virus or even relate deaths to Aids related illness. In the black townships, there is still a huge stigma attached and widespread ignorance about transmission. Last month, a priest declared at a funeral that the deceased had been poisoned with muti (African witchcraft).

However, there are some public figures that are open about their status. Anneline Malebo, jazz singer, admitted she was HIV positive two months before she died in August last year. International playwright Gibson Kente is known to be in the last stages of Aids related illness. Former Government Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi wept openly when he lost first a son and then a daughter to Aids in less than a year.

Bowing to international pressure and vociferous campaigns by Aids activists, the South African government was eventually forced into a U turn on its policies on Aids. Recently a national rollout of free anti retroviral drugs for all HIV positive South Africans was announced.

For many it is too little too late. According to recent estimates, over 85,000 people die from Aids related illness in South Africa each year. And at the funerals the word ‘Aids’ is still a hushed whisper. This is Life in Denial.

Photographing victims is often harrowing; I have to win the confidence of my subjects over time. I want to portray intimacy, however painful. Editors of publications are often reluctant to use pictures of people in the terminal stages of illness, saying they are “too horrible,” and that they will offend their readership!

In one of my photographs, “Family Portrait” a township family smiles for the camera. The father was suffering from AIDS related TB. He is now dead. The baby was HIV positive. She is now dead. The eldest child had not been tested. He is still alive. The mother did not discuss her HIV status and is now in a new relationship. This is living in denial.

Fanie Jason 2004