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Beauty Fights the AIDS Beast

By Ferial Haffajee

Twenty-one year old Mpule Kwelagobe is a refreshingly empowering figure in the fight against AIDS in Africa.

The image of AIDS is more commonly that of wasted babies with bulging eyes, reed thin men and women sapped of their fertility, their energy and verve. Kwelagobe is a UN Population Fund goodwill ambassador, a Botswana national and a former Miss Universe.

She shatters stereotypes of the beauty queen - she is articulate and socially conscious.

Kwelagobe wore a really cool Afro, simple shirt and slacks - no beauty queen gloves or gown - when she addressed the conference yesterday.

She is part of the UNFPA's face to face campaign, which uses celebrities in advocacy work on HIV/AIDS. Kwelagobe runs a foundation in Gabarone, Botswana and works with young people. Her country has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the world - it afflicts 35 per cent of the 1.5 million citizens - with young women between 15 and 24 years old twice as likely to be infected. One of the ways in which Botswana will slow the spread of AIDS is by targeting the young in behavioural change practices - getting young people to delay the onset of their first sexual experience; teaching them safe sex and providing them with other leisure activities.

"I want to put youth concerns and needs at the forefront of my work," says Kwelagobe.

"These days I think of AIDS all the time. But I can't say that this is the same for a young woman in Botswana when she meets a young man. It should be, but young people are still living in the moment."

Kwelagobe was joined at yesterday's meeting by Belgian TV star, Goedele Liekens, who has also visited Botswana as a UNFPA goodwill ambassador. Earlier this year, she took five Flemish teenagers to Botswana to see firsthand the ravages of AIDS. It changed their lives, as witnessed by a documentary shown yesterday. The Belgian group went to AIDS funerals, cared for AIDS babies and formed close links with 28-year-old Staphie and her two daughters who are all HIV-positive.

They made friends with teenagers and discussed sex - in one clip from the documentary, they were pictured handing out condoms to Batswana youth.

This provoked a sharp response from Canut Niyonkuru, a Burundian delegate swho said, "relations between teenagers in Europe were different from those in Africa. If a young woman carries a condom, it is like an invitation". He added that it was far more preferable for young people to learn from elders.

In a lively exchange, Liekens replied that the young people they had met had complained about the embarrassment in going to get condoms "from an aunty of an aunty at the clinic. You can't ask an aunt of an aunt how to unroll a condom in the dark", she said.