Africa, Development & Aid, Headlines

HEALTH-MALAWI: Traditional Practices Transformed By AIDS

Brian Ligomeka

BLANTYRE, Nov 8 2003 (IPS) - The small Southern African country of Malawi, with a population of just 11 million, has found itself at the heart of the AIDS pandemic.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS estimates that up to 15 percent of Malawians have been infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. The surrounding countries of Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa also have some of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world.

Health activists in Malawi have often pointed the finger at traditional beliefs and practices as being amongst the main catalysts for the spread of HIV. Now, officials, ethnic leaders and health workers are taking steps to transform these beliefs.

Practices that are being re-examined include those of wife inheritance, sexual cleansing and initiation.

In the case of wife inheritance, a widow is married to a relative of her deceased husband. Supporters of the custom say it helps the woman avoid promiscuity, and that it may even appease the spirit of the deceased – preventing punishment from being visited on the family.

However, the prevalence of HIV in Malawi has transformed wife inheritance into a potentially fatal practice. If the late husband’s cause of death was AIDS-related, the man who inherits his wife is at risk of contracting HIV if the couple engages in unprotected sex. Widows might also receive the virus from their new partners.

Health Minister Yusuf Mwawa says most of the country’s 30 odd tribes practice this custom. But he is quick to point out that senior government officials – including President Bakili Muluzi – and AIDS activists, are waging strong campaigns against wife inheritance, and other customs which promote the spread of HIV.

At almost all the political rallies he addresses, Muluzi has been warning Malawians against traditional practices that are potentially harmful.

During a recent ceremony to welcome a new chief in the central district of Salima, Muluzi said that “(Malawians) should do away with all cultural practices that promote the spread of HIV/AIDS.” Those who continued to follow these traditions, he added, should ensure that all parties involved in an instance of wife inheritance were tested for HIV.

Muluzi also questioned the morality of this custom, saying “The main factor behind wife inheritance is nothing but greed. Greedy male relatives of the deceased husband are the ones who are quick to inherit wives of their deceased brothers, so that they can also inherit wealth.”

“This outdated custom is more.wealth inheritance than wife inheritance. (The) practice is all about property grabbing,” he added.

Human rights activist and University of Malawi law lecturer Ngeyi Kanyongolo agrees, saying the practice could be avoided if more husbands prepared wills that benefited their wives. “If spouses write their wills before their death, property grabbing would come to a stop and women would easily say ‘no’ to wife inheritance,” Kanyongolo explained.

Women interviewed by IPS appeared divided over the custom of wife inheritance – some calling for its abolition, and others saying it should continue.

One woman who refused to be inherited is Shira Mkandawire, who lives in Ndirande Township – a suburb of Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre. For her, this meant rejecting the advances of her late husband’s brother.

“Although I needed the financial support to educate and take care of the three children my husband left behind, I refused to have one of my late husband’s brothers or relatives inherit me,” said Mkandawire. “The relatives of my deceased husband are very promiscuous, and there is no way I can accept.marriage with them. My love was for their brother and not them,” she added.

But 43-year-old Ellena Zulu of Mchinji, a district on the border between Malawi and Zambia, had a different story to tell.

“My husband died eight years ago in a road accident after we had borne four children. A month after his burial ceremony, his relatives asked me if I was ready to be inherited by one of his brothers. Two of his brothers were married and only one was single. I told them that I was ready to get married to the one who was single,” says Zulu.

She adds that she is living happily with her new husband: “I chose to be married with him because I knew that it was difficult for another man to marry me after I had four children with my first husband.”

Another cultural practice which is held responsible for the spread of HIV is sexual cleansing, which occurs after funerals, burials and initiation ceremonies. It is also practised on widows, as it is thought that these women become “unclean” after the deaths of their husbands – and remain so until they have had intercourse with a sexual cleanser, or “namandwa”. Both widow and cleanser run the risk of contracting HIV.

An AIDS counsellor in the southern district of Nsanje, Victoria Piriminta, says health authorities tried to convince people to stop the custom – but to no avail. So, the officials attempted a different approach.

“In order to transform this practice (into) a weapon (for) fighting HIV/AIDS, we decided to convince traditional leaders and initiation counsellors to encourage the use of condoms for those who are involved in sexual cleansing rituals,” said Piriminta.

A tribal leader from the area, Chief Ndamera, says this initiative has been welcomed, and that almost every cleanser uses condoms nowadays.

“The fact is, sexual cleansing ritual is as old as our tribe. There is no way somebody can just wake up one day and (tell) us to stop the custom, which our forefathers, great grandfathers and parents have been practising since time immemorial,” said Ndamera.

“We have (agreed) to modify it by telling our namandwas to use condoms during cleansing rituals. And now, this is a ‘must’,” he added.

Ndamera says that cleansers who force women to have sex without condoms are punished with fines: a goat must be given to the chief of their tribe, and another to the widow who was coerced into having unprotected sex. The cleaner is also suspended or expelled from the traditional club of cleansers.

In addition, changes have been introduced into the initiation ceremonies that help Malawian youths make the transition to adulthood.

In the past, teenage boys and girls were taken to separate camps in the bush for circumcision and traditional counselling. Boys were circumcised with one knife, something that could easily lead to the spread of HIV. At the end of the initiation ceremonies, they were also encouraged to have sex with any partner of their choice, to demonstrate their adulthood.

According to Chief Sagawa of the Yao People in Mulanje district, near Blantyre, these practices have changed. Traditional counsellors have discarded the knife in favour of a new approach.

“Instead, traditional counsellors pinch the foreskin of the teenagers’ penises,” says Sagawa. “Furthermore when they are graduating, we don’t advise them to have sex as a way of proving their adulthood. Instead we admonish them to refrain from sexual unions, till they get married,” he adds.

Sagawa praised the National AIDS Commission (NAC) for holding training workshops for traditional counsellors in villages, in an effort to adapt cultural practices.

“Every year, traditional counsellors go for workshops on HIV/AIDS.They, in turn, teach teenagers who go for initiation ceremonies the importance of abstinence and condom use,” he says.

NAC Executive Director Bizwick Mwale has praised ethnic leaders for their cooperation in the fight against AIDS. He believes the success of the NAC’s programme for altering cultural practices can be attributed to community involvement in deciding which approaches to take in the initiative.

Mwale says that non-governmental organisations, health institutions and other bodies are currently analysing research on the success of the initiative. Their findings are scheduled to be released by Dec. 1 – which is also World AIDS Day.

 
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