A campaign to raise AIDS awareness among men in South Africa seeks to bring a new dimension to what has become the conventional image of the African man. Currently running on radio, television in newspapers and on billboards, its message begins with the arresting phrase:” There is a new man in South Africa....” That is enough to stop most women in their tracks. I do not know if the effect on men is the same, but it certainly made me lift my gaze from my laptop to listen more closely. It goes: There is a new man in South Africa. A man who takes responsibility for his actions. A man who chooses a single partner over multiple chances with HIV. A man whose self worth is not determined by the number of women he can have. A man who makes no excuses for unprotected sex, even after drinking. A man who supports his partner and protects his children. A man who respects his woman and never lifts a hand to her. A man who knows that the choices we make today, will determine whether we see tomorrow. I am that man. And you are my brother. The website that houses this campaign is called Brothers for Life and its slogan is Yenzakahle, do the right thing. South Africa has a high rate of violent crime, especially of sexual crimes against women and children. It also a country with one of the highest rates of AIDS infection in the world and we know because South Africa keeps records. This campaign is part of a move to counter that, one that does not begin by demonising men and like many other campaigns aimed at giving women the power to fight victimhood, makes men the “deciders” in this challenge and offers them a dignified space to pursue this in. I first heard this ad on radio, a medium that I find very often more powerful than television because it has the ability to focus your senses on the nuances of the human voice and on the power of the spoken word. Sometimes with the ubiquity of talk radio what you get is the unrelieved drivel of the dialogue between the ignorant, usually the presenter/anchor and the often uninformed public. Discipline is always a problem with untrammelled freedom on the web on the airwaves in print, everywhere. But really the beauty of radio is that you can listen and work at whatever else it is you are doing. It does not entrap your mind the way mediocre television can. What struck me about that promise - there is a new man with a new masculinity -was the wonderful possibility of change in hewing a new image of the African man; strong compassionate, sensitive loving responsible and sexy and on top of all that African. Icing on the cake. The general image has always been one with all the harder elements. These are the hard working, go getting, strongly male attributes which invariably meant a particular kind of patriarchal attitude to women. On that side these engendered the just focus on the one thing he is good -for the size of his wallet- approach to ‘man hunting’. The video version of the new man campaign has that direct, look you in the eye straight talk style that conveys the earnestness. Different men in ordinary everyday situations looking at the camera announce their commitment and make their appeal to other men to join them. It is a man thing, it is serious business. This is quite different from another appeal for change in a great song by John Legend featuring Snoop Dogg who insists “I can change”. “I aint been clubbin’, drinkin’, or smokin’ I’m focused Bowin’ down every night prayin’ and hopin’ I’m trying to figure out a way But I just don’t know how to say But I’m rearrangin’ Hopefully I’m changin’...” Snoop Dogg promises to “give up on the pimping” and step his love game up and then spoils it by boasting ‘I can make your zoom zoom go boom boom!” Those are changes women are pretty much used to, that are without doubt very important too, but the new man must bring much more than the same old same old. Thirty years ago it was clear that to combat AIDS the biggest weapon would be in changing the dynamics of sexual relations between men and women. The hope was that the fear of the disease would make it easy and quick to change behaviour even before a cure was discovered. It has not quite happened like that. Human behaviour is a devil to change. It has taken far longer than many anticipated and we still have not got there yet. Hopefully with a new man in Africa a change is going to come.