DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
5.6 The economic backdrop of AIDS
The range of significant adults predisposing adolescent girls to HIV infection includes what appears to be unlikely groups of males. According to Hunter (2002: 110):
Older male relatives, family friends and men in positions of power and influence such as teachers, often sexually abuse young women. 'Sugar daddies' may entice young girls into sexual relationships in exchange for necessities or 'treats'. These men are generally older and economically independent, and therefore have considerable power and access to girls.
The individuals who are supposed to be role models by virtue of their age, and who are expected to protect and care for the young girls, are implicated in fuelling the spread of HIV.
Pressure to engage in either form of sex is tremendous, considering that the majority of learners attending Umlazi Township schools are from poor homes and working class families (Rudwick, 2004).
According to Bates (2003:13), HIV is an illness that creates and feeds off poverty:
It spreads with the ferocity of a bush fire amongst the poor who have no way to protect themselves, found as they are, only on the margins of a full human life, in their daily experience of limitation in knowledge and resources.
In comparison to men, women bear the brunt of poverty, and have the least access to resources (cf. Hunter, 2003; Walker et al, 2004). These researchers cite young women as being the poorest, most economically marginalised and the least educated sector of the South African population. Women who are in dire financial need sell sex to obtain basic necessities, while those better off also sell sex, but with the intent to acquire luxuries such as cell phones and clothing. Due to their low social status and economic dependence on men, selling their bodies renders young women vulnerable to HIV/AIDS.
While girls are in the process of sleeping with multiple partners for economic gain, they often have to comply with practices that may ultimately compromise their health. Take the example below:
Rose: Sometimes when girls age going to sleep with a man and maybe yesterday they slept with another man, the following day they put a newspaper in their vagina to make it dry. To take [absorb] all the dirty things: discharge and stuff [Pause]. A lot of girls often do that. Every time a girl is going to sleep with another boyfriend, she should put a newspaper inside them and wait for 10 or 20 minutes, till she becomes dry.
Interviewer: What other substances do they use apart from newsprint?
Rose: They go to traditional doctors and get all kinds of things to drink in order to dry their vaginas.
Known as 'dry sex', this form of sex seems to be gaining currency among adolescent girls. 'Dry sex' is a practice whereby a taut and dry vagina is obtained using drying agents to ensure there are little or no vaginal secretions, which is contrary to a woman's natural physiological responses during sex. A girl with a wet or slack vagina is
considered a 'loose woman', and the vaginal secretions are mistaken for symptoms of an STL This is done to create the impression that the woman is monogamous. In addition to this, men consider a tight vagina to be sexually desirable since it enhances sexual pleasure. Nonetheless, the practice has serious implications for the spread of HIV. Dry, tight vaginas are a major risk factor for HIV infection. The excessive trauma that occurs during penetrative 'dry sex', often results in pain, bleeding and even lacerations in the female genitalia that could provide an entry point for the virus. 'Dry sex' is practised mostly by adult women throughout Southern Africa. But, older adolescent girls in KZN are also known to practise 'dry sex' for the reasons above and to please their men by recreating the taut vagina of a virgin.
As the AIDS pandemic takes its toll on South Africans, a growing number of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWAs) are seeking remedies. In Umlazi, alternative HIV/AIDS 'cures' proliferate among those who not aware that there is no cure for the illness, and thus a lucrative market is emerging for herbalists and other traditional healers. Some of the individuals, who know there is no cure, try to clutch at straws, as revealed below by several respondents. When asked whether she knows of a cure for HIV/AIDS, Palesa - aged 17 - offers a comparison between biomedical treatment and the role of traditional healers:
Palesa: It [AIDS] cannot be treated. You go to clinic, they give you many tables, but very expensive. They don't cure AIDS, but they lengthen life. But some traditional healers say: "Come to me. I have medicine. If you have AIDS it can finish from your body." If you say: "How much?" he will tell you big price. R500. Or some say R200, R450, R300. If medicine finish, you go back to buy another bottle. You pay R500 again, and again and again.
Interviewer: Young people your age, do they also go to these traditional medicine men?
Palesa gives an example: Yes, she is going, if very, very sick.
Palesa observes that young people (who know there is no cure for HIV/AIDS) visit traditional healers for a cure only as a last resort. When asked how many healers she knows of in Umlazi Township who claim to heal HIV/AIDS, she mentions three in the township's Section C alone.
It is not just traditional healers who cash in on the remedies they sell for HIV/AIDS, but some faith healers also ask payment for their prayers. As the race for both a vaccine and a cure continues worldwide, Ogwini respondents reveal that HIV/AIDS patients in Umlazi join queues for 'miracle cures' for HIV/AIDS, or for prayers among abathandazi (faith
healers):
Palesa: I know one woman who is umthandazi (faith healer). Abathandazi (faith healers) pray for people and they get better. But such abathandazi are small [few] in number.
Mandy: I don't think there is a cure for AIDS. It's just that some people in church - I believe, because I've seen it - that when a pastor or somebody prays for somebody in such a way that the person can feel that it [prayer] is working. When they go for a test, they test negative. I don't know how it happens, but it happens!
Other widely held misconceptions prevail concerning a cure for HIV/AIDS, as evident in another participant's response:
Jessica: A cure for AIDS, I don't think there is. But I believe there are pills one can use to prevent themselves from getting AIDS.
An antiretroviral is not a vaccine, as Jessica mistakenly believes. According to respondents, some adolescents who knowingly engage in unprotected sex for material gain, rather than love, wrongly believe antiretrovirals are a cure to be taken should they contract the virus.