HEALTH: Conjugal Visits Not the Right Answer for AIDS in Prisons

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Lewis Machipisa

HARARE, Jul 21 1998 (IPS) - Zimbabwean officials, increasingly alarmed by the rising incidence of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) within prisons, are considering allowing prisoners conjugal visits as one measure to curb the spread of the disease.

The idea was suggested by Justice Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa last week as one way to kick-start national debate on HIV/AIDS in prisons.

But according to AIDS organisations in the country, conjugal rights for prisoners may be a good idea, but putting it into practice requires improving the conditions in the prisons.

“We don’t have enough rooms for the prisoners themselves, let alone to think of private rooms to satisfy conjugal obligations,” says Zorodzai Machekanyanga, information officer with the Women and AIDS Support Network (WASN).

“We would support the idea, but conditions in our prisons have to improve first. The environment is rough for even the hardcore prisoners, let alone people from outside,” she adds.

Norman Nyazema, chairman of the AIDS Counselling Trust (ACT), also agrees that it might be far too soon to talk about conjugal rights for prisoners as an AIDS prevention strategy.

According to Nyazema, during a recent visit to talk with prisoners about condoms, many flatly refused the idea of having their spouses come to spend time with them in prison.

“The prison facilities are so poor. A place for conjugal purposes has to be comfortable,” Nyazema says, adding that prisoners who are in jail for longer sentences “refused to have conjugal visits arranged for them”.

“To them (long-term prisoners), life is what happens in the prisons,” Nyazema explains. “It is only the short term prisoners who were for the idea of allowing spouses’ visits to meet sexual needs”.

The Zimbabwean government, which now appears more ready and willing to talk openly about the AIDS pandemic in this Southern African nation, is faced with an estimated 1.5 million people infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS.

One in four Zimbabweans is HIV positive, and according to official figures, 700 people die of AIDS-related deaths a week.

A recent study by the Zimbabwe Prison Services over the last five years also shows that the number of inmates with HIV/AIDS is a cause for concern. A total of 642 AIDS cases were recorded and a further 2,908 prisoners showed clinical symptoms of the disease in the country’s 40 prisons.

There are 17,000 people in prison, of which 800 are women. Although the Prison Services’ study does not say whether the inmates acquired the disease in the prisons, it is widely believed that most of them got it in jail. In 1995, 72 percent of the deaths among prisoners were AIDS related, official statistics show.

“Before conjugal visits may be allowed, we need to research on whether this will lower homosexuality and sexual assault in prisons,” says Elizabeth Matenga, ACT’s Executive Director.

Ironically, while Justice Minister Mnangagwa is in favour of conjugal rights for prisoners, he is against providing them with condoms, because he says this could be seen as encouraging homosexuality, an offence in Zimbabwe.

But Matenga says that giving condoms to prisoners is a must. “We can’t continue to say it’s not happening, when we all know it’s happening. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and say its not happening.

“We are not encouraging homosexuality, but we have to look at which is the lesser evil — denying someone a condom and condemning him or her to death through AIDS, or giving the condom so that those tempted into sexual desires can at least be safe,” stressed Matenga.

Machekanyanga agrees. “Condoms should be readily available. I think reality shows that in all our prisons, you find homosexual relationships, some by consent, some not. To save lives, condoms should be provided.”

But in the same way that some prisoners refuse the idea of conjugal visits, condoms also were not seen as an option.

“We went to talk to the prisoners about giving them condoms and they refused,” Nyazema told IPS. “They said homosexual activities were happening not because they want it, but because most of them were being forced by hardcore prisoners…so, they bluntly refused to be given condoms. It was even surprising to us.”

The Zimbabwean government, following a high-level political delegation’s recent visit to Uganda, has said that it will begin to talk more openly about AIDS. “Putting a cover around AIDS has been our biggest weakness,” Vice-President Simon Muzenda told the 12-member delegation which met him this week.

“There is no way we can run away from this problem. We cannot just brush it aside especially after realising what the pandemic is doing to our productive young men and women,” Muzenda said.

The Zimbwean delegation, headed by the Minister of State in the President’s Office responsible for Gender, Oppah Muchinguri, spent a week in Uganda to study how that country had succeeded in bringing down HIV infection levels.