The Missing Link in the Fight against AIDS
Moyiga Nduru, Inter Press Service (IPS)
April 18, 2005
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=28335

JOHANNESBURG - A group of traditional dancers, donning colourful artificial animal skins and headgears, formed a circle around a drummer, entertaining guests heading to an AIDS event.
The dancers, most of whom were in dreadlocks, suddenly sprang up, formed an arch and burst into a melodic song, dancing and stomping their feet in a traditional Zulu-warrior style.

Inside a tent, prepared specially for the occasion, Oliver Mtukudzi, one of Zimbabwe's leading musicians, sat on a stool near the high table with his acoustic guitar hooked on to an amplifier. As the 150 so guests started to make their way to their seats, he started playing his guitar and singing.

Behind Mtukudzi, on the wall, was an imposing plastic sheet with the theme of the event 'Making Law and Policy Work in the Fight against AIDS and Gender Inequalities in Southern Africa' scrawled in huge letters. Mtukudzi, a towering musician with a whiskey-drenched hoarse voice, is a tireless anti-AIDS campaigner. One of his hit songs 'Todii' (What Shall We Do) challenges the stigma attached to the virus.

''I found that people normally just kept quiet after reading something related to AIDS in the newspapers,'' he told the event held in South Africa's commercial hub of Johannesburg last Thursday. ''So I thought I should sing about it and break the silence.''

To the cheer of women attending the meeting, Mtukudzi said, ''women must stand up and fight for their rights. They must not give up.'' Jacqueline Bataringaya of Oxfam-America, an international charity, which organised the event, said absence of law was fuelling the spread of the virus. ''In Southern Africa, where AIDS has touched almost every family, the impact is greatest among young women aged 15-24 who in South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe for example, are three to six times more likely to be infected than young men the same age,'' she said.

According to the 2004 report of the UN Secretary General's Task Force on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, more than three quarters of all young people 15-24 years living with HIV in those countries are girls and young women, where the majority get infected almost as soon as they start having sex. ''The deep-rooted social and cultural norms continue to assign women throughout the sub-region to lower social and economic status than men,'' Bataringaya said.

She said studies of HIV/AIDS law and policy implementation across Southern Africa had shown that regional and international rights instruments have not been adequately applied or incorporated into domestic laws.

Bataringaya regretted that women are assigned minority status under customary law; and that violence against women and girls is condoned and unlawful and harmful traditional practices that drive extreme violations of the rights of women and girls are not redressed.

In Zimbabwe, Bataringaya said, the law is silent about harmful traditional practices such as marrying off young girls, forcing young girls to marry aggrieved claimants and subjecting young girls to a humiliating practice of virginity testing. These practices, she said, expose girls and women to HIV/AIDS.

Campaigners also point to poverty as a leading factor in fuelling the pandemic. In 2003 the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said the organisation's 13-member nations were failing to meet the minimum requirements in the Millennium Development Goals, which seeks to reduce poverty by 2015. Forty percent of the people in the SADC region are still living in poverty, of which around 70 percent are women, the hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic, according to the regional grouping.

Bataringaya said poverty prompts poor girls and women to sell their body for survival. Once infected, she said, they suffer reduced access to education opportunities; access to a job; access to care and treatment. They also suffer reduced dignity and hope for the future and increased sexual and domestic violence, she said.

According to the Zimbabwe Girl Child Network, a non-governmental organisation, at least three girls aged 16 years and below are raped and over 6,000 girls are sexually abused annually in Zimbabwe.
Addressing the same occasion, South Africa's judge Johann Van der Westhuizen said discrimination against girls and women were exacerbating the spread of HIV and AIDS. ''Many male judges do not understand why many women judges should be on the bench,'' he said. ''Some of the judges don't understand, for example, why women are raped.''

He said women should be protected from abuses such as rape where men don't seem to bother. ''In crime-ridden South Africa, for example, men think about their Mercedes Benz being hijacked. They dread filling insurance forms and making a statement at a police station. But women go beyond what men fear and dread. They fear rape, while driving around,'' he said. Der Westhuizen urged girls and women to be aware of their rights and also of their responsibilities. ''The answers are not always in law and in court, although sometimes the courts take a stand on social changes,'' he said.

According to the Joint United Nations Programmes on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), up to 1.2 million people succumbed to AIDS-related illnesses in southern Africa in 2003. The death rate has resulted in the dramatic drop of life expectancy at birth to levels below 40 years in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, it said.

It also said the death rate indicates that countries will face for decades to come a range of inter-generational consequences including deepening poverty, overwhelming demand for treatment and care, and increasing numbers of orphans and vulnerable children.

Over 14 million people are living with HIV/AIDS across Southern Africa, amounting to well over one third of people living with the virus worldwide, in an area with only two percent of the global total population, said UNAIDS. The gathering was almost ruined by an announcement of the passing away of Zimbabwe's writer Yvonne Vera who died in Canada on Apr. 7. The 40-year-old Vera was a leading voice in the fight against HIV/AIDS and promoter of the rights of women and girl children.

''We, including her friends around the world, will miss her,'' said Eleanor Sisulu, a human rights activist, who made the announcement. Towards the end of the event, Mtukudzi's closing show came to an abrupt end following the disconnection of power to the tent. But the dancers, who had now shed off their traditional costumes for modern attire, poured onto the stage and worked participants through another traditional African dance.