Should we care about the appalling HIV rates in South Africa, if the people of South Africa elect someone who does not care either?

Want a hyper-epidemic? All you need is a tradition of polygamy AND high levels of female autonomy. Big Men have their little network of wives and/or lovers. Women buy in to duty sex for the status and security, but get to run their own little networks on the side, for the fun of it.

That has been the pattern in South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and a number of other countries where more than one adult in seven has HIV.

But woe betide anyone who points this out. At best, you are insensitive to cultural traditions. At worst, you are perpetuating racist myths of the hypersexualised African male, blah, blah, blah.

Shouldn’t people get what they deserve?

Update: a reader who knows the subject writes:

Surely the real irresponsibility lies within the card-carrying ANC? It’s they who really choose the country’s leader.

Well, sure.

But I think the point the writer of the above article was getting at was just that.

We need to have the courage to tell Africans bluntly that certain African cultural norms are dooming them, and not flinch when accusations of RAAACISM come flying back..

And we also need to speak out strongly against the folly of ridiculous leaders who in one way or the other play to dangerous African superstitions and prejudices and make things worse.

When Nelson Mandela dies, how many of the thousands of obituaries round the world will blame him for not roundly denouncing Thabo Mbeki and his crazy AIDS policies, which have led to hundreds of thousands of African deaths? 

Isn’t it a perverse form of racism – and in any case a policy hugely damaging to Africa – not to press hard points like this?