Sisonke Msimang - A Pragmatic Idealist

 

 

So, I am the product of a freedom fighter and an accountant, which I guess would make me a pragmatic idealist. [audience chuckles] My father left South Africa when he was 21 years old to join the armed wing of the liberation struggle. A few years later, he met my mother-- Well, she wasn't my mother at the time, but he met an accounting student, a young accounting student, who was charming and beautiful and the rest, as they say, is history. 

 

So, when we were growing up, my parents used to say things like, “When we are free, one day when freedom comes, when liberation is here. And our favorite would be when Nelson Mandela is released from jail.” My sisters and I would look at each other and be like, “Yeah, right. That's ever going to happen. [audience laughter] Nelson Mandela is going to get out of jail.” Of course, he did. And not only did he get out of jail, but actually he was the first President of a free and democratic South Africa. 

 

And so, fast forward, it's the mid-1990s. My family is back, I'm back from university and I've landed my first job. It's actually my dream job. I'm working for the United Nations on a program on young people and HIV and AIDS. And so, of course, it's a pragmatic idealist dream come true. [audience laughter] On the one hand, it's the UN, so it's like love, peace and happiness. And on the other hand, let's face it, the UN is the world's biggest bureaucracy. So, it's rules and systems and procedures, and I'm in heaven, both [audience laughter] at the same time in one place. So, it's great. So, it's great. 

 

So, I'm very happy. I'm also really excited, because I get to throw myself into my new country and this new job all at the same time. Because by this time, it's clear to me that while my parents’ generation, for them, the struggle was one to end white minority rule. For my generation, the struggle is going to be slightly different. For us, it's going to be the tangibles. It's going to be health and education and water and sanitation, the things that you need to know stuff about. So, I throw myself into reading and research and trying to figure out as much as I can, because I'm the pragmatic idealist. So, I've got to figure out how to do this stuff. 

 

And so, I can tell you everything about HIV and AIDS and young people, because that's what my new job is about. I can tell you about the key elements of a plan for the syndromic management of STIs. I can tell you how many young women living in the northern KwaZulu-Natal district of [unintelligible [00:40:35] age 15 to 19 are living with HIV. I can tell you the likelihood of HIV transition and a single sex act. Like, I am on it. [audience laughter] 

 

And then, of course, I meet Prudence. So, I'm sitting in my office one morning, no doubt, with my head buried in some or other research report, and this whirling dervish of a mad dreadlocked teeth and joy and laughter person plunks herself in front of me. She introduces herself. Like me, she's a young woman who's working for the UN. While I was working on a program on young people and AIDS, Pru was working-- She was one of the first people living openly with HIV and AIDS in South Africa. And so, she was working for the UN to help to reduce stigma in the workplace. So, she was hired to demonstrate to employers that people living with HIV aren't going to bite, and that you can actually hire people living with HIV and there's going to be no negative consequences for you or your bottom line. 

 

And so, we had a lot in common. And so, we hung out, not just in the office, but on weekends. There were concerts and there were plays, and South Africa was this amazing new blossoming place with this fantastic new constitution. Everybody had rights. Pru and her mad group of friends were all lesbians, which was fantastic for me, because my cool points shot up a 1,000%. [audience laughter] So, it was wonderful. It was great. It was a wonderful, wonderful time. But of course, it wasn't as simple as things seemed on the surface. 

 

After some time, it became clear to me that Prudence was in a very violent and abusive relationship. And so, I pulled her aside and I was like, “Pru, what's going on, man? You're the most confident, amazing woman I know what's happening.” She's like “Eh, eh.” “It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, because what's going to happen is you need to get out of this relationship, and the way you're going to get out of that is you're going to move in with us. There's plenty of space in our house. Come and live with us.”

 

And so, before you knew it, Pru was living with us. And of course, there wasn't a lot of space, so she was living in my room. Actually, she was not just staying in her room, she was staying in her bed. So, we were chatter, chatter, chatter late into every night, and we would get up in the morning and go to the office exhausted, because we were talking so much. Twice a week, because Prudence had managed to wangle her way into this experimental drug treatment program, because these were the days before antiretrovirals were widely available, twice a week, we would get on the highway from Pretoria where we lived, and drive to Johannesburg to the doctor's office where she would have the meds. 

 

I remember the first time we got to the doctor's office, I parked and I took the key out of the ignition, ready to get out, and Pru was like, “You stay here.” And I'm like, “Oh, but we do everything together.” “Okay, okay, okay, stay in the car.” And so, Pru went in and the drive back was in silence. There was no talking. And so, this happened twice a week, every week for a few weeks. After a couple of weeks, the meds were clearly starting to have their effects on her. We got to the doctor's office one morning and she needed help. There were two steps to walk up to get into the doctor's practice, and so she needed some help. And so, I got out to help her. Inside, secretly, I'm like, “I'm feeling really bad that she's not feeling well, but thank God I get to go inside, because now I see what's going on in there.” 

 

So, we go inside. It's the small little room, and it's about 12 to 15 people who are sitting in that room and it's this deathly silence. Contrary to what all the headlines were telling us at that time about what AIDS looked like, AIDS is a black disease, AIDS is a gay disease, AIDS is a disease of poverty. Actually, this room didn't look like that at all. It was a fairly affluent, middle-class room. But it was clear that nobody in that room wanted to be there. So, it was this deathly silence. And so, we crept in, and we sat down and people would be called one by one. The receptionist called this name, and it was first names only, and she called Alice. Prue stands up and she goes inside, and I'm like, “Huh.”

 

She comes back out after about 30 minutes or so, and we go back into the car and we start making the long, silent trek back to Pretoria. And so, I'm driving. I look at her and I say, “What's he like?” And Pru says, “What's who like?” And I said, “The doctor, what's he like?” She looked at me for a long moment and she said, “He won't touch me without gloves on.” I realized that my friend, my brave, courageous, amazing friend, who is openly living with HIV in a time when people are getting killed for that, who is an out lesbian at a time when women were getting killed for that, still are, actually, that she's also petrified and vulnerable and ashamed of herself. That's not a contradiction. That's all of us. That's life. It's all happening at the same time. 

 

And so, in that moment, Pru taught me a really powerful and important lesson, a lesson that I have carried with me in 20 years as an activist and as an ally with people living with HIV and AIDS. It was a lesson that was basically that it was fine to be a pragmatic idealist, that pragmatism is good and idealism is good. But that what I was missing was empathy. And that if I was going to make any difference, that I wasn't actually listening to what Pru was saying, I was listening, but I wasn't listening enough, and that if I was going to make any kind of impact and if I was going to be the advocate that I wanted to be, that what I was going to have to do was listen not just to the words of people like Prudence, but much more importantly, I needed to listen to the silences.