(From Swazi Media Commentary 21 February 2009 www.swazimedia.blogspot.com)
King Mswati III is being blamed for the huge incidence of HIV in
Swaziland.
The king’s lifestyle and Swazi’s disrespect for women are major causes of the
spread of the virus that leads to AIDS.
The
criticism comes as a new report is published showing that 42 percent of
pregnant women in Swaziland are HIV-positive. This is an increase of
three percent in two years and means the kingdom has the worst HIV rate
in the world. Average life expectancy in Swaziland is now only 37 years.
King Mswati has at least 13 wives
(we don’t know the figure for sure because this is information the
Swazi people are not allowed to have) and this encourages polygamy (men
having more than one wife) in the country.
Reacting to the report and King Mswati’s polygamy, Professor
Alan Whiteside, of South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal University, who has
spent years studying HIV and AIDS in Swaziland, said, ‘There are
particular gender questions in the country around the role of women and
how they're perceived by men.’ He said polygamy ‘is a major issue’.
Whiteside told the Voice of America radio
station, ‘This [polygamy] is a problem that we face in that you do have
polygamy, which is accepted and respected. What we’ve had until
recently is a view of women as being there primarily for men. What I
have to say is that legislation in the country has recently changed and
the challenge is to change the mindset of the people. And maybe the
king has a role in leading this change of mindset.’
Whiteside
says that the fact that Swaziland is ruled by a king puts the
international community off. ‘... the global community looks on it as
not being typical’.
Criticism of King Mswati’s role in the HIV pandemic also comes from closer to
home. The Associated Press (AP) news agency reported,
‘AIDS activists blame King Mswati III for doing too little to spread
prevention messages and promote condom usage and HIV testing, and they
say he sets a bad example by having 13 wives.
‘“The
nation, especially polygamous men, look up to the monarch,” Sphiwe
Hlophe, who runs a support group called Swaziland Positive Living,’
told the AP.
King
Mswati has a poor record on HIV in Swaziland. He was slow in
recognising there was an HIV problem in the kingdom and despite the
urging of the international community, he would not admit that the
virus was in Swaziland and refused to declare a state of emergency. He
did this even though it was estimated that 90 percent of the beds at
Mbabane Government hospital were filled by people with AIDS.
King Mswati also let Swaziland down after,
in response to the rising level of HIV infection, he imposed a
five-year sex ban young women. He was one of the first to break the ban
when he took a 17-year-old teenager as a wife. At the time he already
had one other fiancée and seven wives.
Walter Bennett (a well known ‘rent a quote’ in Swaziland) was once a Swazi
Senator and adviser to the King. During this time he said there was no need to
continue providing medical support to people with HIV AIDS because they
contracted the disease out of choice by being promiscuous. He called for all
places of entertainment to be closed to stop promiscuity.
The
increase in the rate of HIV infection should now cast doubt on the
Swazi Government’s policy of encouraging men to be circumcised. As I have
reported before this
method of controlling the spread of HIV has been discredited by many
medics, but remains a major plank of HIV policy in Swaziland. According
to the AP. ‘there are fears that this [circumcision] might backfire by
making men more complacent and more likely to have unprotected sexual
intercourse’.
Link
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2009/02/swazi-king-to-blame-for-hiv-rate.html
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