CULTURE-SWAZILAND: Women in the Forefront of the Battle Against AIDS

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

SWAZILAND, Aug 18 2003 (IPS) - Gogo ("Granny") Mkhatjwa, 62, has had enough of watching her grandchildren die of "the disease that cuts you down completely," as AIDS is colloquially known in the SiSwati language.

"I have learned about this disease. The health motivators taught us. I am insisting that my daughters take proper precautions," she told IPS from her mud and stick thatched hut in the central Manzini district.

All women, families and whole communities are now receiving information from health NGOs and the health ministry in the belief that the greater the penetration of knowledge, the more likely that relatives and neighbours will ensure the survival of the country.

Swaziland’s King Mswati suggested that survival might be in question when he opened parliament this year. Noting that the tiny country, the size of Wales, has one of the world’s highest HIV infection rates (38,6 percent, though that figure might also be low), Mswati called upon all Swazis to get involved with the eradication of AIDS, or else he would have no nation to govern.

Groups like the National AIDS Task Force, the Alliance of Mayors Initiative to Combat AIDS at the Local Level (AMICAALL), the United Nations children’s fund UNICEF, and others are targeting their AIDS messages at women who are no longer of childbearing age, or who may no longer be sexually active.

"When we discovered that the mortality rate for infants and children under five has grown by 50 percent in the last five years, because of mother to child transmission of the HIV virus, we knew we had to reinvent our education campaign, and expand it," Alan Brody, UNICEF’s national director for Swaziland, told IPS.

At community meetings that might be held in the kraal of the local chief (all Swazis are registered under 350 palace-appointed chiefs) or informally under trees, involving a handful of women, information about AIDS prevention has been disseminated this year.

Gogo Mkhatjwa put together the pieces of a tragic puzzle when she attended one meeting in rural Nyankeni. "My grandchildren were wasting away, and dying in a manner I did not understand. Now I know it is this AIDS, and I know there are ways that even if the mother has the sickness she does not have to pass it onto her child," she said.

Mkhatjwa is a leader of the local regiment of her age group. All Swazis, male and female, belong to the regiment of their contemporaries; they grow-up together, assemble for national celebrations and duties, and become involved in community projects.

When health organisations expanded their AIDS information distribution system beyond hospitals and clinics and out into the communities, they tapped into the traditional structures that have long existed to keep Swazis informed about national events.

"Swaziland is a traditional society, and it was wise to use the existing structures for our lectures," health motivator Thandi Simelane told IPS.

"This is also a conservative country, and the people respond better to messages that don’t come from strangers, but at gatherings that are sanctioned by the chiefs or local council of elders. The women have networks both formal, like the regimental system, and informal. We tapped into those," Simelane said.

This is the same approach UNICEF used this month when it launched its campaign to supply all Swazi children under age five with vitamin A supplements, using capsules donated by the Canadian government.

"The women were very involved in the programme.We find that Swazi women are anxious about their children’s health because they haven’t been properly informed. But they will endure any hardship, like long walks to clinics and queuing for medicine once they get there, when they have the information about what they must do," Satu Pehu-Voima, who is the programme officer for UNICEF in charge of the vitamin A distribution, told IPS.

Nor is the vitamin A initiative the first time that Swazi women were recognised as authorities to be put in charge of family health. Last year, the World Food Programme, (WFP) revamped its emergency assistance distribution when drought and the loss of agricultural workers to AIDS cut harvests, and left one quarter of the population without food.

"We knew it was the women in the villages who had all the intelligence about whose pot was empty, and which family needed assistance, because women…share information," said a WFP relief worker.

Swazi chiefs were consulted, and they agreed to put local women in managerial positions to distribute food. Now, some of these same women are using their knowledge of their communities for the AIDS containment effort, by directing medical assistance and information distribution to those who need it.

"The irony is not lost that women are given these responsibilities in a country where they are legal minors," an official with the Swaziland chapter of Women in Law in Southern Africa told IPS.

Activists who are seeking to empower women politically and socially are happy that traditional authorities are recognising the value of women in social, health and emergency relief efforts.

"Women are showing themselves capable outside the kitchen, for the first time in the experience of some of these chiefs. This is a good thing," said health motivator Simelane. She feels that ground has been broken this year, and there is no turning back.

As for Gogo Mkhatjwa, she has become a health activist. In Swazis society, it is often the grandmother who raises the children of her children, or the senior wife of a polygamous household. Upset that she has lost three grandchildren, and armed with knowledge about how to avoid HIV and, if the mother is infected, how to prevent transmission to offspring, she is speaking with her daughter and two daughters-in-law with the authority of an elder.

"I told them, ‘No more dead babies!’ And they must look after themselves, too! I instructed them on what they must do, because now I know myself," she said. (ENDS/IPS/AF/SA/CR/JH/SM/03)

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