Condoms cause aids': Poison, prevention and denial in Venda, South Africa

African Affairs

Volumn 108, Issue 432, 2009, Pages 353-370

  McNeill, Fraser G ^a  

^a LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME; CONDOM USE; DISEASE CONTROL; HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS; MORTALITY;

AFRICA; LIMPOPO; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; VENDA;

EID: 67649424768     PISSN: 00019909     EISSN: 14682621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adp020     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Robert. J. Thornton, Unimagined Communities: Sex, networks and AIDS in Uganda and South Africa (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA and London, 2008), p. 2. This quote echoes the sentiments of many other commentators on the topic who have, to various extents, resorted to the explanatory paradigms of denial and stigma to make sense of the powerful influence that HIV/AIDS has on the ways in which people talk, and don't talk, about it.
2. See, for example, Tony Barnett and Alan Whiteside, AIDS in the Twenty-First Century: Disease and globalization (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, NY, 2002);
3. Graham Reid and Liz Walker, 'Secrecy, stigma and HIV/AIDS: An introduction', African Journal of AIDS Research 2, 2 (2003 , pp. 85-8;
4. Jonathan J. Stadler, 'The young, the rich, and the beautiful: Secrecy, suspicion and discourses of AIDS in the South African lowveld', African Journal of AIDS Research 2, 2 (2003), pp. 127-39;
5. Catherine Campbell, Letting Them Die: How HIV/AIDS prevention programmes often fail (James Currey, Oxford, 2003);
6. Didier Fassin, When Bodies Remember: Experiences and politics of AIDS in South Africa (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA and London, 2007).
7. This saga has been documented extensively, possibly excessively, in the literature, and does not need to be restated here. See, for example, Nicoli Nattrass, 'AIDS and the scientific governance of medicine in post-apartheid South Africa', African Affairs 107, 427 (2008), pp. 157-76;
8. Mandisa Mbali, 'AIDS discourses and the South African state: Government denialism and post-apartheid policy-making', Transformation 54 (2004), pp. 104-22;
9. Fassin, When Bodies Remember, chapters 1 and 2; Mark Gevisser, Thabo Mbeki: The dream deferred (Jonathan Ball Publishers, South Africa, 2007).
10. Stadler, 'The young, the rich, and the beautiful', p. 128.
11. Helen Lambert and Kate Wood, 'A comparative analysis of communication about sex, health and sexual health in India and South Africa: implications for HIV prevention', Culture, Health and Sexuality 7, 6 (2005), pp. 527-41;
12. see also Deborah Posel, 'Sex, death and the fate of the nation: reflections of the politicization of sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa', Africa 75, 2 (2005), pp. 125-53.
13. Isak Niehaus, 'Death before dying: Understanding AIDS stigma in the South African lowveld', Journal of Southern African Studies 33 4 (2007), pp. 845-60.
14. Stadler, 'The young, the rich, and the beautiful', p. 133.
15. See also Adam Ashforth, 'An epidemic of witchcraft? the implications of AIDS for the post-apartheid state', African Studies 61, 1 (2002), pp. 121-45;
16. Adam Ashforth, Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy in South Africa (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL and London, 2005).
17. See, for example, Alexander Rodlach, Witches, Westerners and HIV: AIDS and cultures of blame in Africa (Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA, 2006);
18. Isak Niehaus and Gunvor Jonsson, 'Dr Wouter Basson, Americans and wild beasts: Men's conspiracy theories of AIDS in the South African lowveld', Medical Anthropology 24, 2 (2005), pp. 179-208.
19. This was the official title of the Thirteenth International AIDS Conference held in Durban, South Africa in July 2000.
20. The Venda region is officially known as the ThulamelaDistrict of the Vhembe municipality of the Limpopo Province in the Republic of South Africa. The Limpopo Province includes the former homelands of Venda, Lebowa and Gazankulu. Following more conventional usage, I refer to the Venda region, the people as Vhavenda (sing.: Muvenda) and the language as Tshivenda.
21. For an account of ritual murders in Venda, and the social unrest they caused in the early 1990s, see Victor N. Ralushai, M. V. Masinga, D. M. M. Madiba et al., 'Report of the commission of enquiry into witchcraft violence and ritual murders in the Northern Province of South Africa' (mimeo, 1996).
22. Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, 'Notes on Afromodernity and the neo world order: An afterword', in Brad Weiss (ed.), Producing African Futures: Ritual and reproduction in a neoliberal age (Brill, Leiden, 2004), pp. 329-48.
23. Fraser G. McNeill, An Ethnographic Analysis of HIV/AIDS in the Venda Region of South Africa: Politics, peer education and music (London School of Economics and Politics Science, unpublished PhD dissertation, 2007).
24. Dissident thinkers question the connections between HIV and AIDS. Ironically, in his search for 'African solutions', none of the dissidentsMbeki consulted, such as Peter Duesberg, David Rasnick or Harvey Bialy, were of African origin. See for a comprehensive overview of their arguments and an extensive bibliography (7 July 2007).
25. M. F. Mavhungu, 'A changing view of death in a Venda village' (University of Venda, unpublished MA dissertation, 1998);
26. V. J. Rambau, 'The role of woman in the formation and operation of women's burial societies' (University of Venda, unpublished MA dissertation, 1999).
27. Fraser G. McNeill, 'We sing about what we cannot talk about: Music as anthropological evidence in the Venda region of South Africa' in Liana Chua, Casey High, and Tim Lau (eds), How Do We Know? Evidence, ethnography, and the making of anthropological knowledge (Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle, 2008), pp. 36-58;
28. Jaco Kruger, 'Of wizards and madmen: Venda zwilombe, part 1', South African Journal of Musicology 19/20 (2001), pp. 1-17.
29. Taken from 'Tshidzumbe' (Secrets), written and performed by Solomon Mathase, recorded by the author at Ngewani ya Themeli in June 2004.
30. See also Deborah Durham and Fred Klaits, 'Funerals and the public space of sentiment in Botswana', Journal of Southern African Studies 28, 4 (2002), pp. 777-96.
31. Stadler, 'The young, the rich, and the beautiful', p. 129.
32. See, for example, Herbert Aschwanden, Symbols of Death: An analysis of the consciousness of the Karanga (Mambo Press, Harare, 1987);
33. Ashforth, Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy, p. 70.
34. Helen Epstein, The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West and the fight against AIDS (Penguin, London, 2007), p. 148;
35. See also Elizabeth Pisani, The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, brothels and the business of AIDS, (Granta, London, 2008), p. 148;
36. Thornton, Unimagined Communities, p. 199;
37. Rodlach, Witches, Westerners and HIV, Chapter 7.
38. 'Taps of Poison', Thulamela Mirror, 27 August 2004.
39. Interview, Fondwe royal homestead (Musanda), 28 December 2004. Note the distinction made between 'talking' and 'gossip', marking out the public and private spheres of communication regarding causes of death.
40. Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumour and history in colonial Africa (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2000), p. 86;
41. see also Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumours and Gossip: New departures in anthropology (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003).
42. McNeill, An Ethnographic Analysis of HIV/AIDS, pp. 228-60;
43. see also Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, 'Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: Notes from the South African postcolony', American Ethnologist 26, 2 (1999), pp. 279-303.
44. FAP is a pseudonym, and non-governmental is perhaps a misleading term here. FAP maintains strong - if often strained - relations with government at the regional and local levels. It is funded, for example, through a bewildering array of national and international donations and tenders, financed by Scandinavian, North American and South African governments and charities.
45. Government AIDS education campaigns are distributed through free magazines, on billboards and on television and radio dramas. They have, however, been delivered with an overwhelmingly urban bias across South Africa and are thin on the ground in Venda. Seemingly contradicting the government's previous stance, they have generally been received with confusion. Civil society organizations such as the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which has played a pivotal role in cementing scientific understandings of AIDS in other parts of the country, have yet to make a significant impact in the far north of Limpopo Province.
46. Catherine Campbell and Zodwa Mzaidume, 'Grassroots participation, peer education, and HIV prevention by sex workers in South Africa', American Journal of Public Health 91, 12 (2001), pp. 1978-86;
47. Deborah James, '"To take the information down to the people": Life skills and HIV/AIDS peer educators in the Durban area', African Studies 61, 1 (2002), pp. 169-93; Campbell, Letting Them Die
48. For an in-depth analysis of peer education songs, see McNeill, '"We sing about what we cannot talk about"'; Fraser G. McNeill and Deborah James, 'Singing songs of AIDS in Venda, South Africa: Performance, pollution and ethnomusicology in a neo-liberal setting', South African Music Studies 28 (2008), pp. 1-30.
49. There is no space to discuss in detail a significant parallel process at work here, through which ancestral knowledge relating to sexual health, known as malwadze dza vhafumakhadzi (the illnesses of women) ascribes blood-related and sexually transmitted illness to women who have breached menstrual taboos, aborted a child or used contraception. Peer educators are frequently located in this category. This folk model of ancestral knowledge also supports notions of the health-enhancing exchange of fluids during intercourse and the importance of friction, sometimes referred to as 'dry sex', in maintaining sexual pleasure for both men and women. Both of these are inhibited by condom use, and this is closely connected to the ways in which condoms have been variously constructed as conducive to a host of illnesses across southern Africa. See McNeill, An Ethnographic Analysis of HIV/AIDS; Thornton, Unimagined Communities.
50. Lambert and Wood, 'A comparative analysis'; see also Durham and Klaits, 'Funerals and the public space' for an analysis of the avoidance of witchcraft accusations at funerals in Botswana.
51. UNAIDS, 'Country Profiles' (6 February 2007).