RIGHTS-SWAZILAND: Women Immigrants Counter Injustice with Hope

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

LOMAHASHA, Swaziland, Jun 27 2002 (IPS) - Of all the causes for the spread of the HIV virus in Swaziland, so that now one-third of the country’s population is infected, no health organisation ever lists the presence of immigrants from Mozambique as a significant contributing factor.

Yet, at a meeting of headmen who represent voting districts in the kingdom, the Manzini South constituency headman, Pitoli Shabangu, declared, “Immigrants from Mozambique are the cause of HIV/AIDS, because they do not attend health meetings.”

None of the other headmen present at the meeting challenged his assertion, despite the lack of either statistical or anecdotal evidence to support the assertion.

Illegal immigrants face discrimination wherever they go in the world, from the United States, which boasts of being the world’s melting pot, to the young democracy of South Africa.

South Africa has constructed a concrete fence topped with razor wire, electrified at places, along the border with Mozambique to keep out unwanted immigrants. (South African officials say the fence would be removed in 2004 to make way for a transfrontier “Peace Park”.)

But as Southern Africa’s poorest country – and until 2000 the poorest country in the world – Mozambique has spawned an exodus of desperately impoverished people, some of whom were fleeing a two decade-long civil war.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says women constitute a majority of the migrant wave, because Mozambican men who were family breadwinners made up most of the war casualties, leaving behind their wives who have no means of support in the ruined land.

Swaziland, on Mozambique’s southwest border, hosted 300,000 war refugees in tented communities under UNHCR supervision. At the end of the war the camps were emptied and people repatriated eight years ago. However, post-war poverty has brought thousands of Mozambican women back to Swaziland, this time as economic refugees.

“Mozambicans are crooks, they fight and steal,” asserts 17-year-old Willie Simelane, voicing a common prejudice found among Swazis and South Africans. As Swazis awaken to the HIV/AIDS crisis in their midst, blame is carelessly being put on Mozambican women.

A survey by the Swazi Observer newspaper showed that 30 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “You get AIDS from going to prostitutes.”

Sex workers in Swaziland are either poor rural girls, who had moved to the urban centres in search of hard-to-find employment, and ended up selling their bodies, or Mozambican women. There are no reliable figures for what percentage of the kingdom’s sex workers are Mozambicans. But it is a safe bet, police sources say, that the Mozambican sex workers would be illegal immigrants.

“Work visas are not easy to come by, and you need one for a residence permit,” says Ethan Dlamini of the Department of Immigration. “For a foreigner to obtain a work permit, he or she must show an employment contract. It stands to reason that a Mozambican prostitute is an illegal immigrant, because she has no work permit to do what she does, and thus she has no residency permit.”

Rather than admit that prostitution may also be a domestic problem, some Swazis have attempted to shift responsibility on to immigrant Mozambicans. Last month, Member of Parliament Frank Dlamini confronted Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini, under whose portfolio the police department falls, with the statement, “Mozambican women here illegally constitute most of the prostitutes, especially in (the central commercial centre) Manzini.”

The Prime Minister responded with an assertion that the police were monitoring sex workers in the country, but he did not challenge the MP’s assertion by asking for the source of his information.

“On the streets, people think we are prostitutes,” says Angela Ferreira, a former resident of Mozambique’s Inhambane province who is now a fish vendor at the Manzini bus station. “People call me a prostitute to insult me, and men approach me with offers of money or dinner for sex. They cannot believe I just sell fish.”

Ferreira, whose skin is darker than most Swazis are and whose accent shows her origin when she speaks SiSwati, admits that she is in the country illegally. But she says that virtually all Mozambicans working in the informal sector are illegal immigrants. Like most immigrants, they gladly do the poorly-paid jobs that the local people disdain to do, such as work as garden boys.

Thobile Dlamini, executive director of the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse, which counsels victims of physical and emotional abuse, says, “Mozambican women immigrants are a vulnerable group. We have an outreach programme to get them assistance. They may not know it, but they are entitled to the same protection against rape and assault as anyone. Just because you don’t have a visa does not mean you have forfeited your human rights.”

Legal assistance to Mozambican immigrant women is hard to come by in a country where there is no system yet for assistance for poor Swazis. But health NGOs are aware that a way must be found to bring AIDS information to illegal residents.

The Swaziland Action Group counsels and arranges medical assistance for victims of rape and physical abuse. While they have no knowledge of a rapist deliberately infecting a woman, because of the high prevalence of HIV in the country they assume that every rape carries with it the risk of infection. They urge all rape survivors to test for HIV, an additional trauma for raped women.

“The Mozambican women are at risk, especially the poor ones who will sleep with a man for dinner,” says Hani Dlamini, president of the counselling service Swaziland AIDS Support Organisation (SASO). “They may contract and then spread HIV. We believe health is a human right. But it is hard to find people who are here illegally because they hide (to prevent detection). But we are resourceful.”

SASO provides much-needed counselling and support to people living with HIV/AIDS. Counsellors provide round-the-clock help and information regarding diet, medicines and lifestyle. And takes AIDS awareness campaigns to schools and civic groups.

The Times of Swaziland in a story about prostitution guess-estimated that “most” of the country’s prostitutes were HIV positive. According to the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse, half the Mozambican sex workers may be HIV positive.

Faced with discrimination and prejudice from Johannesburg to Harare, wherever they temporarily migrate for survival, Mozambican immigrant women could take some comfort in a historical irony: their war-ravaged country is already on the rebound, and may soon be more affluent than neighbouring countries.

Last month, Mozambique replaced Zimbabwe as South Africa’s number one African trading partner. While neighbours Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Malawi descend into recession, Mozambique’s economy grew by 15 percent last year, one of the highest rates in the world. Investors are flooding the country to exploit its natural resources, build factories and pipelines now that political stability has returned.

Monica, who works as a domestic helper in the Swazi capital Mbabane, says, “Soon poor Swazis and South African women will come to Mozambique for jobs, and I hope they do not face the same problems we do now.”