ABSTRACT
In 2003, I walked into a pharmacy in Cape Town’s bustling train station and bought a bottle of herbal tonic called Africa’s Solution. It was not like any other remedy I’d seen. From street sellers, you could buy locally made tonics
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advertising a wide range of healthful properties; some interviewees used these, too. Africa’s Solution was different. Red, green, black and gold, like a brightly coloured African flag, it promised the indigenous answer that President Mbeki and many others hoped for. It claimed to help ‘tiredness and fatigue . . . chronic chest, perspiration at night, swollen glands’, all possible symptoms of HIV. A picture of a whiskery African potato, the mainstay of health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s nutritional advice for people with HIV, adorned the label. Retailing at R39.95 a bottle – then nearly onetenth of the monthly disability allowance – few people living with HIV could afford Africa’s Solution, but many would try anyway. It had a pleasant, vegetably taste, and lasted two years in my fridge before fermenting.
