Njongonkulu Ndungane, the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and anti-apartheid activist, will speak on the current African AIDS crisis and how Americans can help by understanding and becoming involved in the fight against HIV and AIDS. His lecture, “Going Beyond Despair: AIDS and Poverty in Africa and What You Can Do About It,” is cosponsored by Episcopal Campus Ministry, Wash U DATA, Lutheran Campus Ministry and the Association of Black Students.

“What he really wants to convey to people is that individuals and communities can make a huge difference-that there is a great deal that we can do and there is great hope out there, and the hope is in our hands,” said Reverend Mike Kinman of the Episcopal Campus Ministry.

Ndungane, Desmond Tutu’s successor of Cape Town, began his public involvement by protesting the segregation ideologies of the apartheid laws in the late 1950s.

“We identified the apartheid laws as the laws that were at the heart of the oppression of the black person,” said Ndungane in a phone interview. “These were the laws that determined where one could live, where one could go to school, whom you could fall in love with or even marry, and where a person could be buried.”

His political activism soon led to his arrest. Ndungane was imprisoned on Robben Island for three years alongside civil rights activist and later South African President Nelson Mandela.

Since he assumed the position of archbishop in 1996, Ndungane has been working as an advocate for bringing HIV, AIDS and global poverty in sub-Saharan Africa to the world’s attention. He was a key member of the team that obtained a $10 million USAID grant for AIDS prevention in the Anglican Province of Southern Africa. He also wrote the book “A World With A Human Face: A Voice from Africa.”

Every 18 days, 150,000 people worldwide die of HIV/AIDS, which is the same number of people who died in the Southeast Asia tsunami this past year.

Ndungane explained that stigma is one of the major problems preventing a public conversation about HIV and AIDS. He was one of the first well-known political and religious figures to take a public AIDS test as an effort to decrease the fear of discussing AIDS in the public arena.

“Stigma prevents people from early testing,” said Ndungane. “We have got to teach that AIDS is not a punishment from God; it is a disease, like any disease, that is manageable, preventable and treatable.”

The archbishop, through the Church, has helped to create a program what will help people engage in the four major areas of recognizing the HIV/AIDS virus, which include how to fight stigma, prevent the spread of infection, treat the disease and care for those who are dying of AIDS. Another goal is targeting young students and educating them about “abstain[ing] from sex, so that those who are negative will remain negative,” Ndungane said.

All of his efforts look to further one important purpose.

“Our major goal is to have a generation without AIDS,” said Ndungane.

Ndungane will speak about the African AIDS crisis in Rebstock 215 at 4:30 p.m. Later tonight, he will also be the guest preacher at the Episcopal Campus Ministry weekly worship service at 8 p.m. in Rockwell House.

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