Decriminalization – a prerequisite to ending Aids and TB:
Every person has the right to live a full life with dignity. Yet across Southern Africa, a region that has achieved some of the world’s most remarkable gains against HIV, punitive criminal laws are undermining that principle.
Laws criminalising sex work, same-sex relationships, drug use, and HIV transmission are driving people away from the very health services that could save their lives.
As we mark Zero Discrimination Day on 1 March and look ahead to World TB Day on 25 March, this month offers a critical moment to confront a truth we can no longer avoid: the same laws that fuel the HIV epidemic also fuel tuberculosis. Both diseases thrive where criminalisation drives people underground and into denial and ignorance.
At the South African AIDS Conference in 2023, we met with former sex workers who now form part of the advocacy group, SWEAT, calling for the decriminalisation of sex work. Many relayed their stories of abuse, from both clients and the police. However, it wasn’t just the lack of police protection that made them more vulnerable to abuse but with it came a lack of access to health protection.
Their stories are not unique. They are proof that punitive laws are, in practice, driving people away from lifesaving health services.
This is not rhetoric. It is epidemiology.
They further described their relief at institutions such as WITS RHI and OUT among others, who had created spaces for them to access condoms, HIV prevention medication, testing and treatment without the fear of humiliation, scorn and stigma. Unfortunately, with the funding cuts of 2025, some of these clinics no longer exist. Today, many are dependent on the grassroot community-based organisations to provide these much-needed services.
Eswatini has the highest HIV prevalence of any country in the world – over 27% of its population is living with the virus. Yet HIV prevalence among sex workers in Eswatini stands at 60.5%, among the highest recorded anywhere on the continent.
In Lesotho and South Africa, key populations — including sex workers, gay men and other men who have sex with men, transgender people, and people who use drugs — bear a disproportionate burden of new infections. These are not coincidences of biology. They are the predictable consequences of criminalisation.
When sex work is criminalised, sex workers power equation with clients change totally and they cannot negotiate safer working conditions. They cannot report violence to police without risking arrest.
They avoid health facilities where stigma and legal exposure await them. When same-sex relationships are criminalised, gay men and transgender people are pushed underground, unable to access targeted prevention services, too afraid of disclosure to test for HIV or initiate treatment.
When drug use is criminalised without pathways to harm reduction, people who inject drugs share equipment and avoid health systems. When people living with HIV face the prospect of criminal prosecution for transmission or exposure, they defer testing, delay treatment, and remain silent, fuelling the very spread the law claims to prevent.
Criminalisation does not protect communities. It fractures them.
As March also marks World TB Day on the 25th, this is a moment to name an uncomfortable truth: the same structural failures that sustain the HIV epidemic also sustain tuberculosis.
In South Africa alone, more than half of all notified TB patients – 54% – are co-infected with HIV, and the incidence of new TB among people living with HIV remains the highest in Africa, exceeding 50% in parts of southern Africa. TB is the leading cause of death among people living with HIV globally, and the populations most exposed to both diseases are precisely those most criminalised.
Sex workers, people who use drugs, and incarcerated people face overlapping TB and HIV risks, compounded by the same barrier: fear of a health system that works with the law against them, not for them.
Social determinants such as poverty, inequality, and stigma, continue to be major barriers to eliminating TB, but law is the lever governments can pull today. We cannot “End TB” and “End AIDS” as separate siloed missions. We must end the conditions that make both diseases lethal for the most marginalised.
The findings from the 2024 HIV Stigma Index 2.0 report show that “more than half (54.6%) of those living with the virus have experienced the feeling of shame or guilt about their HIV positive status at some point in their lives”.
Internalised stigma can lead to feelings of shame, fear of disclosure, isolation, and despair. Overall, internalised stigma was higher amongst key populations: 65% of people who were using drugs experienced feeling shame or guilt about their status, followed by 60.3% of transgender people, 57.7% among men who have sex with men (MSM), and lastly 56.3% among sex workers.
South Africa’s Constitutional Court has long enshrined the right to dignity, equality, and bodily autonomy. Its Cabinet has proposed the repeal of laws criminalising sex work, a step UNAids has strongly welcomed. South Africa’s progressive legal architecture stands as a model for the region.
But progressive laws on paper mean nothing if their implementation remains punitive in practice, or if our neighbours are left behind. Lesotho has made important strides, with a new Labour Act banning employment discrimination against LGBTQI+ people and people living with HIV.
But same-sex relations remain criminalised in both Lesotho and Eswatini, and across the region, HIV exposure and transmission laws continue to be weaponised in ways wholly out of step with the science.
The urgency of this moment is reflected in the newly launched Global AIDS Strategy 2026–2031, which focuses global efforts to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 and sustain the HIV response beyond it.
The strategy makes a decisive shift, from a predominantly intervention-centred approach to a people-centred one, and is explicit that legal and social barriers, including criminalisation, must be dismantled if the world is to reach its goals. Governments in this sub-region are encouraged to read it, adopt it, and act on it.
UNAids is unequivocal: ending the criminalisation of key populations is not a peripheral human rights concern. It is central to the science of epidemic control. Research across sub-Saharan Africa confirms that countries which criminalise same-sex relationships have measurably worse HIV outcomes, lower rates of testing, lower viral suppression, higher rates of transmission. The single intervention that would make the greatest difference to the HIV and TB trajectories of Lesotho, Eswatini and South Africa is not a new drug or a new technology. It is legal reform.
These three countries; South Africa, Eswatini and Lesotho have defied expectations before. The scale-up of antiretroviral therapy across southern Africa is one of the great public health achievements of this century. Eswatini and Lesotho have achieved the 95-95-95 treatment targets.
South Africa has committed to a 5.9% annual increase in health expenditure, with ring-fenced allocations for HIV and tuberculosis. These are hard-won gains, and we must protect them.
But progress built on foundations that exclude the most marginalised will not hold. On this Zero Discrimination Day, and as we approach World TB Day on 25 March, the path forward is clear.
Governments, with the support of UNAids, civil society, and affected communities, have the opportunity to accelerate transformative legal reform: decriminalising sex work, repealing laws that criminalise same-sex relationships, replacing HIV-specific criminal statutes with evidence-based public health frameworks, and investing in harm reduction for people who use drugs. This is work we must do together, governments, implementers, advocates, and communities standing visibly alongside those most affected by criminalisation.
To end AIDS and TB, we must work in partnership to end the laws that perpetuate both.
Alankar Malviya is the UNAids director for South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini
UNAids leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. For more information, visit unaids.org.
Khamenei killing puts limits of self-defence under UN Charter to the test:
The Israeli and United States air strikes on Iran this weekend which killed its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have triggered debate on whether they represent a lawful exercise of anticipatory self-defence or a departure from the United Nations Charter’s limits on the use of force.
Iranian state television confirmed Khamenei was killed early on Saturday in an operation which has since widened into missile exchanges across the region. The strikes also killed at least 115 schoolchildren in the southern city of Minab, where a girls’ elementary school was hit during the broader aerial assault. Iranian authorities say more than 200 people have been killed nationwide and more than 700 wounded across 24 provinces.
The scale of civilian harm has sharpened scrutiny of both the decision to use force and the conduct of specific strikes.
Israeli and US officials described the operation as pre-emptive, saying it was aimed at degrading imminent Iranian ballistic missile and nuclear threats. No detailed public evidence of imminence has been presented. The legal question is whether that justification satisfies Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
At issue is whether the strike represents a lawful exercise of anticipatory self-defence or a departure from the Charter’s limits on the use of force.
Article 2(4) of the Charter prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state. The only recognised exception is self-defence in response to an armed attack. The dispute turns on how narrowly or broadly that exception is interpreted.
Anticipatory self-defence has traditionally been confined to situations where an armed attack is imminent in a strict sense, said Chris Gevers, an associate professor of international law at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“The requirement is not that a state has dangerous capabilities,” Gevers said. “It is that an armed attack is imminent. If imminence is stretched to include long-term or speculative threats, then the prohibition on the use of force weakens in practice.”
The threshold has historically been high and evidence-based, he added. “If capability alone is treated as sufficient, states effectively decide for themselves when the Charter constraints apply. That moves the system away from collective security.”
Article 51 was drafted to limit the circumstances in which force may be used, said
professor Mahmoud Patel of the University of the Western Cape.
“Self-defence is triggered by an armed attack,” Patel said. “It is not a general authorisation to strike first because a state believes a threat may materialise in the future.”
Statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the objective of the campaign was regime change complicate the legal assessment, Patel said.
“Self-defence must be directed at stopping or repelling an armed attack. If the stated aim extends to political transformation, that raises questions about necessity and proportionality,” he said.
Legal analyst Diana Buttu rejected the characterisation of the operation as pre-emptive.
“It’s called an illegal attack, not a pre-emptive attack,” she said, arguing that no public evidence has been presented of an imminent Iranian armed assault that would meet the Article 51 threshold.
The reported deaths of at least 115 schoolchildren in Minab have intensified scrutiny of the conduct of the strikes. Under international humanitarian law, parties to a conflict must distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects, and civilian harm must not be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage.
While legal debate gathered momentum, the military exchange widened.
Within an hour of the strikes on Tehran, Iran launched missiles toward Israel. Explosions were reported in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa as air defence systems intercepted incoming projectiles. Israeli emergency services said dozens were treated for minor injuries.
Tehran expanded its response beyond Israeli territory. Missiles and drones were directed at US-linked military installations across the Gulf, with reported strikes near facilities in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Several states closed or restricted their airspace as flights were diverted.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry described the Israeli-US operation as a declaration of war.
The escalation followed stalled diplomacy. Indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran, mediated by Oman, had been under way. On Friday evening, Oman’s foreign minister said a peace deal was “within our reach”. Hours later, the air strikes began.
As the exchange intensified, Iran moved to close the Strait of Hormuz, halting commercial transit through one of the world’s most important energy corridors. The strait carries roughly one fifth of global oil supply and a significant share of liquefied natural gas exports from Gulf producers. Energy benchmarks rose sharply as traders assessed the likelihood of sustained disruption.
Insurance premiums for vessels transiting the Gulf increased. Shipping operators recalculated risk exposure and some charter contracts were paused pending security assessments. For import-dependent economies, prolonged disruption would translate into higher fuel costs and broader inflationary pressure.
President Cyril Ramaphosa reiterated that anticipatory self-defence is not permitted under international law and called for renewed diplomatic efforts. The African Union warned that further escalation threatens global stability and carries implications for energy markets and food security.
At the United Nations, Iran’s ambassador described the strikes as a war crime. An emergency session of the Security Council convened as member states debated the legality of the operation and the risks of wider conflict.
The killing of Khamenei introduces further uncertainty. As Supreme Leader, he held ultimate authority over Iran’s military and strategic decisions. His death raises questions about succession, command continuity and internal stability at a moment of external attack.
Israel has continued additional strikes on missile and air defence sites in central Iran. Tehran signalled that further retaliation would follow, warning that any additional strikes would be met with a “much stronger” response.
How governments interpret the self-defence claim may shape more than the trajectory of this conflict. If the threshold for imminence is broadened, the space for unilateral force expands in practice. If it remains narrow and evidence-based, the constraints embedded in Article 51 endure.
The confrontation now tests not only regional stability, but the boundaries of lawful force under the Charter system.
Melrose: blend of hype and heritage:
If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in traffic between the glass towers of Sandton and the trendy pavements of Rosebank, you’ve passed through Melrose. It’s an upmarket pocket of Jozi that feels like a deep breath of fresh air and it turns out, we have a Scotsman named Henry Brown Marshall to thank for that.
Before Johannesburg was even a glint in a gold miner’s eye, Marshall was running a transport business between Durban and the Highveld. By 1886, he was buying land.
He acquired a portion of Turffontein and later established what became Marshalltown in the Johannesburg CBD. But his real legacy was further north.
By 1893, he decided to head north and bought 700 acres (about 280 hectares) of a farm called Cyferfontein. He built a family home and more importantly for us today, planted the massive oak trees that give the suburb its signature leafy canopy. The land would later become what we know today as Melrose.
If you’ve ever driven down Glenhove Road, you’re driving through a piece of Marshall’s homesickness — it’s named after his birthplace in Scotland.
Marshall didn’t stay long; he was sent back to Scotland in 1897 after getting caught up in the Jameson Raid. But in just four years, he set the tone for the area that has lasted for more than a century: an emphasis on space, greenery and a sense of permanence.
Fast forward to today and the real game-changer arrived in the late ’90s: Melrose Arch.
This 170 000m2 mixed-use precinct was something of a catalyst for the suburb and proved that Jozi residents were hungry for a pedestrian-friendly lifestyle where you could walk from your office to a gym and then grab a world-class coffee and croissant on your way home.
Melrose Arch is a blend of flats, hotels, restaurants and offices.
The precinct turned Melrose into a magnet for international tenants and corporate high-fliers who want convenience without the sterile feel of a standard office park.
For a long time, Melrose was the domain of the “grand old lady” free-standing homes. There are about 200 of those beauties left. But over the past few years, the energy has been all about sectional titles.
While the suburb has always been known for having limited “For Sale” signs, developments are popping up to cater to young professionals (mid-20s to 40s) who want to be close to the action but away from the noise. We aren’t seeing an oversupply yet, so the market remains healthy.
The Price of Admission (2025 Average Asking Prices according to Property24):
• One-bedroom: Approximately R1.299 million.
• Two-bedrooms: Around R2.17m.
• Three-bedrooms: Around R4.2m.
Studios are rare across both the current stock and the development pipeline.
The demand bias clearly favours one- to three-bedroom apartments and townhouses. Melrose consistently outperforms many other Johannesburg suburbs and it has done so for years.
When a development launches here, the obvious question is: Is it overpriced?
I recently reviewed a sectional title development called Iconic by Craft Homes. It sits on a site bordered by Dunkeld, Melrose, Illovo and Rosebank. For starters, great location.
The Iconic will consist of 219 flats across two four-storey buildings in two phases. Some units come with their own lock-up garages and storerooms. Studio units start at R1.259m, two-bedroom flats at R2.145m and three-bedroom flats at R3.180m.
For a secure, contemporary new build in this node, the pricing is impressive. In fact, it undercuts some older three-bedroom stock while offering brand-new construction, eight floor plan options, four finish palettes and no immediate maintenance concerns. If anything, the pricing feels conservative for a new build in this location.
When you compare the pricing of their smaller units, it sits comfortably in line with the two- and three-bedroom units, without any price shock.
I say this often: I love reviewing a development where the numbers make sense. Where there is no emotional pricing and where the developer has read the market.
When I spoke to Lubbe Kruger, the development manager at Craft Homes, he explained that they deliberately moved away from the traditional apartment block formula of narrow passages and long, dimly lit corridors. Instead, they introduced a central atrium.
The atrium draws natural light deep into the building and creates space for greenery and trees at ground level, shifting the feel from enclosed to expansive.
The materials used in its construction also allow the building to operate about 2% cooler, a subtle but meaningful efficiency gain for long-term investors.
Beyond the atrium sits a landscaped deck with a gym, a semi-serviced coffee shop and a clubhouse. Picture running on a treadmill while overlooking planted gardens rather than a blank wall. The design borrows inspiration from high-end retail environments, where volume and openness shape the experience.
There are fewer internal passages, which makes spaces feel larger and allows air to circulate more freely. As Kruger put it: “We do not want the development to look like a cookie-cutter hotel.”
Just as Henry Brown Marshall planted oaks that define the suburb more than a century later, the developer has also made a conscious decision to retain certain heritage trees on site. It is a small but deliberate nod to Melrose’s DNA.
Beyond Iconic, Melrose continues to evolve. One on Whiteley strengthens the residential presence around Melrose Arch. Boutique retail and corporate headquarters line landscaped streets.
Across the area and into Melrose Estate, smaller luxury offerings continue to come online.
It’s refreshing to see no rapid overdevelopment. Rather, we are seeing careful densification in a proven node. Melrose is holding its value.
You have Melrose Arch and Blu Bird Shopping Centre for retail. The Wanderers Cricket Stadium on Corlett Drive is for major sporting moments. The Inanda Club for equestrian and social heritage. Schools like Pridwin Preparatory and Jeppe High Schools are anchoring long-term family appeal.
Rosebank is five minutes away. Sandton is 10. Everything else is essentially on your doorstep.
Whether you’re there for the history of Henry Marshall’s oaks or the hum of the more modern sectional title developments, Melrose remains one of those rare suburbs that manages to feel both historic and perfectly ahead of the curve. A fine blend of healthy hype and heritage.
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