Celebrating World AIDS Day in Manzini

The woman next to me is walking barefoot down the baking stretch of highway. Her ankles are encircled in rings of dried seed pods that rattle with every step. She is wearing a red, white and black cloth tied over one shoulder, falling over a full black skirt. Her other shoulder is adorned with a strip of brown fur, and her short hair is pulled into a mushroom shape by a black net.
She carries a sign. “I am a hero,” it reads. “I don’t sleep around.”
We are taking part in a 1000-person march to commemorate World AIDS Day in Manzini, Swaziland’s largest city. Swaziland is a monarchy of a million people sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique. For several years now this tiny nation has had a huge burden to carry: the distinction of having the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world. Studies show that up to 40% of the adult population carries the infection.
There is no simple answer as to why Swaziland’s rates are so high, although many point to the highly-mobile male population as one of the reasons. Lack of employment drives many men over the border to work in the mines of South Africa, where they pick up the infection and bring it home to their wives and girlfriends. Life expectancy rates have plummeted, and there are more orphans than the government and NGOs can handle. And to top it all off, years of drought are driving some rural areas deeper into poverty.
As we walk we are accompanied by two marching bands from the Swaziland Defence Forces. The soldiers wear camouflaged pants tucked into combat boots, and T-shirts emblazoned with the picture of a red ribbon and the words “I abstain.”
I chat with Captain Bongani Msibi about military’s involvement in the event. He says it’s particularly important for soldiers to be aware of the virus. “We are also human beings,” he says. “We are the most vulnerable in the country because of the nature of our jobs. We are highly mobile so we are more exposed to the dangers of contracting the virus.”
The march takes us along the country’s main artery, the highway that links Manzini with the capital city of Mbabane. Cars, trucks and mini-buses zip along, honking their support. Any effort to get HIV and AIDS out of the shadows is appreciated.
The stigma and secrecy surrounding a positive HIV status is still a problem in Swaziland, and I discuss this with first-year University of Swaziland student Phumulani Matse. The nineteen-year-old says that general talk of the epidemic is common on campus, yet he admits to not knowing of a single student who is living openly with HIV. Matse has already lost a sister to AIDS, and sees the epidemic as affecting more than just his personal life. “A lot of money is being poured into HIV and AIDS that could have done a lot of things for me as a youth,” he explains. “The longer that HIV remains here, the more I’ll be affected because of the drainage economically and otherwise.”
The long walk takes us into the city’s exhibition grounds, and I follow the other marchers into the grandstand where we sit down to take in the speeches and entertainment. As the crowd settles, a group of dancers gathers on the grass below. Among them is the woman from the march, standing amongst a dozen other women, identical in their traditional costumes. They are all older women, probably grandmothers. They begin to sing and dance, shuffling slowly back and forth in tandem. As I watch, I am amazed that they have the strength and energy to sing and dance at all. It is, after all, the grandmothers who are carrying the burden of the epidemic; first by watching their sons and daughters dying one by one, and then by taking on responsibility of raising their children.
But still they raise their voices and sing. Ululations ring through the crowd. Their feet move together, and they creep forward, much like Swaziland itself... slowly propelling itself forward through the crisis.