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A detailed report by the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy, Anna Tibaijuka (2005) drew the conclusion that Operation Restore Order exacerbated vulnerability as well as risky sexual practices, and significantly tempered with the provision of HIV and AIDS services. It is against this backdrop that Operation Restore Order is criticised for having caused more harm than good. Ironically, the consequences of a campaign which was supposedly a drive to sanitise Zimbabwe’s urban spaces were so cataclysmic that justifying its original objective became highly contestable.
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social services may shun these as they attempt to escape the brunt of the public’s moral gaze (Iliffe, 2006). Zimbabwe’s early response to the AIDS epidemic was and continues to be largely problematic. Iliffe (2006, p.81) clearly articulate that early HIV/AIDS awareness messages were based on fear appeals, and largely propagated prejudice. Popular among these were; ‘AIDS kills’ was understood to mean imminent death, ‘AIDS cannot be cured’, [which]
encouraged hopelessness, and ‘AIDS is spread in promiscuous sex’ [which] signified that all HIV-positive people were promiscuous”. To a large extent, these messages bear evidence of intolerance.
The intolerance is also manifest in the government’s continued refusal to provide prisoners with condoms despite that there is overwhelming evidence that homosexuality is rampant in the country’s penitentiaries. Current statistics indicate that a considerably significant number (28%) of prisoners are infected with HIV (NewsdzeZimbabwe, 2015).
Former President Robert Mugabe was openly homophobic and spiteful towards ‘deviant’
sexualities. He is on record insulting gays and lesbians, comparing them to pigs and dogs, and importantly, declaring that they absolutely do not have any rights to talk about. This clearly shows that sexual minorities have no recognition in Zimbabwe, and this has serious repercussions on public health. The need to protect sexual minorities from HIV incidence is not only a human rights issue but is also important to the greater population which is rendered at risk. This is so because microbes know no boundaries, hence there is no guarantee that the virus will remain among the marginalised population who are judged as deviant. In the current matrix, the risk is worse for school adolescents who may belong to this marginalised population segment because they suffer a double tragedy of being ostracised and offered no prevention options.
As such, the government is reluctant to promote condoms in prisons since homosexuality is codified as a crime in the country’s criminal law (Constitution of Zimbabwe,
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2013). From a health promotion perspective, this is problematic because microbes do not have boundaries. Therefore, it can be argued that the unsafe sexual practices among men having sex with men (MSM) have strong implications on the mainstream heterosexual population (Newsday, 2015). Therefore, one may argue that Zimbabwe’s discriminatory HIV policies negatively impact on health promotion interventions. For example, a moralistic approach regarding the sexuality of key populations such as prisoners and in-school adolescents impact on matters of access to preventative accessories such as condoms. Condoms are critical to most prevention strategies and must be made available in all contexts to all populations (Baxter &
Abdool Karim, 2016; UNAIDS, 2002).
Despite calls from both human rights organisations and public health experts encouraging the Government of Zimbabwe to tolerate homosexuality, at least in the name of promoting HIV/AIDS prevention and management, the country remains in a state of denial.
Tolerance towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people (LGBTIs) promotes the public health enterprise in that, these may get access to interventions which are meant to stem the tide of HIV/AIDS. At the 2015 International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) which Zimbabwe hosted, the government displayed its entrenched abhorrence and perpetual denial of the reality of homosexuality by disrupting LGBTI presentations. Therefore, there is merit in arguing that discrimination of some key populations in Zimbabwe fuelled, and continue to promote the spread of the AIDS epidemic. As one activist argued, “sex between men is criminalised in Zimbabwe, thus driving them underground and making them difficult to reach with HIV interventions” (Newsday, 2015).
Similarly, denying prisoners protection from HIV infection does not only defeat public health efforts as these people are later released into the same society, but also infringes into the rights of other people they are linked to in various ways. The implications of denying this key population protection from HIV are far and wide (Jackson, 2002). For example, there are
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negative ripple effects in that both the families and broader communities to which prisoners are released such that they face increased risk of infection. Family members and the broader community also suffer the economic consequences of providing care and support during ill- health and in worst cases bear the psychological trauma of AIDS related deaths. In-school youth are not exempted from this deliberate structural marginalisation (Dutta, 2008). While they are recruited in schools to undergo VMMC, condoms remain a taboo, and so are partial protection messages relating to this biomedical approach to mitigating HIV incidence.
However, the likely success of reducing HIV transmission in prisons through use of condoms may be a mere gamble since sexual encounters particularly among inmates take place in complex circumstances. A case in point is that sex among prisoners often takes a coercive form where it is motivated by the will to assert power and control, mostly over weaker inmates.
Under such conditions, practice of safe sex is greatly compromised. As such, micro-abrasions during anal sex provide portals for HIV entry (Johnson, 2002). Despite this, condom access remains critical among this population segment and other key populations such as in-school youth.