Whose Story Is It To Tell? Poem by Khethiwe Ramathuthu

And why after so many years do we still feel that there should be secrecy around it?
Why is it still a disease that people feel they have to be ashamed of, that they have to defend themselves for having it, as if they did some heinous act to get the disease?
I ask you because this is my story, but I do not know if it is mine to tell.
Can I tell the story if it affects so many people.

And as much as I know that me telling my story might set someone else free, might make the world see that here we are presented with an opportunity to tap into our humanity, our sense of Ubuntu, it might also make the people who are affected feel that I have taken the decision to disclose away from them, that I have taken their privacy away from them and now they have to be ashamed or feel that they have to defend themselves.

Whose story is it to tell?

This is my story, I am HIV positive, my sister is HIV positive, my friend is HIV positive, my mother is HIV positive but who isn’t?

Who isn’t HIV positive or is affected by HIV, who has not suffered the loss, the shame, the fear, almost everyone in South Africa.
Why then do we still make the ugly jokes, so and so is so….. thin I think he has the three letters?

You are coughing so much I think unamagama amathathu.

Do you know how painful it is to hear that to a mother who has just buried her child because of the same illness?

Do you know how painful it is to a sister to hear that being said about her sister, do you know how painful it is to a women who contracted the illness from her husband who has just passed away and she has had to sit on the mattress and mourn him even though he has never said I am sorry to her.
This is my story, and I know this is the story of a lot of people but not too many people know that in my story I have seen the families being taught to forgive, and to love and truly choose to love like I have never seen in this lifetime before.

Very few have felt the love of a family working together to rebuild, to redeem a marriage.

This is my story but whose story is it to tell?

Whose story is it to tell that through the grace of God that life does go on and that it goes on as if nothing ever happened.

Whose story is it to tell that through the grace of God, the love and support of a good family, you and I are no different.

This is my story but I do not know if it is mine to tell and until I can truly tell the story without fear and without doubt,
then Lord please save us, save us because we are a people so far away from love that even when you present such opportunities like HIV for us to come together, love one another and care for one another we are still not able to see it.

This is my story, the world is HIV positive but does not want to tell the story, so who story is it to tell anyway?