Snip snip. Extra extra. Blah blah. Aids could well be worst thing to happen to mankind if one is not to indulge in time consuming Biblical and other extrapolations to find worser scourges, but the strategies being debated and proffered by health experts have somewhat exposed how desperate the world – especially the developing – is about containing new infections. That is if not only it was about taming the feral sex urges. Take for example all this talk about circumcision: it has been reported that this drastically reduces chances of contracting the HIV-virus that causes Aids. But looking at the bigger picture this provides insights about the world’s obsession with unprotected sex – just exactly what is killing poor Africans in their millions! No wonder radical religious types snort at all approaches designed by experts as what will beat this terrible thing. Have a circumcision, have unprotected sex – bulletproof! Why? Without sounding like some haughty holier-than-thou type, is it because we have resigned ourselves to the eerie imagination that nothing else will – not even behaviour change – beat this terrible thing that is claiming the lives of young men and women with so much promise before their time? To circumcise or not to circumcise, that’s the question.

our heads and shoulders are decorated with flecks of gold
flurries of falling jacaranda leaves
colouring our world
as we sit in the circle

touching the warming earth beneath my feet
it has been too long since I have felt the ground
the crackling dry leaves
the warming round rocks

weavers are already beginning their nests
intricate works of art
Celtic knots
no beginning
no end

and the web weaves around us
threads of light
reaching from across the planet
touching ground
as Zimbabweans begin this journey of self reliance
‘what can I contribute?’
‘where do we connect?’
General invites the other communities
to his organic gardening workshop in Kuwadzana
Chikukwa comes to Epworth
to speak of community building
counsellors and therapists and small organisations
begin to connect
‘what have we got to share?’

bronze mannekins on dry branches
picking up the courage
to come to the seed

warm earth
cold wind
golden flecks

I didn’t learn African history in school. What I know of my own history is what has been handed down from father to son (or in this case daughter) for generations. In Shona we say Ziva kwawakabva, kwaunoenda husiku (know where you came from, for where you go is dark). Very few of us know our histories before colonialism, and have a passing knowledge of the country’s history as a whole. What we do know is a history that is tainted, it is our story as seen by foreigners. It wasn’t that long ago that to be black was to be inferior, and we believed it. We didn’t know how to prove anything different.

The world has changed, but that lesson of a lack of history has become part of the very nature of being African. Africa as a continent looks Westwards and Eastwards and never to herself for solutions to her problems. Africans are supposedly the most educated and skilled immigrant group in America and Europe, yet Africa itself is the poorest and most under developed continent on the planet. How? Because even in education we teach ourselves the inferiority of our ideas. It is no wonder then that Africa’s collective present, and future, looks dark.

Here are some excerpts from an article by Xan Rice writing for The Guardian Weekly. His piece is about the Kenyan government of national unity, how the government has done well for itself, while the poor eat “air burgers”.

Sounds a lot like Zimbabwe.

Evans Akula lost his Mercedes but got the message. During a late-night carjacking in Nairobi a few weeks ago, the assailants asked the Kenyan MP: “When will you people give us the new constitution or the jobs that you have promised?” The question encapsulated the main concerns in Kenya today: the urgent need for political reform and accountability, and the growing struggle of the mwananchi, or common man, to get by.

Poor people skip meals, eating “air burgers”, as the local saying goes. Government attempts to help the poor have been half-hearted at best, reflecting not only lack of money but a skewed sense of priorities. In the recent budget, finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta revealed that the projected revenues for this year would not even cover the state’s running costs, which went up steeply when Odinga and Kibaki nearly doubled the number of ministries to reward allies with seats.

To save cash Kenyatta announced that no government official would be able to drive a vehicle over 1800cc – the local Mercedes dealer quickly advertised several models at 1796cc – but several ministers said they would ignore the directive.

Governing in Africa
is like sweeping leaves
on a windy day

An IRIN headline caught my eye this morning: Militaries unite to fight HIV.

The article discusses the launch of the Regional HIV Network of Military Forces in West and Central Africa, a network for military forces to combat HIV within their ranks, and in their surrounding communities. As the article points out, with the exception of Ethiopia, “A number of studies on HIV prevalence rates among sub-Saharan Africa’s armed forces have shown higher rates than in civilian populations.”

And yet, most African militaries have been reluctant to develop programmes that effectively address this challenge. A few excellent reports, notably Alex de Waal’s Fucking Soldiers and Martin Rupiya’s study for the Institute for Security Studies – The enemy within: Southern African militaries’ quarter-Century battle with HIV and AIDS, look at some of the reasons behind this resistance.

As in other sectors of society, some of the reasons why HIV/AIDS is not adequately tackled within the armed forces include ignorance, fear, stigmatisation and stereotyping. For example, in Ghana, “new recruits who test positive are not admitted into the armed forces. A similar ban in South Africa was overturned by the courts in 2008.”

At one presentation at the launch of the regional HIV network, a doctor with Ghana’s armed forces said that soldiers are provided with condoms in the military barracks there.  In response, echoing a classic argument against distributing condoms in schools,  Senegal’s Minister of Armed Forces, Becaye Diop, asked: “But by giving them condoms, are you not encouraging promiscuity?”