The following story triggered in me a question:
A first for soldiers living with HIV By Latoya Newman IOL
A KwaZulu-Natal soldier has become the first known HIV-positive soldier to be deployed externally by the SA National Defence Force. In a statement on Tuesday, the Aids Law Project said the sergeant, from 121 SAI Battalion, based in Mtubatuba, had made history on Friday when he was deployed on a peacekeeping mission to Sudan. This follows a May 2008 judgment declaring the SANDF’s HIV-testing policies – which were used to exclude people with HIV from recruitment, promotion or foreign deployment – unconstitutional.
The SA Security Forces Union welcomed the man’s deployment, but union president Bhekinkosi Mvovo said that the union could not celebrate until the SANDF had completely changed its policy in this regard. Mvovo said the SANDF was dragging its feet in instructing its commanders that HIV-positive soldiers could no longer be held back because of their status. Project spokesperson S’khumbuzo Maphumulo said: “The sergeant was originally excluded when his unit was scheduled for deployment to Sudan. “It was only after the project intervened that the chief of the army issued an instruction on September 28, authorising his deployment to Sudan. “The project has been informed that the sergeant departed for Sudan on Friday,” he added.
A soldier living with HIV can go and serve as a peacekeeper
A diplomat living with HIV can go and serve his country,
A priest living with HIV can serve his church and the faithful,
well only if he was lucky to be already ordained before the infection was detected. Which seminary takes a man with vocation in, when he is HIV positive in our days? Please tell me since when God has mad HIV a criteria for vocations?
Filed under: Politics and Society, Reflection, Aids, Church Matters, diplomat, hiv, people living with the virus, priest, soldier, south africa
God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE 