Aids has orphaned around 750,000 children in South Africa. This compelling documentary follows three families in rural Zululand to see how HIV/Aids has affected the
children.
Award-winning documentary maker Brian Woods presents events as
much as possible from the children's point of view. He explains what it was like making such an emotive film.
Interview
BBC Four: How did you choose the village you featured?
Brian Woods: I wrote a composite story of a rural village in South Africa, almost certainly in the Kwa-Zulu Natal region where the incidence of Aids is highest. I needed a working title for the film, so I opened up my atlas and in the heart of Natal was a town called Nkandla. The Orphans of Nkandla just had a nice ring to it. My co-producer Deborah met some of the Aids charities in Durban and described the kind of location we were looking for. One of these guys said, "I think the place you ought to go to is a village called Nkandla". It was just one of those remarkable coincidences which make you think, "Ah, this is meant to be!"
BBC Four: What was it like filming such heart-rending scenes?
BW: We had a wonderful associate producer called Xoliswa Sithole. If ever anyone got too glum, she fixed that. Her attitude is; "Look, this thing that’s killing my people is terrible, but getting morbid about it isn’t going to help. What’s going to help is doing something about it, so let’s keep focused on that".
There’s a scene where the Mbata kids are alone that was pretty grim. Seven-year-old Sne just started sobbing, and of course all you want to do is put the camera down and put your arm round him. But on the other hand you know that what’s going to work for him in the long term is people seeing his distress and responding to it, and asking “how can I help?” That was probably the worst moment. His sister didn’t really know how to comfort him because she was dealing with her own grief and just wasn't old enough to mother him. After the scene played itself out, Xoliswa was immediately in there comforting them, and within two minutes had them both laughing. You try to end the interview with laughter, because you know you’ve taken them somewhere nasty and you need to bring them back. You can’t leave them there and walk away.
BBC Four: It’s interesting that in the Zulu language, you can’t say that you have Aids, only that you are Aids. How much do you think this plays a part in the community’s prejudiced and unsupportive attitude to sufferers and orphans that we see in the film?
BW: I think that’s actually an expression of the prejudice. The Zulu word for Aids, "ingculazo", is a nasty, horrible word - its associations are sex and dirt and filth. It’s the most unpleasant thing you could say about someone. And that’s just a reflection of the prejudice and the veil of silence around the disease. The assumption is that if you have Aids then you’re a prostitute or you sleep with prostitutes, which is absurd in a society where it’s so widely accepted that people will have affairs outside marriage. It’s almost odd to be faithful, particularly for men.
The orphans are the product of people who have Aids, so they’re tainted by this stigma. An awful lot of children don’t get taken in, and that’s just the reality of the degree to which Aids is affecting South Africa. I don’t think they are any more callous than anyone else. I think that if in our society a third of the adults you knew either died of Aids or were affected by Aids, and if you had already taken on two or three nephews and nieces, you’d have second thoughts about whether or not you were going to take more in as well.
BBC Four: In your opinion what single change in South African government would have the greatest effect? And what change needs to happen in the West?
BW: In South Africa they need to implement the promise they made last year to get anti-retrovirals (ARVs) to everyone with Aids. If they follow through on that, it will transform the situation. You can keep someone alive on a generic triple therapy cocktail for $140 a year, but if you use branded drugs it costs four times as much.
You can’t put a triple therapy pill together - the drug companies won’t agree because each one owns the patents on their drug. The generic drug companies in India have shown that it’s easy and very effective, but there’s enormous pressure on the South African government not to use generics, which is coming from the European and American pharmaceutical companies.
The West needs to let the developing world use generics, that’s the single biggest thing. Bush came out last year and said "I’m giving $15bn to fight Aids in Africa", and then said, "but you’ve got to use branded medicines. And if you even think about using generics, we’ll stop all funding to projects in your country". For all sorts of political reasons George Bush will do everything he possibly can to stop it happening.
BBC Four: What do you think the future holds for South Africa in the wake of this "plague of biblical proportions"?
BW: The Aids pandemic has not peaked yet. Even if they were allowed to use generics and started doling out ARVs tomorrow, death rates would continue to rise. There’s going to be a whole generation of children who will have grown up without parents. How the country handles that, who knows? They could have an awful lot of very angry young men in 10 years’ time, or maybe not, if they can get the economy working. So I guess I don’t really know!
