Publications
Partners
Not enough is being done to save the lives of black people, especially black women, who are exposed to Depo Provera’s deadly side effects, writes Thandolwethu Gulwa.
This virus has been eating up my nation for years – from the inside out.
It has left many of my people – like Xolani Nkosi Johnson – now in tombs rooted eternally to the earth.
Sometimes I long for the time Nkosi was alive – not that there was beauty in seeing such a young soul die before my eyes – but for his bravery.
It’s the same bravery black women in Africa show when they walk into health institutions for the Depo Provera, the injectable contraceptive also known as Petogen.
I never knew Nkosi personally, but his voice turned my shy, introverted self aged four, into a public speaker and a writer.
I was terrified when I learnt there was medical research proving that Depo Provera increases by more than 50% a woman’s chances of being infected with HIV. Subsequently, new research has come out that indicates that it doesn’t, but still the risks were there.
This statistic compels me to think back and I see the faces of black women in the townships. (I instantly block the thought that the township is a legacy of apartheid.)
My people in Phelandaba, Lady Frere, Tsolo, Langa and everywhere in shacks and mansions devastated by this pandemic.
I am reminded of Malcolm X’s speech — Who Taught You to Hate Yourself — which he delivered in Los Angeles on May 5 1962 at the funeral of Ronald Stokes, shot dead by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Malcolm X said then the black woman was the most unprotected person in the US.
Today I think a woman is still the most unprotected person in the world when I think of the consequences of Depo Provera which my gender and my race have been exposed to since apartheid.
I appreciate it — with all my heart — when Europeans lend a hand to my community.
But then I turn pitch-black from anger and rage when I think of the millions of bloody hands the West has extended to African women through this deadly contraceptive.
In most cases I am black before I am considered a human being. I’m a black woman.
And this alone determines many things that are exercised on my body. Even by the black men who have been indoctrinated to hate and wage war on my body through the ages.
But, that my own government has continued to carry the legacy of apartheid on its shoulders reminds me of Lady Justice, she who wears the sword and the balance – blindly.
First, government officials knew about the deep trauma the injection contraceptive brought women in apartheid South Africa.
Black women especially were reluctantly injected with that! It says a lot about those terrorists who were in power yesteryear.
I almost spit blood when I think of the numerous disasters, turmoil and diseases that the orange, white and blue flag of apartheid South Africa caused.
A lot of horrible things happened under that flag. The blue probably represents the fathoms of oceans of immeasurable pain and the orange a shade of a deep scorching sun that even the strongest melanated bodies couldn’t cope with.
White South Africans, in private conversations, say black people “must forget and get over apartheid”.
They say we blame everything on apartheid. But I still do point my fingers — all 10 of them — at apartheid’s legacies.
When I see the orange, white and blue flag I get angry.
The Boere still have pride in that flag. Yet one thing I know is that they cared neither about us nor our bodies.
Of course, there are exceptions. Like the businessperson and doctor who have funded my education since I was 16; the head teachers of my schools who cared enough to provide me with food instead of letting my tummy roar louder than Nala.
I cherish their kindness.
But in the same breath, what bothers me is how white people want my people to “build a bridge and get over it”.
It bothers me that they do not want to invest enough in black history to understand that there are barely any tools to cut away the sores because the wounds are too deep and hardly healed.
We can’t just let go of things, especially when young people like me come across information such as the side effects of Depo Provera.
My white former schoolmates often refer to my rage of protest at racism whenever I speak against white domination.
And I can, to an extent, embrace the word because it simply means I can speak my mind even more.
I’m a young black woman who says many things some may consider as prejudice, but I say them in protest for what my people – and especially my generation – are and have been going through.
To my compatriots I say it’s time to save lives. Let your helper, farm worker, gardener, black colleague know that the Depo Provera injected into her mother, sister, brother is deadly.
I am eternally grateful to the fists of my mother and Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela’s generation, who fought for our liberation.
I am thankful for the black consciousness that Steve Biko left behind as a legacy to my people.
Through the word of mouth and my pen, I am endlessly grateful.
I want to be part of the generation that saves South Africa’s majority with this piece of information.
In Alice Walker’s words: “We had been stripped of everything but our black skins. My people had once been whole, pregnant with life.”
Gulwa is a journalism student at Rhodes University
- This article was amended on July 31 2019 to include the link to the new research.
