It is remarkable to think that putting a condom on a plastic phallus in the middle of a crowd outside Durban town hall could be considered an act of civilisation.

But then AIDS is one of the cruellest jokes ever played on mankind, a disease riddled with irony, as this hard-hitting documentary points out.

How odd that a disease which is transmitted in an act which procreates life will simultaneously take it away.

How odd that women desperate to feed their kids will barter their bodies and contradict infections which will make their children hungry orphans.

How odd that health programmes push for testing when they can do nothing to cure those afflicted.

African now has created 13 million AIDS orphans, but by 2010 that figure will have topped 40 million.

The film takes the view that AIDs is seen by the west as just the latest African disaster, so it takes the trouble to make comparisons - in some villages of 250 there are 50 orphans. Imagine this proportion in a city the size of New York or London.

And AIDS is so insidious it exacerbates all the existing problems.

With rural devastation there are precious few to work the land, meaning more crops fail, there is less food around and those with the disease get weaker and succumb quicker. The most vicious of vicious circles.

Even doctors are succumbing to the disease which will wipe out 25 percent of Southern Africa's medics this decade.

Meanwhile the bulk of research money is spent on other diseases while HIV sufferers make do with highly toxic stand-bys which can cause everything from nausea to death and can become useless if you miss just one dose.

Orphanages don't work - they merely extend childhood and create helpless adults argues one expert close to the scene.

Harrowing scenes accompany the harrowing facts. In Zambia we see moaning patients waiting for death while we learn the only painkiller is aspirin.

It is a catalogue of heartbreak sparing no one. Not the wives who end up with a death sentence because of their husband's philandering or the children who are preyed upon because they are seen as safe sexual targets by older males.

But in the young there is hope. Which bring us back to the rubber display on the town hall steps.

The safe sex message is getting across.

Whether it can avert a disaster on par with Europe's 14th century plague is doubtful.

But until a cure is found the denizens of Durban and in towns like can expect more youth groups putting on such public displays in a bid to save their continent.

Matthew Taylor