In the visitors’ books of Eshowe’s many guesthouses and hotels, tourists inspired by verdant sugar cane fields and blossoming trees write about “a corner of Eden”.
Locals and specialists know the small town set high among the rolling hills that run along South Africa’s eastern coast for another reason.
With the world’s attention now focused on a new infectious and potentially lethal disease, there is hope that South Africa’s long battle against an earlier pandemic – and other infectious diseases – can provide ideas for possible solutions and hope.
South Africa remains the centre of the global HIV pandemic, and about 8 million people were estimated to be living with HIV in 2019, including one in five of all those aged 15–49. KwaZulu-Natal is the worst-hit province of the country, and Eshowe is among the very worst-hit communities.
But, even in Eshowe, there is a growing belief in a future without HIV.