By Davison Mudzingwa
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 23 2014 (IPS)

Lungile Thamela knows how he got infected with HIV: through his reckless choice to have unprotected sex with his partner although he knew she was living with HIV.

He wanted to prove his manhood by having a baby. Instead, he got HIV and was crushed by the burden of self-stigma.

Gendered concepts of masculinity influence how men behave around HIV and within antiretroviral treatment (ART) programs.

As a result, the number of men on ART in South Africa in 2012 was half the number of women.

Why are South African men reluctant to test for HIV, to start and stay on ART, and to join support groups?

Is it that health services are not men-friendly? Is it an idea of masculinity that mandates men to be stoic, to hide pain as a weakness and not to talk about their feelings?

What defines the relationship of men to health services and how can it be improved?

In this video by Davison Mudzingwa, experts and activists like Thamela, analyze the factors that drive men’s gendered vulnerability to HIV in South Africa and suggest ways to reduce it.

Children stampede for reading material at the Chingwizi transit camp. Most of the kids had their schooling disrupted due to the displacement. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

By Davison Mudzingwa
MASVINGO, Zimbabwe, Jun 26 2014 (IPS)

When the Tokwe-Mukosi dam’s wall breached, so started the long, painful and disorienting journey for almost 18,000 people who had lived in the 50-kilometre radius of Chivi basin in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo province as even those not affected by the flood were removed from their homes.

The community was relocated to Chingwizi, an arid terrain near Triangle Estates, a sugar cane farm and ethanol project jointly owned by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

IPS was one of the few agencies able to visit the site and speak to the displaced.

More than 18,000 people live in the Chingwizi transit camp in Mwenezi district, about 150 kms from their former homes in Chivi basin as they wait to be allocated one-hectare plots of land by the government. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

By Davison Mudzingwa and Francis Hweshe
MASVINGO, Zimbabwe, Jun 25 2014 (IPS)

As the villagers sit around the flickering fire on a pitch-black night lit only by the blurry moon, they speak, recounting how it all began.

They take turns, sometimes talking over each other to have their own experiences heard. When the old man speaks, everyone listens. “It was my first time riding a helicopter,” John Moyo* remembers.

“The soldiers came, clutching guns, forcing everyone to move. I tried to resist, for my home was not affected but they wouldn’t hear any of it.”

So started the long, painful and disorienting journey for the 70-year-old Moyo and almost 18,000 other people who had lived in the 50-kilometre radius of Chivi basin in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo province.“We don’t want this life of getting fed like birds.” -- John Moyo, displaced villager from Chivi basin

When heavy rains pounded the area in early January, the 1.8 billion cubic metre Tokwe-Mukosi dam’s wall breached.

Flooding followed, destroying homes and livestock. The government, with the help of non-governmental organisations, embarked on a rescue mission. And even unaffected homes in high-lying areas were evacuated by soldiers.

According to Moyo, whose home was not affected, this was an opportunity for the government, which had been trying to relocate those living near Chivi basin for sometime.

“They always said they wanted to establish an irrigation system and a game park in the area that covered our ancestral homes,” he tells IPS.

For Itai Mazanhi*, a 33-year-old father of three, the government had the best excuse to remove them from the land that he had known since birth.

“The graves of my forefathers are in that place,” he tells IPS. Mazanhi is from Gororo village.

After being temporarily housed in the nearby safe areas of Gunikuni and Ngundu in Masvingo province, the over 18,000 people or 3,000 families were transferred to Nuanetsi Ranch in the Chingwizi area of Mwenezi district, about 150 kms from their former homes.

The crop and livestock farmers from Chivi basin have been forced to adjust in a land that lacks the natural fertility of their former land, water and adequate pastures for their livestock.

The dust road to the Chingwizi camp is a laborious 40-minute drive littered with sharp bumps and lurking roadside trenches.

From the top of an anthill, a vantage point at the entrance of this settlement reveals a rolling pattern of tents and zinc makeshift structures that stretch beyond the sight of the naked eye. At night, fires flicker faintly in the distance, and a cacophony of voices mix with the music from solar- and battery-powered radio sets. It’s the image of a war refugee relief camp.

A concern for the displaced families is the fact that they were settled in an area earmarked for a proposed biofuel project. The project is set to be driven by the Zimbabwe Bio-Energy company, a partnership between the Zimbabwe Development Trust and private investors. The state-owned Herald newspaper quoted the project director Charles Madonko saying resettled families could become sugarcane out-growers for the ethanol project.

This plan was subject to scathing attack from rights watchdog Human Rights Watch. In a report released last month, the organisation viewed this as a cheap labour ploy.

“The Zimbabwean army relocated 3,000 families from the flooded Tokwe-Mukorsi dam basin to a camp on a sugar cane farm and ethanol project jointly owned by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front [ZANU-PF] and Billy Rautenbach, a businessman and party supporter,” read part of the report.

Sugar cane fields like this one in Chisumbanje are planned to feed the ethanol project in Mwenezi district. The displaced villagers from Chivi basin fear they will be used as cheap labourers. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

The sugarcane plantations will be irrigated by the water from the Tokwe-Mukosi dam. Upon completion, the dam is set to become Zimbabwe’s largest inland dam, with a capacity to irrigate over 25,000 hectares.

Community Tolerance Reconciliation and Development, COTRAD, a non-governmental organisation that operates in the Masvingo province sees the displacement of the 3,000 families as a brutal retrogression. The organisation says ordinary people are at the mercy of private companies and the government.

“The people feel like outcasts, they no longer feel like Zimbabweans,” Zivanai Muzorodzi, COTRAD programme manager, tells IPS.

Muzorodzi, whose organisation has been monitoring the land tussle before the floods, says the land surrounding the Tokwe-Mukosi dam basin was bought by individuals, mostly from the ruling ZANU-PF party.

“Villagers won’t own the land or the means of production. Only ZANU-PF bigwigs will benefit,” Muzorodzi says.

The scale of the habitats has posed serious challenges for the cash-strapped government of Zimbabwe. Humanitarian organisations such as Oxfam International and Care International have injected basic services such clean water through water bowsers and makeshift toilets.

“It’s not safe at all, it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” a Zimbabwe Ministry of Local Government official stationed at the camp and who preferred anonymity tells IPS. “The latrines you see here are only one metre deep. An outbreak of a contagious disease would spread fast.”

Tendai Zingwe fears her child might contract diarrhoea due to poor sanitation conditions in Chingwizi camp. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

Similar fears stalk Spiwe Chando*, a mother of four. The 23-year-old speaks as she sorts her belongings scattered in small blue tent in which an adult cannot sleep fully stretched out. “I fear for my child because another family lost a child due to diarrhoea last week. This can happen to anyone,” she tells IPS, sweating from the heat inside the tent. “I hope we will move from this place soon and get proper land to restart our lives.”

This issue has posed tensions at this over-populated camp. Meetings, rumour and conjecture circulate each day. Across the camp, frustrations are progressively building up. As a result, a ministerial delegation got a hostile reception during a visit last month. The displaced farmers accuse the government of deception and reneging on its promises of land allocation and compensation.

Children stampede for reading material at the Chingwizi transit camp. Most of the kids had their schooling disrupted due to the displacement. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

The government has promised to allocate one hectare of land per family, at a location about 17 kms from this transit camp. This falls far short of what these families own in Chivi basin. Some of them, like Mazanhi, owned about 10 hectares. The land was able to produce enough food for their sustenance and a surplus, which was sold to finance their children’s education and healthcare.

Mazanhi is one of the few people who has already received compensation from the government. Of the agreed compensation of 3,000 dollars, he has only received 900 dollars and is not certain if he will ever be paid the remainder of what he was promised. “There is a lot of corruption going on in that office,” he tells IPS.

COTRAD says the fact that ordinary villagers are secondary beneficiaries of the land and water that once belonged to them communally is an indication of a resource grabbing trend that further widens the gap of inequality.

“People no longer have land, access to water, healthcare and children are learning under trees.”

For Moyo, daily realities at the transit camp and a hazy future is both a painful reminder of a life gone by and a sign of “the next generation of dispossession.” However, he hopes for a better future.

“We don’t want this life of getting fed like birds,” says Moyo.

*Names altered for security reasons.

Junior Mayema says that discrimination against gay people is just as bad in South Africa as in his home Democratic Republic of Congo. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

By Davison Mudzingwa
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Jun 26 2012 (IPS)

When Junior Mayema boarded a plane to South Africa from his native Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010, he cried tears of joy because he was finally heading to a country where he could live openly as a gay man.

South Africa is the only African country to recognise same-sex unions, and the country’s constitution forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, gender or sexual orientation.

However, when he arrived in South Africa Mayema shed even more tears. But this time they were tears of pain because of the exclusion and harassment he had to endure.

“It’s a very hard life I’m living, a very hard life,” the 24-year-old told IPS.

In South Africa Mayema has been verbally abused and beaten up several times for being gay. And he has lost confidence in the justice system because of apathetic law enforcers.

“I was beaten up last year and when I went to report it to the police they started laughing asking ‘Why are you gay? Just go to the hospital.’”

The prejudicial attacks are one of the reasons why Mayema left DRC. Being gay in his home country means finding work is almost impossible, and it means being discriminated against in education institutions and even being killed.

Mayema, a university drop out, had a close brush with death when his own family beat him up because of his sexual orientation. He said that he was starved for seven days, as his family attempted “to exorcise his demon.”

But he never expected to experience similar discrimination in South Africa. He told IPS that he was ejected from several shelters for being a gay man and a foreigner. The situation is sometimes so bad that he said he misses home.

“In South Africa it’s worse, there is xenophobia, homophobia and racism,” Mayema told IPS, lamenting his fading hope for a new life here.

But his story is sadly not unique. His is just one of many cases of hardships that refugee Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) people experience here according to a report titled “Dream Deferred: Is the Equality Clause in the South African Constitution Bill of Rights just a far-off hope for LGBTI Asylum Seekers and Refugees”.

The report, produced by the People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), was released on Tuesday Jun. 26. It found that at the root of the plight of refugee LGBTI people in South Africa was their lack of legal residential status. The report recommends that the government of South Africa sensitise its Department of Home Affairs staff to properly handle the application for refugee status by LGBTI people.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency guide for adjudicating LGBTI refugee and asylum claims, threatened people should be granted legal status in their country of refugee. But this is not the case in South Africa.

“Out of 35 people we interviewed who applied, only two were granted refugee status,” said Guillain Koko, coordinator of the PASSOP LGBTI advocacy project.

Koko said that the lack of residence status jeopardises the chances of employment for refugee LGBTI people.

“They are the most vulnerable people,” he said. He added that the difficulties of being unemployed resulted in “two of those interviewed trying to commit suicide, while some were driven into sex work.”

Unemployment, Koko said, slows down social integration and even acceptance into local LGBTI social groups.

“They can’t go to gay clubs or restaurants because it’s expensive.”

Robinah Kintu, a former Uganda national soccer player who resides in Mandalay Township near Cape Town, is a case in point. She has a tenuous future in the country and she may soon be unemployed because she has not been granted residence here.

Kintu currently plays provincial league soccer for the Red Eagles Football Club in Cape Town. However, the South African Football Association has refused to grant her permission to continue playing since she only has asylum in the country. “When you are a foreigner and also a lesbian, for me, I call it war,” she told IPS.

“It’s dangerous.”

She has been living in the country since 2009 and said that there is little to distinguish between South Africa and her East African home, a country notorious for its homophobia, when it comes to people’s attitudes towards LGBTIs.

“The people there treat you, if you are lesbian or gay, like a pig,” she said. “The sentence is death, when they find out that you are a lesbian.

“In South Africa, it’s still the same. There is a law but people do not follow the law…even South African lesbians are raped and killed.”

In February four South African men were sentenced to 18 years in jail for stoning and stabbing to death an openly lesbian teenager, 19-year-old Zoliswa Nkonyana, in 2006. Violence against lesbians is common here, with high incidences of “corrective rape”, where men believe they can “cure” lesbians of their sexual orientation.

Kintu has been subjected to her fair share of harassment, and fears for her safety.

“If I had money I would move from this place, it’s not safe. That’s why you can’t find me walking out at night…they can kill or rape you,” she said, her voice breaking.

The PASSOP report calls for tighter law enforcement regarding the rights of LGBTI refugees in South Africa. It urges the government “to take affirmative measures to prevent, stop and prosecute acts of violence against LGBTI refugees.”

When a financial crisis threatened the existence of Africa’s oldest community station, Bush Radio, an outpouring of sympathy and appeals went viral on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. However, despite this outspoken support that showed that the station is worth saving, its future remains uncertain.

Radio Zibonele began broadcasting under the bed of a shipping container truck in 1995. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

It got the message out there to the decision makers, and because it was in their faces all the time… there has been offers of assistance,” said Adrian Louw, programme integrator at Bush Radio.

The emergence of social media has opened new opportunities for community broadcasters in Cape Town, South Africa. Not only are they able to interact more effectively with their audiences, but they can now do so cheaply.

Bush Radio broadcasts to at least 260 000 listeners, predominantly in the poor Cape Flats, formerly an apartheid housing area for people of colour.

But thanks to social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and a blog, Bush Radio now maintains a strong presence in the community.

“The use of social media has been important for us because it has allowed us to do stuff without getting a specific designer on board that knows our internet protocols,” said Louw.

The station has a rich history of defiance during the apartheid era. Back then it broadcasted illegally after repeated applications for a licence were turned down. Since the granting of a broadcasting licence in 1994, the station has evolved with the times.

“If blogging works, why do we have to pay thousands of (South African) Rands to get a designer to design a fancy website for news when a free CMS (content management system) works?” asked Louw.

Core to Bush Radio’s programming are issues that affect their audiences. These include HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, poverty and crime. Highlighting these issues through social media is convenient in several ways. “The nice thing about social media is that it really assists community media with its mission, in terms of increasing access to the station and really making people feel that they are owners of the station because they now can communicate with the station quickly,” says Louw

“Even if you are not interested in something you get an alert, like ‘do not forget that Sakhisizwe (radio programme) is going to talk about HIV/AIDS at 12pm.’ In that way, a specialised audience will interact.”

Bush Radio is also renowned for training young people in broadcasting. Social media has enabled them to spread the message quicker. “For instance we had a recruitement for news volunteers. We had a response from over sixty applicants within three days.”

For Bush Radio, social media complements the weaknesses of radio – its immediacy and transient nature. With social media, the station can now relay important messages that have a presence on the internet.

“We seriously believe that technology must be used in bettering people’s lives,” said Louw.

Across town in South Africa’s biggest single township of Khayelitsha, Radio Zibonele has a lot in common with Bush Radio. Radio Zibonele’s listenership has steadily increased with the station’s meteoric rise from its days of broadcasting under the bed of a shipping container truck in 1995.

With over 220 000 listeners, feedback grew and inundated the single studio phone line. The advent of social media has been a welcome development for Radio Zibonele.

Like most community media, Radio Zibonele traditionally interacts with its audiences through outreach programmes such as road shows and other sponsored community activities. However, of late, dwindling sponsorship has been a hindrance. Social media, said Ntebaleng Shete, the station’s programme manager, fills the gap by reconnecting with the community.

Radio Zibonele broadcasts mostly in the local language, isiXhosa. Its flagship programme discusses various social problems, and feedback peaks during this two-hour programme.

The high penetration of mobile phones with internet connectivity has also boosted the number of listeners who log onto social networks. According to latest figures provided by Cellular Online, a mobile portal, South Africa has a growing subscriber base of close to 20 million users.

“I think people are growing with technology…many of the people want to be on Facebook and Twitter,” said Shete.

However, Chris Kabwato, the director of Highway Africa, a Pan-African programme at Rhodes University that focuses on research, education, media and digital technologies, said community media in Africa has a long way to go to utilise social media.

“(There are ) the perennial challenges of lack of internet access… and the general lack of technical knowledge around the use of new media on – mobile, internet, web-based social applications,” said Kabwato of the factors that have hampered the full usage of social media.

He, however, believes that vast opportunities to develop more interactive programmes and to generate revenue from social media exist.

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.

**The story that moved on Feb. 3 incorrectly stated that Bush Radio had received sufficient financial support to save the station.