THE EARLY YEARS (1985-1994)
3.2. The Roman Catholic Church’s Response to HIV and AIDS
3.2.5. AIDS-Related Denial and Stigma at the Grassroots Level
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organisations not to view each other as competitors appeared to enhance teamwork.617 Therefore, to a large extent, early HIV and AIDS interventions by the Roman Catholic Church in Manicaland benefited from support gained from FACT.
The two FBOs shared a history of collaborative effort in carrying out HIV interventions. In 1990, FACT benefited from the facilities at St. Joseph‘s hospital, a Roman Catholic healthcare centre. This enabled training of volunteers in home-based care and counselling services.618 Some of the church‘s clergy and laity were also involved in the work of FACT prior to the formation of the diocesan AIDS care project. For example, Father Martin O‘Regan, stationed at St. Joseph‘s mission, Mutare, mentioned that he had been involved in the work of FACT in Mutare since the late 1980s. Accordingly, this opened opportunities for O‘Regan to gain first-hand experience of Christian led HIV and AIDS interventions.619 The FACT worked with urban and rural communities and also trained the first voluntary home-based caregivers in Manicaland.620 To suggest that the diocesan project positioned itself in competition against the State healthcare system in this period (1985-1994) is an inaccurate assertion. In fact there was a high degree of collaboration between the State and the church‘s healthcare systems. This is evident from networking between the project‘s staff and the State‘s provincial medical director for Manicaland.621 The Government of Zimbabwe held the diocesan project in high esteem, as noted in a statement in the report. The statement illustrates that the Roman Catholic Church‘s home-based care projects were of good repute.622
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early years. Some respondents expressed a perceived connection between HIV and AIDS awareness and the death of Zimbabwean military personnel guarding the oil pipeline in Mozambique. For example, at St. Paul‘s Dangamvura in Mutare a respondent mentioned that in late 1980s AIDS was responsible for the death of some Zimbabwean soldiers on national duty in Mozambique.623 The perception that army personnel in Zimbabwe were understandably prone to high risks of HIV due to the nature of their duties, emerged from another lay Roman Catholic.624 In the early years of the epidemic in Zimbabwe public perceptions that associated HIV with army personnel and promiscuity were common and may have shaped people‘s responses to the AIDS epidemic. The apportionment of blame on others for having caused the epidemic was also evident in the following statement of Cecilia Mauye who stated:
―Promiscuity of both men and women was to blame for the inroads made by AIDS into the community.‖625 George Maedze has also pointed out that between 1985 and 1995 at Triashill it was common to hear people, including some of the church‘s members whispering to each other about a strange disease.626 In Rusape, some Christians became suspicious of those individuals suffering from what people termed a ‗slimming disease,‘ or a disease that made one‘s hair unusually soft.627 These perceptions from some members of the Roman Catholic Church in Manicaland had an effect on HIV interventions at the grassroots level.
Furthermore, between 1985 and 2000 the Manyika people‘s worldview that witchcraft was the underlying cause of the epidemic enhanced the denial of HIV and AIDS.628 The fact that some Roman Catholic Church followers tended to associated HIV and AIDS with witchcraft and occult forces negatively affected prevention strategies by imparting inaccurate information, and therefore enhancing denial. Since AIDS was a new disease, ordinary people struggled to understand its origins and mode of transmission. For example, in 1993, strong beliefs in traditional myths and spirits, prevented communities from appreciating biomedical explanations of HIV and AIDS.
Others associated AIDS with ‗runyoka‘, a cultural taboo in which a man who
623 T. Nyawera, same interview. See also information supplied by A. Vinyu to M. Mbona, Mutare, 10 June 2010.
624 M. Mudzimiri, same interview.
625 C. Mauye, interview conducted by M. Mbona, Vengere, Rusape, 21 August 2010.
626 G. Maedze, same interview. See also T. Nyawera, same interview.
627 C. Mauye, same interview.
628 G. Maedze, same interview.
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suspected that his wife was unfaithful obtained traditional charms from a traditional health practitioner. 629 The charms bring affliction to any man the married woman had sexual intercourse with other than her husband and the ‗trespasser‘ wastes away.630 Sex is therefore protected by a number of taboos and runyoka was one of them.631 The difference between runyoka and HIV was that ―runyoka is, however curable with a traditional healer‘s intervention; HIV/AIDS is not.‖632
Some Christians including some members of the Roman Catholic Church believed that traditional health practitioners could eradicate HIV. At grassroots level people associated HIV and AIDS with witchcraft and did not accept biomedical explanations.
At the same time people also trusted traditional healers who claimed to cure AIDS.
This affected the input by the diocesan project in carrying out HIV interventions especially among HIV positive people. The intensity of this problem led the project officers to initiate meetings with traditional leaders as will be discussed in the next chapter. In the wake of HIV and AIDS the Roman Catholic Church in Manicaland was made to re-examine its teachings on sexuality, traditional healing, myths and spirits in the context of the Christian faith.
During the period 1985 to 1994 there was also a general understanding that HIV and AIDS is something outside the church.633 Women were the first group to seek ways of openly discussing HIV and AIDS-related issues since the early 1990s. For example, within the Roman Catholic Christian women‘s guilds, special sessions on HIV and AIDS became a regular feature at weekly meetings in Mutare, Mutasa and Rusape in 1990.634 Fellow guild members, clergy and health experts delivered lessons that focused on HIV and AIDS awareness, stigma and other aspects. The same platforms became space for women from the Roman Catholic Church to encourage each other to
629 G. Maedze, same interview.
630 D. Simmons, ―African witchcraft at the millennium: Musings on a modern phenomenon in Zimbabwe,‖The Journal of the International Institute 7/ 2 (2007), downloaded as a pdf, 20 March 2011. See also R. P. Hatendi, ―Shona marriage and the Christian churches,‖ in Bourdillon, Christianity south of the Zambezi, 139.
631 See also Hatendi, ―Shona marriage and the Christian churches,‖ 139.
632 Simmons, ―African witchcraft at the millennium.‖
633 C. Mombe, same interview.
634 E. Tichawangana, same interview. See also C. Mauye, same interview.
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embrace those infected and affected by HIV and AIDS.635 At times AIDS-related stigma was self-imposed by PLHIV and not by the people they lived with. Consistent with this assertion, Chiome mentioned: ―The infected person tended to develop feelings of self-guilt and shame due to the tendency of associating AIDS with promiscuity.‖636 If there was something about HIV and AIDS that the churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, struggled to deal with in their respective reactions between 1985 and 1994, stigma was one such an issue. Among the Shona speaking people, including the ―Manyika‖ of eastern Zimbabwe, AIDS being similar to sexually transmitted infections is a disease that one could not mention openly. In addition to linking it with witchcraft, AIDS was perceived, as a disease that exposed the evils of a person‘s sexual ill discipline.637 Although within the diocese, pastoral agents were trained to provide psychosocial support to PLHIV, stigma mitigation gradually took effect from the late 1990s to mid-2000s.
At the local parish level HIV and AIDS was not a regular item on the formal agenda of parish council meetings. This is noted from parish council meetings held at St.
Simon Stock Roman Catholic between 1991 and 1994.638 However, in June 1994 at a meeting of the parish council a proposed HIV and AIDS awareness youth seminar to be held St. Joseph‘s, Vengere on 24-26 June 1994 was approved.639 The general absence of HIV and AIDS talks in the priest-in-charge‘s ministry to adult congregants at St. Simon Stock shows that there was also lack of cohesion in the manner in which clergy reacted to the pandemic. At the Roman Catholic Church‘s Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Mutare silence on HIV and AIDS was noted from the parish council meetings held in 1987,640 1988,641 and 1991.642 Given the reality that lay members looked up to the clergy for guidance and leadership, low levels of awareness at the parish level therefore caused possible harm.
635 E. Tichawangana, same interview. See also C. Chitsungo, same interview. See also V. Chibatamoto, same interview. See also T. Nyawera, same interview.
636 R. Chiome, same interview.
637 E. Tichawangana, same interview. See also A. Dera, same interview.
638 St. Simon Stock Roman Catholic parish archives, Rusape, (SSCPR), Minutes of parish council meeting, 1991-1994.
639 SSCPR, Minutes of parish council meeting, 10 June 1994.
640 The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity archives, Mutare (CHT), Minutes of parish council meetings, 17 November 1987 and 15 December 1987.
641 See CHT, Minutes of parish council meetings for 16 February 1988, 15 March 1988, 28 April 1988.
642 See CHT, Minutes of parish council meeting, 30 March 1991.
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Chiome has shown that at St. Simon Stock the priest mainly carried out HIV and AIDS awareness and prevention activities with the youth at the peril of adult church members. Chiome shared a perception that the youth were prey to HIV and AIDS because of they failed to take the Roman Catholic Church‘s teachings on morality seriously as opposed to the case in former years.643 The ‗then‘ and ‗now‘ trend observed by Ronald Grele among interviewees when speaking about the past in comparison with the present appears to be of relevance.644 In another case, at St.
Paul‘s in Dangamvura, there was also a perception among lay people that talking about HIV and AIDS during church services was an embarrassment. For example, Caston Nyemba, a male parishioner, mentioned that one could not discuss AIDS in the church without reference to sex and health.645 Nyemba‘s opinion that matters of sex and health were private and personal—if widely shared—may have led to low-key engagement in HIV and AIDS interventions at the parish level.