Turn on the radio to learn about sex
For decades, on-air hosts have been educating the public about safe practices and the spread of HIV
When Marlene Wasserman was a young woman, she wanted to study sex.
It’s ironic that she was interested in how people get together in the most intimate of ways because she lives in a country obsessed with keeping people apart.
“You’ve got to remember that we had censorship,” explains Wasserman. “There was sexuality censorship so there was absolutely no exposure to pornography, to sexuality education, to sex toys.”
South Africa was in the grips of apartheid — a brutal system of white minority rule that kept people of colour separate from whites.
Sex wasn’t just taboo, it was dangerous. Legislation made sex between blacks and whites illegal.
In the 1990s everything changed. Anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 — the beginning of the end of apartheid.
People started talking, telling their stories. And one story that kept coming up was about this disease, which for years had been infecting people.
A decade of silence had left South Africa with an unchecked HIV/AIDS epidemic. Wasserman knew what she needed to do. By this time, she was a clinical sexologist and sex therapist. She took on the pseud- onym Dr. Eve and went on South Africa’s most popular black radio station to talk about sex, HIV and contraception.
And that’s when the phone calls started. It was always men. Dr. Eve is a white woman, and she was telling them what to do in bed.
“(They told me) ‘this is a white man’s disease,’ ” Wasserman recalls. “‘We don’t have it here in South Africa. This is not a black man’s disease. We don’t have homosexuality, and we don’t have HIV.’ ”
But the reality was different. “There was these people coming forward saying, ‘I’m positive, but there isn’t anything to treat me with,’ so the deaths began,” says Wasserman. Today, Dr. Eve is one of South Africa’s most beloved talk radio hosts.
In South Africa, radio has helped people talk about HIV. Talk radio star Criselda Kananda Dudumashe can relate to the issues facing HIV-positive South Africans. She’s one herself.
Dudumashe is also one of the few media stars who have come out publicly as HIVpositive. She says she wanted to do a different kind of radio show — one that really talked about living with the virus.
The township of Khayelitsha, in Cape Town, has been hit hard by the epidemic: At COSAT high school, most of the kids have a friend, relative or neighbour who is positive.
Some of the students are youth radio reporters who work with the Children’s Radio Foundation. With guidance from instructors, the teens put together a radio show about issues that affect them.
A lot of these conversations are similar to the ones Dr. Eve had 20 years ago. And that’s something that exasperates activists and health workers. Even though billions have been invested in education and access to protection, most new infections are still in young people, especially girls.
These students are fed up with peers who don’t change their behaviour when it comes to sexual activity. And most of all, they’re tired of discussing what everyone already knows: how to make this stop.