Father Thomas D. Williams, moral theologian and dean of the theology school at Rome's Regina Apostolorum University sets the record straight on the relationship between AIDS and the use of condoms in Africa.
One thing is abundantly clear: the Church will never “promote” condom use as the remedy to the AIDS problem in Africa. The reason for this policy is twofold. First, promotion of condoms inevitably means the sanctioning of promiscuity, and consequently, the increasing of AIDS itself. Second, existing data suggests that condom promotion simply doesn’t work, while abstinence programs have more of a shot. As much as we may wish to shout about “safe sex,” condom distribution first and foremost sends a message about sex itself: it is perfectly fine to be promiscuous. And only as a side note: oh, and be safe.
I have spoken to a number of Africans who find the Western supposition that “they’re going to do it anyway” to be insulting and, frankly, racist. Prejudice against Africans as primitive peoples with no self-discipline or control over the sex drive simmers just beneath the surface of much anti-abstinence propaganda. Behind the cries for “realism” stands the unspoken assumption that Africans are naturally and incorrigibly promiscuous.
This supposition, however, besides its thinly veiled racism, flies in the face of statistics. If we truly want to be “realistic” and objective, we should look to Uganda, the only African nation that has substantially curbed the rate of AIDS infection. Through an intense abstinence-based campaign, Uganda managed to reduce the infection rate from 29 percent to 4 percent in just ten years. As South African Cardinal Wilfred Napier put it, the unified message in Uganda, beginning with the president, was “Change your behaviour ... change your behaviour.”Compare Uganda’s success with the dismal failure of the two most condom-flooded African nations, Botswana and South Africa. South Africa has been inundated with condoms and its rate of AIDS infection continues to soar at 22 percent of the entire population. Botswana’s situation is even worse, with 37 percent of the adult population infected by AIDS. Professor Norman Hearst, of the University of California at San Francisco, notes that in Botswana condom sales rose from one million in 1993 to 3 million in 2001, while HIV infection among urban pregnant women rose from 27 percent to 45 percent. In Cameroon, as well, condom sales rose from 6 million to 15 million, while HIV prevalence rose from 3 percent to 9 percent.