Red Rhinos, Red Ribbons, Red Roofs

On the N2 inbound, somewhere around where the R300 crosses over the highway, there is a patch of reverse graffiti on the concrete barrier between the lanes going into and coming out of the city. At first I caught only a snatch of it as I sat behind the driver and his friend in the parachute tracksuit--who smiles a lot but never speaks and smokes a lot but never in front of me--wondering why we always have to listen to Cape Talk, and musing about whether the radio call-in torture gives me enough of a reason to buy my own car. So all I saw initially were rows of crosses, not quite white against the grey-brown canvas of the barrier, but light enough to stand out. I first thought they commemorated pedestrians who have died trying to cross this stretch of highway. But then I saw the line "Rhinos killed" and realized the memorial was for an entirely different kind of entity.

A quick google of "N2 rhino graffiti" tells me that actually the graffiti has been up since August 2012. I hadn't noticed it before, I assume because I'm never a passenger along this stretch of road. I'm driving, always, albeit in cars that aren't mine. To be fair though, the graffiti has changed and got bigger. It's different to what's in the Green Renaissance video. Now instead of 312 rhinos dead, it shows a higher number: I can't quite remember, I think it was in the 600's. Fine, but where am I taking this? I could ask why the rhino, when across the road from the memorial are people with no horns endangered by the structural violence that hunts them. But I won't. Because I understand that people pick their battles--we are free to fight the fights we wish to--and caring about rhinos doesn't mean you don't care about people. So what does it mean?

Little red rhino horns: you can buy them from your local CNA and tie them to the front of your car. Builds awareness, and the proceeds go to protecting the rhino. Where have I heard this before?

Little red ribbons: you can buy them anywhere and pin them to the front of your clothes. Builds awareness, and the proceeds go to prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS. It used to dominate our collective consciousness. We got AIDS talks at school, at varsity. You couldn't go into a public space without seeing a poster, or several. In every bathroom a condom dispenser with the little blue packets of cheapie Choice condoms. Candlelight vigils and speeches and NGO logos that had the red-red ribbon of AIDS looped into their name. Everyone had an HIV+ TAC Tshirt, everyone--at least up on campus. It was part of the undergrad experience. Mbeki's denialism, Manto's potatoes, Zuma's infamous shower, and swathes and swathes of little red ribbons.

It's not that it's stopped. On the 1st of December we remember both AIDS Day and our campaigns against AIDS. TAC is still TAC. But we've kind of moved on. We've moved on to sanitation and education, to climate change and food security, to Marikana, Nkandla and Phillipi East. Does it mean that we don't care about AIDS or the lives it effects? No. But nor does it mean that the battle is over or that the war is won. I work with organizations who've had funding cut, projects cut, people cut; all because AIDS is no longer the donor concern that it once was. It captured our collective empathy for years, and then perhaps we got saturated, or perhaps we got tired. Either way, we moved on.

Little red rhino horns, little red ribbons, little red roofs on the side of the road because while government houses come in different colours, their roofs all come in red. I'll dig out my little red ribbon this weekend, and wear it to work on Monday. I care about the rhino, I do, but I haven't forgotten the other red artefacts that require response.