Here’s a press release published by the Artists Trust of Southern Africa (ARTSA):

Zimbabwean renowned poet, Albert Nyathi performs on the 17/08/2010 for all of SADC’s Heads of State during the 30th Anniversary of the regional body here in Windhoek, Namibia. He is the only regional artist who has been brought in, in  a landmark arrangement between SADC Secretariat and Artists Trust of Southern Africa (ARTSA).

The Artists Trust of Southern Africa (ARTSA) is a network of artists from the 15 member Southern African Development Community (“SADC”) operating in various artistic disciplines whose main function is to coordinate the development and promotion through smart partnerships, of varied cultural interventions at all levels targeted at artists and to make use of art in all spheres. In particular, ARTSA is involved in the organizing and coordinating and implementation of the rotational SADC Artists Aids Festival which is held on an annual basis.

ARTSA was formed during the Malawi edition of the SADC Artists Aids Festival by stakeholders present as well as through a direct push from the SADC Secretariat present who felt that it was imperative to have an organisation that could be a conduit between themselves (SADC Secretariat) and artists as well as push for the implementation of the SADC Culture Trust Fund.

One of the key objectives of ARTSA is:-
To advocate for artists in the region to interact with governmental structures especially the political leadership, for many a time the cultural industry is always on the back burner and we are treated as a “by the way”. Through platforms and interactions such as the one Albert has been exposed to, we believe we have started reclaiming the regions oneness. To borrow from the poem he will present to the Heads of States, ….”One SADC, One People”..and from SADC Secretariat’s own key driver…”One team, fifteen nations”.

This oneness must resonant within all of SADC’s citizenry and what better way than to do it through our arts and culture.

Recently, ARTSA in partnership with SADC, GTZ and the South African Governments, Department of Sports coordinated cultural events from the region at KeNako Plaza which was situated right in the heart of the International Football Village during the 2010 World Cup. This platform afforded visual artists and performing artists from the SADC region an opportunity to share their spell binding cultural and artistically rich wealth to an appreciative foreign market.

Here’s a poem by Albert Nyathi:

In Silence We Sing

Even the silent ants
Trampled upon by giant elephants
Do sing a silent song

They shall surely know
How to shoot
The great foot
Weighing heavily on them.

Here is something from Fungai Machirori, one of Zimbabwe’s best social commentators:

It’s just you and me … and my wife and your boyfriend…

This might sound like a humorous line. But in Lesotho, one of the world leaders in prevalence of HIV, this is the name of a play that has been developed to address the issue of multiple and concurrent partnerships (MCP).

And this play was one of the innovative interventions shared at the Africa-wide practicum on HIV prevention among married and cohabiting couples in Africa, held from 11 to 13 August in Johannesburg, South Africa. The three day-long meeting which brought together over 100 HIV and AIDS communications experts from almost 20 African countries was organised by the African Network for Strategic Communication in Health and Development (AfriComNet).

In his opening address the guest of honour – South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) Communications Advocacy and Campaigns Manager, Junaid Seedat – underscored the importance of looking at HIV transmission among married people and those involved in stable relationships by citing regional statistics on a growing epidemic that is hardly ever discussed or addressed.

Kenya, around 40% of new HIV infections are happening among married women while in Uganda, about 65% of new HIV infections are found in cohabiting couples,” said Seedat, quoting national data from both East African countries. He also cited a 2008 Cape Town study that demonstrated that people involved in MCP were using condoms only 64% of the time within their stable relationships.

The practicum focused on various communication challenges and interventions such as couples’ HIV status discordance, behaviour change communication, couples HIV counselling and testing and condom use.

“Some people don’t think that communication matters and some people want to resort to an entirely medical approach to HIV,” observed international HIV and AIDS expert, Helen Epstein who delivered the practicum keynote address. “But I think it would be a mistake to give up on communication completely.”

During the practicum factors such as sexual dissatisfaction (lack of variety in sex positions, infrequent sex or no sex at all), lack of communication between partners and male entitlement to multiple partners were discussed as some of the drivers of MCP in some regions of Africa.  Such concurrency, coupled with low condom use, is currently a high-risk factor for HIV transmission.

Bisexual concurrency among men who have sex with men (MSM) was also noted as a driver of HIV by Gift Trapence of the Centre for the Development of People in Malawi. In a three-country study conducted in Botswana, Malawi and Namibia, overall rates of HIV infection were found to be about double national prevalence estimates for all men of reproductive age.

As noted by Churchill Alumasa of the Discordant Couples of Kenya, one of the challenges to people involved in stable relationships in knowing their status is what he described as ‘proxy testing’ whereby one partner bases their HIV status on that of their partner’s.

Evidence shared at the practicum shows that a couple that has been sexually active can maintain different HIV statuses. But early detection, through regular HIV testing is key to ensuring that the HIV negative partner remains negative and that the couple takes up consistent and correct condom use throughout the rest of their sexual relationship.

One of the challenges to this as shared by many of the speakers at the practicum is that models of couples testing across the continent tend to focus on bringing couples together to testing centres and yet thereafter, each member of the couple is tested separately thus providing leeway for an HIV positive partner to disclose a false status to their partner. For instance, Professor Susan Allen of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Global Health, shared that routine testing for partners of pregnant Rwandan women increased from 40% in 2006 to 80% in 2008, but that women and men were tested separately.

Allen added that regular couples testing had a significant cost advantage over the recently mooted ‘test and treat’ policy that seeks to treat all people found to be HIV positive (thereby making them less infectious to people who are HIV negative) and would actually prevent far more new infections thus putting less financial strain on the treatment end of the spectrum.

Allen’s data showed that in Zambia, it would cost USD 675 000 per year to prevent 70 new infections among 1 000 serodiscordant couples. But yet that same amount of money could provide couples HIV counseling and testing to 10 227 more couples preventing 285 infections in one year, and a cumulative 1282 infections in five years.

Religion and cultural norms were also identified as barriers to effective uptake of services. A study conducted by Zimbabwe’s Family AIDS Caring Trust (FACT) presented by Pemberai Zambezi showed that among members of the Johane Marange Apostolic Church, many refused to acknowledge the existence of HIV in the belief that one could pray for healing from the virus.  Such denialism was suggested to be particularly dangerous for this group as evidence shows that their previously clustered and closed  sexual networks, developed through practices such as polygamy, child pledging and wife inheritance, are now also becoming multi-linked as partners seek sexual relations outside of their closed unions.

But while the experts shared their promising practices, they also shared some of the obvious challenges inherent in their programmes; for instance, the strong emphasis on love in many of the communications interventions shared. These included couples testing campaigns such as ‘Prove Your Love’ in Mozambique and ‘Keep Your Love Under One Roof’ in Zimbabwe. This, many participants felt, left a grey area for those involved in sexual relationships who did not identify themselves as being in love with their partner.

However, it was agreed that often government influence, from whom buy-in must be guaranteed if a campaign is to be successful, led to organisations having to moralise sex and therefore censor their content to gain government’s favour. For instance, due to government pressure and displeasure, Uganda’s ‘Get Off the Sexual Network’ Campaign had to withdraw the use of children highlighting how their parent’s concurrent sexual partnerships had destroyed their family life.

Another obvious challenge shared was funding to ensure sustainability of programmes. One stark example of this was Zambia’s OneLove Kwasila! campaign which achieved overwhelming success particularly through its television drama, ‘Club Risky Business’ depicting the lives of three men all involved in MCP. The campaign’s theme song was a Zambian Top 10 hit showing that the campaign had not only served its communication functions to inform and educate, but also to entertain. The campaign has however been unable to replenish funds to enter into the second phase of the intervention.

Also consistency and uniformity in messaging was identified as a barrier to audiences understanding communications efforts. For example, participants could not reach consensus among themselves on the meaning and parameters of serial monogamy – a sexual practice which was suggested as being far less conducive to accelerated HIV transmission than MCP. It was also suggested that reference to HIV counselling and testing as either HCT or HTC, depending on the region of Africa, made it confusing for people to always understand what was being discussed.

Recommendations offered at the end of the practicum were for such AfriComNet to include private sector players who might be able to engage in public-private partnerships with civil society and government, in future editions of the event.  It was also suggested that AfriComNet facilitate capacity building exchange visits between countries and programmes, while also creating a clearing house for HIV and AIDS materials on its website. The need for AfriComNet, whose secretariat is currently located in Uganda, to establish regional secretariats was also emphasised.

Source: AF-AIDS List

Here’s a poem by the late, great Dambudzo Marechera. Writing on Poetry International, Irene Staunton suggests that … Marechera’s work, his ideas and his defiance live on in Zimbabwe, particularly amongst the youth, who find inspiration in his willingness to be the lone outsider, challenging conventional and authoritarian views.

The last line in this poem, published in 1992, reminds me of Zimbabwe’s unity government.

There’s a Dissident in the Election Soup!

I have no ear for slogans
You may as well shut up your arse
I run when it’s I LOVE YOU time
Don’t say it I’ll stick around
I run when it’s A LUTA time
I run when it’s FORWARD time
Don’t say it we’ll fuck the whole night
The moon won’t come down
At first awkwardly, excruciatingly embarrassing
But with Venus ascending, a shout and leap of joy

When the sheets are at last silent
Don’t ask “What are you thinking?”
Don’t ask “Was it good?”
Don’t feel bad because I’m smoking
They ask and feel bad who are insecure
Who say after the act “Tell me a story”
And you may as well know
Don’t talk of “MARRIAGE” if this reconciliation
is to last.

I think we could do with this in Zimbabwe, although I suspect our Tweets would end up as bird seed. But really, if you could send Mugabe and Tsvangirai a tweet, what would you say (hmmm don’t be rude now!):

Chavez joins twitter
It is known mainly for transmitting celebrity trivia and narcissism, but in the hands of Hugo Chavez, twitter has become something else: a tool of government. Venezuela’s president has harnessed the social networking and microblogging service for his socialist revolution by encouraging the population to tweet him their concerns. Chavez’s Twitter account, @chavezcandanga has exceeded 720 000 followers after establishing a reputation as a way to bypass bureaucracy and appeal directly to the president. It has been gaining 2 000 followers daily.
Source: The Mail &Guardian

Zimbabwe Election Support Network, Zimbabwe Peace Project and Zimbabwe Lawyers For Human Rights have issued the following statement on violence during the current Constitutional outreach campaign:

A Constitution Select Committee (COPAC) outreach meeting was on Saturday 14 August, 2010 abandoned in Chipinge, Manicaland Province after some ZANU PF youths assaulted two villagers prior to commencement of the meeting.

The COPAC meeting was scheduled to be held at Checheche Primary School.

The villagers Charles Chovi and Charles Chunje were assaulted by some ZANU PF youths at Checheche Primary School, who were led by Tonderai Ngwendu and Gilbert Kombo, who used benches, boots and clenched fists.

The two villagers were accused of sitting on some benches which had been set up before the arrival of the COPAC team members for a meeting to solicit people’s input into a proposed draft constitution.

ZZZICOMP monitors who witnessed the incident reported that Chovi and Chunje sustained some injuries on their bodies and on the ear and sought medical attention at St Peters Hospital.

The COPAC meeting was called off after some villagers protested that the meeting could not proceed as some of them had been assaulted and intimidated before the arrival of the COPAC team members. Ngwendu and Kombo were fined by the police at Chisumbanje Police Station, who also asked Chovi and Chunje to pay an admission of guilty fine for engaging in public fighting.

Honourable David Chimhini confirmed the assault and the abandonment of the meeting. He said it was evident that some villagers had been intimidated before the arrival of the COPAC team and his team had to postpone the meeting to a date to be advised as tension was high at the meeting.

The Harare Residents’ Trust (HRT), and many others, are rightly fed up with how our city is being managed. They make the following recommendations to improve service delivery and cash-flows to the City of Harare:

1. The Urban Councils’ Act (Chapter 29:15) should be amended to ensure that local authorities are led by elected mayors, who derive their mandate from the residents, and not from their political parties.
2. Mayor Masunda should desist from making statements that undermine the concerns of residents with regards to transparency, accountability and governance at Town House.
3. The City of Harare should make the necessary adjustments to its huge salary bill, in line with the Government’s directive.
4. Residents of Harare, industry and business should pay justified rates and rentals and not allow themselves to be held at ransom by Mayor Masunda and his colleagues in the top management of the City of Harare who take home 70 percent of the city’s revenue in salaries and allowances against service provision of 30 percent.
5. The mayor should drop his attitude and listen to the voice of stakeholders who have repeatedly expressed concern at the city’s rates and services.