It’s been a long time since as a nation we grappled with the debate on whether to start supplying prison inmates with condoms.
The debate came about after a painful realization that as much as we did not want to believe it, same sex intercourse goes on inside our prison walls.
Because for the most part the people engaging in such sexual relations do not have access to condoms, it goes without saying that such sex is in the main unprotected.
Homosexuality is one of Botswana’s most ingrained cultural taboos.
Batswana simply do not want to engage with matter, least of all as part of their public debates discourse.
For many of our culturally conservative people, especially in the rural areas the issue is simply a no go area.
It is regarded as an overly sensitive matter that is best left alone, of course, with the hope that it does not happen.
The sad reality though is that same sex relationships are on the increase and no amount of legislation or wishing them away is going to bring them to an end.
We only pretend same sex does not happen at our own peril as a nation.
With particular reference to our prisons, unless there is a change of both law and policy as a country we stand to lose out.
What is at risk are not only the lives of those involved but also the progress, the gains and momentum we have achieved over the years in our national fight against HIV/AIDS.
The starting point towards solving the problem that we have as a country would be to admit that indeed there is a problem.
In which case we have to confront the ground-truth that indeed sexual intercourse takes place inside prison among inmates of the same sex. Having accepted that such intercourse does happen ÔÇô however illegal ÔÇô then we have to move on to another level of establishing ways to mitigate the effects of such sex on the broader society.
It is generally agreed that the best way to avoid HIV/AIDS is abstinence. But as is common knowledge, abstinence has proved easier to preach than to practice, including among the clergymen who at least in theory are supposed to be celibate.
After abstinence the best known way to prevent HIV/AIDS is the use of condoms.
If that holds, then we have to say a failure to provide condoms to people in such circumstances as our prison can very easily be equated to murder ÔÇô literally.
We cannot blame the Catholic Church stance against condoms, and do exactly the same thing to a section of our population.
The tragedy is that not only does sex inside prison expose those involved to the risks of new infections and first time infections, a majority of inmates are also poised to rejoin the realms of the larger society when they have done their time in prison.
In which instance it is not very clear what message we are sending out.
Either our stance is informed by irrational homophobia ÔÇô or as is often said those who in public tend to show a rabid hatred for homosexuality are in actual fact – or should we say in private – homosexuals who are only waiting to be found out.
In a bad way, the manner of our national behaviour is comparable to the South Africans who a few years ago instead of tackling the HIV/AIDS problem they, instead, reverted to a philosophical debate on whether there was such a thing as HIV and what its causes were.
The result has been that today South Africa is many years behind in its fight against the clinical, social and economic ravages that come about as a result of HIV/AIDS.
