I’ve just spent a week in Las Vegas. Not my first choice of destination but an award ceremony took me there. As a Zimbabwean I got a variety of comments, like:

- Zimbabwe? You don’t live there do you?

- What’s in your bag – all your money?

- Ag shame man, how do you cope?

When I checked into my hotel I was charmed by the young receptionist who looked at my passport, and then at me, and exclaimed:

No Way! When I was at high school my friends and I used to talk about where we wanted to visit and I always said Zimbabwe because it sounded cool and I didn’t know where it was.

Hmmm.

Then at a clothing store when I handed over my ID, the sales assistant said she’d quite like to live in a place like Zimbabwe. But she changed her mind when I said that there wasn’t a Starbucks.

One of the aspects that I found difficult traveling as a Zimbabwean was how I became so identified as Zimbabwe the country and all that’s wrong with it. Whilst it is certainly appropriate that horrified looks accompany any mention of Zimbabwe, because of the truly appalling situation here, I’m looking forward to the day when our country isn’t headline news because of violence and sadness.

The vast amount of email that I came home to revolved around the high levels of violence that we Zimbabweans are experiencing. The violence is being orchestrated by Zanu PF. But in The Standard published on 25th May, there’s a full page advertisement placed by the ruling party which says that Mugabe’s fist is against white imperialism, not against Zimbabweans. Apparently, according to Zanu PF, “support comes from persuasion not from pugilism”.

The kind of persuasion that cuts off a person’s lips, and cuts out their tongue? This is what was inflicted on Tonderai Ndira, a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) activist who was abducted, tortured and murdered recently.

In a recent article in the British Medical Journal, Roger England suggests that UNAIDS should be shut down. Over the years, there has been much ink spilled over the issue behind England’s argument. Are HIV and AIDS exceptional? Or instead, is HIV and AIDS something that ought to be addressed in balance with other health issues and within efforts to improve health care overall?

I favour the exceptional argument, largely because I view HIV and AIDS – yes, it is a very real health issue – but on top of as well as intertwined with its biomedical realities, HIV and AIDS is an issue of ideology. About ten years ago an extremely astute and very cool Botswanan woman questioned my interest in HIV/AIDS in Africa, she said: Why do Westerners care so much about HIV/AIDS when Africans have been dying of malaria for much longer? Good point. Why such interest?

It started with Ronald Reagan ignoring the virus because it was (predominately) infecting gay men. Now it’s George W. Bush and PEPFAR’s over-reliance on promoting abstinence. For these persons of power and others, part of the motivation behind interest in HIV/AIDS is to use the virus and the disease as a forum to spread a particular set of beliefs which in turn attempt to dictate a conservative stance on what constitutes appropriate sexual behaviour. It is an interest with shades of both religious fundamentalism and imperialism. But of course, the two have a history of co-mingling, particularly when you consider the convergence of missionaries and colonisers in Africa. For many (myself included), in addition to addressing a health issue, interest in HIV/AIDS in Africa (as exceptional) is to combat the ideology of Reagan, Bush, and anyone else who narrow-mindedly thinks we actually live in (and/or ought to live in) a world that defines mutually consensual sex as occurring only between men and women, in one way/position, and only for the purposes of reproducing.

There are near endless cases where this dilemma ­ exception or folded into something larger ­ comes into play in our thinking. For example: Why the exception of Africa Day? As far as I know, we don’t have days to celebrate the six other continents. HIV and AIDS as an issue of ideology lends insight into the importance of Africa Day. Over the last few years the availability of HIV and AIDS medications on the African continent has increased. But this came only after 2001 when, then director of the US Agency for International Development (UASID), Andrew Natsios was hesitant to implement ARV programmes on the continent. He explained his reason to the Boston Globe and before the US Congress: Africans cannot tell time; thus, not able to adhere to the regimen for taking the medications There was more to Natsios’ hesitancies (i.e., the need to improve health care systems overall), yet his comments revealed all too common views held by some in the United States: Africa as a homogenous continent full of folks who have not kept up with the modern world. Continuing to dismantle such lines of thinking is one of the many reasons there is need to embrace the argument of exception and both critically engage HIV/AIDS in Africa and celebrate Africa Day.

Dear Mr Mbeki

You made a famous speech at the beginning of your presidency about being an African. You also launched an ambitious and laudable project for the African Renaissance. Your place in history was guaranteed before you even started but your recent history of “No Aids, No Crime and No crisis” has only served to visit a torrent of ridicule on the man who is meant to represent the new African leadership.

From your pronouncements over the last few years, it is clear that your version of the African Renaissance meant that you were going to choose to work to banish all forms of stereotypes regarding the African man. Unfortunately, you have been so eager to do so that you have probably reinforced the very stereotypes you were working to dissolve. In fact, you have actually worsened the image of the black leader in the eyes of the world giving opportunities to newspapers like the Washington Times to label you a “Rogue Democrat.”

Instead of working to immediately acknowledge the severity of the AIDS pandemic and rape in South Africa for instance, you spent more time arguing against the perceived sexual tendencies of black people. AIDS is a world wide phenomenon! In Sudan, instead of rightly criticising the Khartoum regime for the state assisted genocide in their country, you chose to attack Winston Churchill for his adventures there ages ago! Then of course, there is “no crisis Zimbabwe.” While respected moral leaders like Desmond Tutu were loudly criticising Mugabe for being “the caricature of the African dictator” you were busy labeling him a coconut. You, as an African leader, have clearly not been “up to the task” in the Zimbabwean crisis!

Is it possible, then, Mr Mebki that you have taken your obsession for the African renaissance to such ridiculous levels that you are not willing to criticse Africans for the things you so desperately no longer want them to be guilty of in the eyes of the world? Are you going to sacrifice the children of Africa on the altar of convenience that wishes to restore the status of the African in history’s opinion? Did Idi Amin not exists much in the same way that Hitler did? Are Israeli atrocities in Palestine not comparable to Sudanese atrocities in Darfur?

Mr African, where is your sense of “I am because we are?” Where is your Ubuntu? History will not remember you for NEPAD. It will record you as the bright eyed renaissance man who was so obsessed with liberating the world of its image of Africa and Africans that he forgot the moral standards required for Africa to shed that very image. Your legacy will be that of intellectual, political and moral complicity in the deaths of AID patients, scars of crime victims and terrified citizens terrorised by their own governments in their own countries while you blamed the west and played with conspiracy theories. I, too, am proud to be an African, but not your kind of African.

Burnt buttocks, fettered feet, singed hair, charred homes. Cruel men play dentist. And without anesthetics, they forcibly extract healthy teeth from screaming patients. Patients who put their “X” on the “wrong” space. “If they do not understand, we will beat them until they understand,” a dead former minister said with glee at the height of farm murders circa year 2000 referring to white farmers. Today, the wrath is directed at fellow former comrades. We now “understand” what that dead man meant. Who said dead men tell no tales? Are dead men nothing but pictures? Turning in his grave? No, perhaps laughing all the way to that fiery place for souls unfavoured by St. Peter. Another said “we died (sic) for this country”. And that gives them that unique privilege to take lives, kick butt, pull the ears of infants, apply pliers to the genitals of sworn foes. A wise guy said: Not until all the so-called heroes of the struggle are called to the other life will we know peace. All heroes become a bore at last, another said. Burnt buttocks, fettered feet, singed hair, charred homes.

So the worst fears have been confirmed. CHRA and MDC activist and community organiser Tonderai Ndira, who was abducted from his home last week, has been found dead. Reportedly they had cut off his lips and cut out his tongue.

As Comrade Fatso put it:

Dead. A cold body in a mortuary. That’s how they found Tonde today. Abducted last week, he was tortured and beaten to death. An inspiring, young township freedom fighter whose words were in my ears last week, his breathing body in my eyes. Today the breath has been beaten out of him because he dared to believe that his people could be free. And dreams here are criminal things these days.

Tonderai Ndira was an example of everything that this military junta is trying to weed out and destroy. An energetic township organizer for the MDC, Tonde was inspiring to watch as he would lead us through his tree-lined Mabvuku suburb showing us his community’s problems and how they were determined to solve them. He was a true community activist, greeted by all who walked by and more popular than the local MP.

Once me and other comrades joined him for one of the most creative actions I’ve been in here. Mabvuku has had endless water shortages due to a corrupt City Council so letters supposedly from the Council were sent out to residents calling on them to come to the local Mabvuku council offices to discuss their plight. Soon there was a gathering at the offices of hundreds of Mabvuku residents, from water-bucket-on-head grandmothers to dread-locked scud-in-hand youths. The council representatives were overwhelmed and denied ever sending the letters. Angry residents told the officials and police where they wanted to stick their empty water buckets. Tonde, as usual, was in the forefront. The young and the old were united in their disdain for the answer-less officials. The riot police were called in. Santana trucks began hungrily chasing us and other township youths as we all evaporated into the sprawled out veins of dusty Mabvuku. But the point was made. No justice for us. No respect for you. And that is the message that Tonde’s activism has left written in the soil of his much-loved Mabvuku.

A few weeks ago Tendai Biti told the BBC: “If Mugabe thinks he’s going to get a default presidency, that will be over our dead bodies.”

Well, Biti, Mugabe has been the default president for the past two months. And it is over our dead bodies. 43 and counting. After the March election, the MDC said it was reluctant to organise popular actions in protest because they didn’t want to see people killed by the regime.

But the regime is killing people. And the run off isn’t for another five weeks. How many more of our friends, comrades, brothers, sisters, parents and children will we lose between now and then. And what is the MDC’s plan to ensure that this time, in this election, they take power? Because without concrete steps that see them convert an election victory to a term in office, what have Tonde, Tapiwa, Better and all the others died for?

When it comes to financial resources for HIV and AIDS the challenges are many. This is true all over the world and perhaps more profoundly in Zimbabwe. For example, the World Bank recently released a report entitled The World Bank’s Commitment to HIV and AIDS in Africa: Our Agenda for Action, 2007-2011

If you look in Appendix 8 entitled HIV Prevalence and Global Financing (for 44 African countries), you see that Zimbabwe has the fourth highest adult HIV prevalence rate (20.1%). However, when you look at total funds received from the Global Fund, PEPFAR, and the World Bank, Zimbabwe ranks 26th. Dating back to 2001, Zimbabwe has received US$50 Million from the Global Fund and no funding from either PEPFAR or the World Bank. Ethiopia has received the most funding from these three donors (US$1.1 billion), followed by Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Namibia is 10th with US$429 million.

One can surmise that there is politics behind Zimbabwe’s significantly lower funding; particularly when it comes to PEPFAR. Launched by George Bush in 2003, PEPFAR funds only 12 of the 44 countries listed in Appendix 8. In order of most money received these 12 countries are: South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Namibia, Botswana, Cote D’Ivoire (the range is US$857 million to US$200 million). Despite these funding limitations, adult HIV prevalence rates in Zimbabwe have declined in the last few years.

As often is the case, it’s difficult to understand why prevalence declines. Behaviour change is usually the answer, but which behaviours? How do you document and measure behaviour change? More condoms? Less sex? Increased monogamy? Are self-reported changes accurate? Or do they capture intentions perhaps not actually fulfilled? All solid questions for investigation, yet, in my view, one of the most important questions involves reactions to death; that watching loved ones die potentially prompts behaviour change. Deaths also go beyond pinpointing reasons for behaviour change. I wonder how many dollars go to helping Zimbabweans cope with deaths? And I mean cope emotionally. Even if a figure were available, larger questions resonate: It is socially and culturally acceptable to speak about death? To discuss loss and pain? To express and share the complex process of grieving? The saying goes that everyone grieves in different ways; I get a sense more often than not, Zimbabweans grieve in silence. Only time will reveal the longer-term impacts of HIV and AIDS-related deaths (as well those related to political violence). Again, I mean emotional impacts.

When there are hesitancies to speak openly about death, I wonder too if there are hesitancies to speak openly about life. Natasha’s recent blog Desocialising the self touches on a discussion forum organised by the Musasa Project where people spoke about life’s challenges, largely in relation to lobola, patriarchy, and marriage/relationships in general. I attended the forum as well and a particular comment has been on my mind, one which seems to highlight hesitancies among Zimbabweans to delve into potentially emotionally-charged topics of why, specifically: Why something in life is the way it is?

A woman asked one of the men in attendance: If you had a car that didn’t work, what would you do? Without batting an eye, the man answered: Buy a new one. The woman followed up with: Really, you wouldn’t investigate why the car didn’t work? And then continued with an analogy. Seems then perhaps if your wife didn’t want to have sex you might be inclined to get a new one (wife) and not think to ask your wife why she didn’t want to have sex. The man didn’t disagree. Perhaps he felt on the spot, but still, true to the poignancy of the analogy, the man said nothing. After some laughter that the analogy (unintentionally) equated women to non-functioning cars, the discussion continued following a line of thinking about both desocialising you self away from harmful practices and the importance of resocialising your self to better confront the many why questions life entails, including the complex and emotionally-charged ones.