Green Left Weekly's SARAH STEPHEN spoke to TAFADZWA CHOTO, national coordinator of Zimbabwe's International Socialist Organisation, about the issue of HIV/AIDS when she was in Australia in October.
Zimbabwe has the highest level of HIV infection in the world. One in every four people is infected. In many urban areas, infection runs to 40%. In the army, it is about 80%. Up to 20% of the country's children have lost at least one parent to the AIDS. Currently, 2500 people a week are dying of the disease, and the figure is expected to rise rapidly in the coming decade.
The key problem, Choto explained, was the "failure of the government to initiate a program to prevent the spread of HIV ... Until now, the government's main message is that youth should abstain from sex rather than telling them especially about the use of condoms. Most youth indulge in sex without using condoms. It's getting better, but condoms are still seen as something that [are] used by people with loose morals."
Surveys across 17 African countries have found that more than 50% of girls could not name a method of protection against HIV transmission.
The key solution, says Choto, is "to begin to talk about sex, AIDS and to see that people can have sex even outside relationships, outside marriage... With changing times, most of the young generation are having extra-marital affairs, sex outside marriage and so forth.
"The main solution is talking about these issues and making condoms easily available, so that young people can buy them or get them from free, and to be able to get them everywhere rather than having to walk 25 kilometres to the national family planning centre where they are free, or buying them at supermarkets and chemists. We need to preach the gospel of AIDS, rather than tell the youth to believe in God and to abstain from sex, which is nonsense."
Choto explained the difficulties women have in challenging conservative moral views: "It takes a lot for a woman to pick up and buy condoms in a supermarket. Many people will look at her and be disgusted because in marriage, people are not expected to use condoms.
"Sex outside marriage is still not accepted, yet there are quite a lot of young women with children outside marriage... Even the young generations would agree you can't have sex without a relationship. But that's not to dismiss that it's not happening. It is happening."
Studies on HIV/AIDS throughout Africa identify the inequality between men and women as one of the main elements contributing to the spread of the disease. AIDS affects women directly and indirectly. A study in Zimbabwe by UNIFEM, the UN's women and gender agency, found that 34% of those widowed reported that they had been accused of causing the death of their husbands, while 70% of the children removed from school to look after sick relatives were girls.
Without access to life-prolonging drugs, the average life expectancy of AIDS sufferers is predicted to fall to 37 years. "If you go to any cemetery in Zimbabwe you'll find that most deaths are taking place amongst those born from 1966 to 1976, which makes them 25 to 30 when they die", Choto told Green Left Weekly.
A political movement around the issue of HIV/AIDS has emerged in Zimbabwe. "It used to be middle-class organisations, but now HIV-positive workers are beginning to take the initiative. They are demanding access to the 3% AIDS levy, imposed on workers and collected by the government, so they can survive. The levy was imposed in December 1999, but is being abused by [the ruling] ZANU-PF party. It was supposed to pay for access to drugs, food and education. If [the government] was not abusing the funds, it could be of much help to the workers."
Choto became an activist at high school. Since then, she has been active in a range of feminist organisations and trade unions, and played a leading role in the 1995 demonstrations against police brutality after two protesters were killed. She was also involved in organising the 1996 general strike. Choto helped form the Movement for Democratic Change [the trade union-backed opposition party] in 1997. She is also the vice chairperson of the gender desk of the National Constitutional Assembly which is fighting for a new constitution.
Choto joined the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) in 1995. She explained that the only other revolutionary party in Zimbabwe's history was the mainly white Rhodesian Communist Party which formed in 1940s.
"It collapsed by the end of the 1940s because it failed to link with the rising struggles [of the African people] at the time. After that, there was no other socialist group until 1988 when the ISO formed. I was still in high school at that stage. At school and afterwards, I was a radical. I met the ISO through my work. They used to have meetings in the next room, and I would meet one of the comrades when he came to pay rent for the room and he would tell me about the ISO. I decided to join because I agreed with the politics and was attracted by the way they understood women's oppression [as being a product of the capitalist system]. They did not blame men like most of the feminist groups that I'd passed through."
When Choto joined the ISO, and for the first few years of her activity, she was the only woman member. Now, she's one of a dozen or more which includes students, workers and housewives.
The low participation of women in politics reflects the persistence of sexism and gender segregation in Zimbabwe society. Only 32% of women are employed outside the home.
"Most people see the home as the natural place for women. Abortion is not accepted. There are still debates on the issue. Abortion is illegal, and any that occur happen in 'backyard' operations. Quite a number of young women die as a consequence. Doctors can carry out abortions but they are very expensive and not affordable for ordinary women.
"Due to a combination of economic and social pressures, the vast majority of women marry and have children. I think it's beginning to change. Some women opt to stay single, or become single mothers. In the 1980s, you would be seen as an outcast as a single mother. It's considered unforgivable that you have your own child and don't get married. Some parents would just disown their daughters. During that period there were some centres that we created for young women who were disowned by their families because they were pregnant."
From Green Left Weekly, January 16, 2002.
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