Jonasi Gomora dies of an Aids-related illness in Netflix’s The Polygamist. But HIV isn’t the real villain of the story. Stigma is. As scientists gather in Rio for the world’s biggest HIV conference, Thabani Nyoni explains why shame and silence — not the virus itself — remain some of the epidemic’s deadliest forces.
- As the world’s biggest HIV conference opens in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday , one of the epidemic’s oldest enemies remains stigma — and one Netflix drama shows how easily misinformation keeps it alive.
- HIV no longer kills people who start treatment early. Shame, silence and delayed care still do.
- In this essay, Thabani Nyoni explains why scientists say ending the epidemic depends as much on trust, mental health and communities as it does on medicine.
- This is the first in Bhekisisa’s series of commentaries marking the conference, where 10 000 researchers, health workers, activists and people living with HIV will discuss how to end Aids as a public health threat by 2030. Mia Malan and Anna-Maria van Niekerk will be reporting live from the conference.
Like millions of others, I binge-watched The Polygamist , the Netflix drama based on Zimbabwean author Sue Nyathi’s novel. For readers who have not seen it, here’s the storyline.
Jonasi Gomora is a wealthy, respected businessman with many wives and secret partners. He contracts HIV, cannot bring himself to accept the diagnosis, hides it, refuses treatment, and eventually dies of an Aids-related illness. His death is the engine of the whole story.
I have thoughts about everything the show touches on, from the lies to the marriages to the performance of wealth, but I want to be clear about my vantage point and its limits. I am not commenting on all of its themes, nor am I avoiding them. I am deliberately choosing to look at this through a specific lens, because it is where I work: the sexual and mental health of Black Africans.
On that terrain, the easy lesson, “Jonasi was a bad man, do not be Jonasi,” is true but too small. The harder, more honest lesson is that what killed Jonasi was not HIV. It was denial, shame and silence. He could not face his diagnosis, so he refused treatment, and the show let the virus take the blame for what stigma actually did.
That distinction matters.
What is U=U?
Today, HIV is a condition people live with because of affordable treatment, not one they inevitably die from . A person who takes their antiretroviral treatment (ART) properly brings the amount of virus in their body to such low levels that there’s no longer enough HIV in their body to transmit it to others.
They can therefore not only expect a long, healthy life, and they cannot pass HIV to a sexual partner. Scientists call this “undetectable equals untransmittable.” Researchers also call this viral suppression .
The tragedy of Jonasi is not that he contracted HIV. It’s that he refused the treatment that would have let him live and stopped him from passing on the virus to others.
The show even blurs this, suggesting a person on treatment is still dangerously infectious. That is not true, and spreading such false information feeds the very fear that keeps people away from getting tested for HIV and taking up treatment if they test HIV positive.
Jonasi’s refusal is not unusual stubbornness. The United Nations has goals for countries like South Africa to get people who know they have HIV onto treatment, known as the 95-95-95 targets . They had to be reached by the end of 2025, but very few countries did, so 2030 is the new date for the goals to be achieved .
The three targets build on each other: 95% of people with HIV knowing their status, then 95% of those diagnosed on treatment — the step South Africa struggles with — and finally 95% of those on treatment with the virus fully suppressed.
According to the national health department , South Africa is at 96-79-94. So only 79% of people who have been diagnosed are actually on treatment.
That’s a problem across Africa, which makes it even more important that TV series such as The Polygamist don’t spread misinformation.
Why HIV kills more men than women
It’s especially men who are slow to take up treatment. Across Africa, they test later than women, start treatment later, and die at higher rates , because so many of us are raised to believe that a real man does not get sick and does not ask for help.
And stigma is one of the main reasons for that refusal. This is not a soft observation.
Our 2025 Frontiers in Public Health study of young people aged 9 to 15 living with HIV in KwaZulu-Natal , found that the stigma they experienced was clearly linked to lower self-worth and higher levels of anxiety and depression.
Stigma is not a moral side-note to the epidemic. It is a direct injury to mental health, and wounded, frightened people are exactly the ones most likely to look away from a diagnosis.
Our review of 13 stigma-reduction programmes across sub-Saharan Africa found the same thing from the other side. Where stigma is left unchallenged, it quietly weakens every effort to test, prevent and treat.
So what would have changed Jonasi’s ending? Not a sterner lecture. Support.
In a study that pooled results from treatment-supporter programmes across sub-Saharan Africa , my colleagues and I found that when someone living with HIV had a treatment supporter walking beside them, whether a partner, a family member, a friend, a fellow patient, or a community health worker, they were more likely to take their medication and to bring the virus under control. The effect was strongest when that support came from the community, not only from health workers in clinics.
Jonasi had money, but money is not the same as support. His illness stayed hidden, and so he faced it alone. It is the people around a person, far more than their willpower, that keep treatment on track.
This also reframes the show’s treatment of women. Critics have rightly said The Polygamist gives its women very little power of their own.
But the deeper point is that the secrecy driving the plot is not just one man’s villainy. It is a pattern we can document.
In our MSAFIRI study of African, Caribbean and Black immigrants who acquired HIV after moving to Canada — published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health in 2025, partners often hid their HIV status. That secrecy led to painful, unplanned disclosures, and decisions about condoms split along familiar gender lines.
Women were often held back by a partner’s disapproval or by trust in the relationship, while men cited their own preference.
In a review my team has completed on HIV prevention among Black immigrant communities, women repeatedly said they could not even raise the subject of protecting themselves without a partner hearing it as an accusation of cheating.
When a woman cannot protect herself without risking suspicion, conflict, or violence, the problem is not her character. It is the way power is arranged around her.
If the conversation The Polygamist has started is going to be useful, it has to move from blame to building.
Why gender inequality spreads HIV
The evidence points to things that genuinely work.
Prevention and treatment messages land best when two things are true: they are carried by trusted, Black-led, faith, and community organisations and they are framed around protecting your family rather than policing “risky” behaviour .
The first comes from research I presented at the 2025 Canadian Association for HIV Research conference ; the second is borne out by studies across sub-Saharan Africa.
Care has to be respectful and non-judgmental, because a judgmental clinic is itself a reason people stop coming . In our review, feeling judged or stereotyped led people to delay or avoid care altogether, while respectful, non-judgmental providers were what made honest conversations possible.
Mental health support belongs inside HIV services and schools, so that fear and distress are met early, before they harden into denial.
And because unequal power between men and women sits underneath all of this, ending gender-based violence has to be part of the response.
Gender-based violence directly increases a woman’s HIV risk: coerced sex , and the inability to negotiate condoms or safer terms, mean exposure happens on someone else’s terms.
Our review of 16 school-based interventions shows that GBV prevention works best when it involves a whole school or whole community rather than individuals alone . Addressing gender-based violence is part of HIV prevention, not separate from it.
The most useful thing we can take from Jonasi’s death is not a verdict on his character.
It is a set of questions. Why is it still so hard for men to test, to speak, to be treated?
What would make a diagnosis feel like the start of a manageable life rather than the end of a respectable one?
Blaming men keeps no one safe. Building the conditions for testing, treatment and honesty, without shame, does.
That is harder than writing a television villain.
It is also what the world’s leading HIV scientists, community activists and policymakers will spend the next week debating in Rio.
Because ending Aids will require more than remarkable medicines. It will require building societies in which people are not too ashamed to use them.
Thabani Nyoni is an assistant professor in the school of social work in the faculty of health at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. Originally from Zimbabwe, his research focuses on HIV prevention and treatment as well as the sexual and mental health of people of African descent. He holds a master’s degree in social welfare from the University of California Berkeley, and a PhD in social work from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
This story was produced by the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism . Sign up for the newsletter .
