Why I Will Not Join the Celebration
World AIDS Day (WAD) came upon us again on the 1st of December – 2008 marking the 20th such commemoration. Surprisingly we are still doing the same things we have done over the years. So many resources, and so much time was put into preparing for the national event in Zimbabwe, and all in the spirit of the multisectoral approach following the three ones. We still had the same messages on leadership that we have had over the last few years, and still had the big national event in the Mashonaland Central provincial capital of Bindura.
I believe this commemoration has lost its significance in the way the official national commemorations are done. People living with HIV (PLHIV) are remembered on these “celebrations” so that they can give testimonies – an afterthought that is soon forgotten as soon as this media and political opportunity is gone – and called upon again twelve months later. These PLHIV are the beneficiaries who are mentioned in the proposals that get us ASOs the big donor funding that sees us through programmatic years, but their only benefit is to get a T-shirt and a meal on WAD. It is high time that PLHIV set the agenda for how the commemoration is done. Why have such big budget celebrations of WAD when PLHIV are failing to access services due to the cash crunch, lack of functional health services and lack of essential food? Why partake in this event that pays only lip-service to our concerns, and leaves us without any assurance of access to essential services that will ensure our positive living is indeed just that – positive living?
As a person living with HIV, this was the second WAD (after the 2007 in Chiredzi, Masvingo Province) that I have had no desire to participate in. This is because I feel PLHIV are still not setting the agenda. There are still the forces that determine what is to be done, and how, and then declare that that is what PLHIV should buy into. I feel these national celebrations have lost their relevance for PLHIV. Certainly I see no relevance for me as a woman who is HIV-positive.
WAD also happens to occur during the 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence. The Zimbabwean official machinery, from its public messaging, seems to confine gender-based violence (GBV) to translate to domestic violence. I applaud them for campaigning against violence in private homes. I am much more concerned about the very visible violence against women that has been occurring in our nation over the election period. The ministry has been silent over the decline in the public health care sector that has impacted mostly on women as consumers of the service, and on women as they constitute the bulk of the health care workers. I have not heard any official statement on the stance of the Ministry responsible for women and gender as regards the arrests of women as they demand an end to the multitude of crises that have now become part of Zimbabwean women’s daily lives. We have not heard anything regarding the official stance on the lack of access to essential services and basic foodstuff. Women of Zimbabwe have undergone so many hardships, and there has been nothing from the Ministry, yet they are well placed to amplify women’s concerns in such obvious. Women have been abducted, arrested, beaten up and raped, yet the public sector women’s leadership have remained silent, only to invite women to an elite hotel to “celebrate” 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
“Celebrate” was the exact word used in the invitation. This celebration was being done in the same week that one of the prominent women activists had disappeared and her whereabouts unknown. I believe civil society and women’s rights activists who partook of this so-called celebration did a big disservice to the voiceless women they claim to speak for. What is it that makes us collude with institutions that are abusive of our basic rights? While celebrating in the elite hotel, many were succumbing to cholera, diarrhoea, and other diseases due to lack of safe water, functional health services, essential medicines, health care staff, etc.
In early December 2007, I lost any faith I ever had in such commemorations and celebrations. Due to a death of a close family relative, I happened to spend the night in one settlement set up by the government after the Operation Murambatsvina (clean out the trash) that happened in May 2005. These settlements are called Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle (live happily ever after or paradise). I left this place a highly traumatised person as I found it difficult to cope with the reality of the way of life of the residents of this area that I witnessed. I have now decided to post on my blog the reflections about this experience that I sent to the national leadership in health HIV & AIDS – both civil society ad government – from whom I still await a response and some action, before they can expect my participation in their “celebrations”.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
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Below I have copied the letter I wrote to national public and civil society leaders in Zimbabwe in December 2007 on what I had witnessed during World AIDS Day and 16 Days of Activism:
“District AIDS Action Committees (DAAC)
DAAC will operate as a subcommittee of the Social Services Committee of the District Council.
1. Mandate
To mobilize, coordinate and monitor the multi-sectoral and community response initiatives on HIV/AIDS in the District.
2. Responsibilities of the DAAC
The DAAC shall in collaboration with Provincial AIDS Coordinator:
• To enlist and coordinate multi-sectoral involvement in the district response to HIV/AIDS.
• To coordinate and monitor the district planning process on HIV/AIDS.
• To facilitate capacity strengthening for HIV/AIDS prevention, care and mitigation in the district.
• To promote and support the intensification of community based HIV/AIDS interventions.
• To appraise and endorse project proposals for funding.
• To encourage mainstreaming of HIV/AIDS issues into all social and development programmes in the district.
• To promote resource mobilisation in support of district initiatives on HIV/AIDS as well as ensure transparency and accountability in the disbursement and utilization of funds earmarked for HIV/AIDS activities.
• To facilitate sharing of experiences and lessons learnt among stakeholders within and outside the district.
• To undertake any function(s) that falls within the mandate. “
The above, on the DAAC, is what appears on the National AIDS Council (NAC) website. Where does civil society fit in? Where do AIDS-service organisations fit in? What and how exactly do communities benefit? Are the above responsibilities implementable and can they be functional? Are we using the right approaches to suit different environments? Does the DAAC actually do these things? How effective are they? These are questions that kept swirling in my mind over the weekend. As I pondered on the Minister of Health and Child Welfare’s refrain in all the speeches I have heard him make, the one strategy, I became more bewildered by these questions.
It took a death of a long-lost sister (cousin for those not of the Shona culture) for these issues to knock home. My sister disappeared from home. We just knew she was somewhere in Harare. She last made a brief visit home fourteen years ago. It came as a shock last week to then hear she had died, and her neighbours were desperately looking for her relatives so that she could get a “decent” burial – in this sense more in the cultural context than the financial implications of a funeral. This was the first time we knew where she was living, some address in Hopley settlement Zone 3. I realised why we found it difficult to find my sister – she changed her name, and destroyed much of all documentation that had anything to do with our family name. My sister went through a long illness, and looking at her medical cards, she obviously had full-blown AIDS. Our sister is now buried, and that is past.
What I am now failing to come to terms with are the conditions people in Hopley settlement are living. I had to spend a night and one and a half days in the settlement – with the night spent in my sister’s “home”, a shelter with thin cold cement floors, walls made of thin Hessian material, and corrugated iron sheets. It was raining heavily during the night, and I could feel the dampness seeping through the floor and walls. This is the standard home for the whole community, while they wait for the government to build them their permanent home in the form of a two-roomed brick-under-asbestos house with a bathroom and toilet. In front of each shelter, the foundation for the house has already been dug. So in front of each temporary shelter are trenches that are keeping stagnant puddles of water in this rainy season. They have to walk quite some way to fetch water from the communal boreholes. They have to go very far to get firewood from the forests. It is impossible to keep the single room warm around this time as the wood is wet and therefore causes a lot of smoke when a fire is lit. I had nightmares last night, and I dread bedtime tonight and in the days to come. I keep thinking of that time-bomb, and what we are doing in our much hyped multi-sectoral approach. The pit latrines do not look like they can keep their contents intact with the current heavy rains, and I wonder if the nation will be able to cope adequately with any cholera or other disease outbreak in such a settlement. This period is within 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, and there are reports of two women who have been at the receiving end of axe attacks by men! Did we take our activities to the right places? Did we use the right approach in the strategies we used in the campaigns?
The elderly are also suffering in this area. One man was found dead in his shelter during the weekend I was in Hopley. His body was said to be decomposing, which means he had been dead for a few days. He lived alone, and when people in the neighbourhood did not see him for a few days, they thought he had travelled.
If our multi-sectoral approach was working, we would not have citizens of Zimbabwe living in such sub-human conditions as the ones I saw and experienced in Hopley Zone 3. There is obviously no home-based care initiative that has reached this settlement, and yet people are dying at an alarming rate. It did not seem like there are any HIV prevention messages getting to this community, yet prevention is “our first, second and third strategy” in the response to HIV. There are many ailing people, many aged, many child-headed families, and many child abuse (physical and sexual) cases. I do not pretend to have done any research that uses academic methods. Just from speaking to the people in the community, and observing and experiencing in the one weekend I was there was enough to tell me that as civil society, government, and other stakeholders, we leave a lot to be desired in our approaches. We have failed, and how long are we going to continue failing those whom we call the most needy and the voiceless?
I do not know whether the DAAC Southern District performed its responsibility of encouraging the mainstreaming of HIV & AIDS issues into the social and development programmes in the district, particularly with Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle. If they were not, it would be interesting to know what they have done to mitigate the impact after people were resettled under this programme. Surely the DAAC’s responsibility should be ensuring, rather than encouraging, mainstreaming of HIV & AIDS issues into all social and development programmes in the district? In the district planning processes, have the DAACs around the country included interventions for people internally displaced and resettled? If there are any interventions in Hopley Zone 3, then they seem to be a scratch on the surface. My experience at the weekend has left a sour taste in my mouth, particularly as an activist who was convinced – until last weekend – that I was contributing to an efficient and effective multi-sectoral team.
When were the DAAC responsibilities put in place, and how often are they reviewed? The responsibilities and structure should be continuously reviewed to ensure relevance and impact.
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