AFRICANEWS

Zimbabwe

AIDS rips families apart

AIDS

The "human face" of AIDS is reflected in the eyes of people such as Nkululeko Siwela and Rebecca Chagonda, whose families have been ripped apart by the scourge. The loss of breadwinners and adult children to AIDS has produced orphans and widows who suffer in extreme poverty in Zimbabwe and beyond.

After twenty-year-old Nkululeko Siwela woke up one day in 1998, he had not only lost his father to AIDS, but instantly found himself heading a family of 23 people, which included his 20 brothers and sisters and his father' three wives.

"Someone had to fend for the family, and I being the eldest son found myself in this inevitable position," says Siwela, who lives with his family in Gwanda, 120 kilometres from Bulawayo in southern Zimbabwe. "I have struggled over the past years to keep the family together, providing food and school fees."

Siwela has not been able to complete his education. When his father fell ill in 1997, Siwela was due to sit for his Ordinary Levels but could not raise the required amount because most of the money was being channelled towards his father's medication.

What happened to Siwela and his family is a typical experience of how AIDS is wiping out breadwinners, which affects family survival and food security in communities in Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa.

Zimbabwe is teetering on the brink of an AIDS chasm. The Ministry of Health and Child Welfare estimates that at least 1.5 million people out of the country's 13 million population are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

In Africa, 24 million people are believed to be living with HIV. The spreading affliction, the biggest threat to humankind since its advent some 20 years ago, is decimating families; as a result, there is a growing population of orphans, and fragile economies are being brought to their knees.

Zimbabwe's life expectancy, currently pegged at 44 years, is likely to drop to 27 years, according to latest estimates from UNICEF. Zimbabwe is found within the category of countries with a high incidence of HIV/AIDS.

The impacts of HIV/AIDS on family life and structure are devastating. For instance, in the Siwela family, the death of Siwela's uncle in 1999 - a few months after Siwela's father's death - was a defining moment in the family's history.

Siwela's uncle had inherited his elder brother's wife as demanded by custom, but he soon fell ill and died. The younger brother was to inherit the two widows but soon succumbed to the same fate, which ripped the family apart as members of the three households squabbled.

The widows accused each other of bringing the virus into the family and causing the deaths of their spouses. Tempers flared when some members of the family turned to the Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (ZNNP+). Last year, the AIDS support group produced a documentary, Todii, which highlighted the family's fate.

The central theme in Todii was the trauma and suffering brought about by AIDS. Siwela says other relatives did not like what they heard or saw in the documentary such that "they gave us a severe ear bashing."

Now, tension is rising in the family as one of the widows is finally succumbing to AIDS. The children are dropping out of school in droves as financial problems bite deep.

But Siwela's story is not unique. Zimbabweans are groping for answers on how to cope with the scourge, with many turning to traditional healers for relief. Devastated families are accusing one another of witchcraft. Others have banished afflicted family members from their homes. Most rural areas have become liberally littered with child or grandparent-led families as the scourge wrecks its havoc.

The case of 71-year-old Rebecca Chagonda of the northern part of Bulawayo illustrates these realities. She has lost her two children to AIDS, while the other is deteriorating rapidly.

In her twilight years, Chagonda is looking after 13 orphaned children. The whole family is squatting in two huts at the edge of the village and lives on wild fruits and food crumbs donated by other villagers.

"We are treated as outcasts now because everyone knows my children died of AIDS-related illnesses and another is succumbing to the disease," says Chagonda as she reclines on a reed mat. "People are afraid of us and they keep their distance."

One of her deceased children was forced to steal to sustain herself and pay for medication. "Everyone knew she was too weak to work but they did nothing to assist," she says, as she knits her wrinkled temples and fight back tears. Although some communities have made advances in changing the attitudes towards HIV/AIDS, ignorance still holds sway in the country.

A rural councillor in Bulawayo, Parira Mpofu, agrees that lack of information on the killer disease still pervades the majority of rural areas and could have contributed to the spread of the disease. He says: "A combination of factors such as poverty, ignorance and fatalism are to blame for the predicaments we find ourselves in. There is a dearth of information on the disease."

Mpofu says people still believe that they can get the disease by interacting with the infected. "We need education and to reach out to those in need of material and emotional support," he says. With its proceeds from the documentary Todii, ZNNP+ has distributed US$2,353 to orphaned children identified under the auspices of the United Nations Population Fund. ZNNP+, a wholly donor-funded organisation, has allocated another US$90,909 to each of the country's 10 provinces to support orphaned children and AIDS patients.

"It is common knowledge that people living with AIDS are getting a raw deal because they have been branded the walking dead," says Frank Guni, ZNNP+'s director who tested HIV positive 10 years ago. "So, as an AIDS support group, we are coming in to fill the void left by the system." The organisation has also formed units country-wide for people living with AIDS, and provides backup support for unemployed members to start income generating projects in the hope of ending the vicious cycle of poverty.

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