Zimbabwe: AIDS and Government Abuse
by Jennifer Crosby
Zimbabwe is one of the first African nations to be considered an AIDS success story. In the mid-90’s, nearly 29 percent of the country was HIV positive. However, in recent years, that number has dropped to 20 percent. Although it is quite tragic that a country in which one out of every five citizens is HIV positive is considered to be a success, the drop in infections is substantial. With these “successful” figures reported, Zimbabwe is often overlooked as a nation in critical need of help. Due to the oppressive regime of President Robert Mugabe, however, it looks as though the AIDS crisis in Zimbabwe will no longer see further improvement.
In May of 2005, Mugabe began a campaign known as Operation Murambatsvina, literally translated as “Operation Drive Out the Trash.” Murambatsvina was intended to drive the poorest Zimbabweans (who happen to be his biggest political opposition) out of urban areas, and into rural ones. The result was catastrophic, and an outcry was heard from foreign nations and organizations like the United Nations. Nevertheless, the series of “evictions” continued. Poverty stricken citizens were forced to destroy and leave their homes (some literally being held at gunpoint), and “return” to the rural areas they came from. Of course, the government did not seem to care that many of these people had no homes to go to in the rural areas. Nearly 700,000 people lost their homes during Operation Murambatsvina, and nearly 100,000 of them were documented as HIV infected.
These forced evictions constitute a human rights disaster all on their own, and they have an even more catastrophic effect on the progress of AIDS treatment. Not only were the poor urban citizens already among the most at risk to contract the virus, but many of the organizations they went to for birth control and retroviral drugs were destroyed along with the neighborhoods they lived in. Clinics reported that their clients simply “vanished” after the evictions. Married couples were separated, the population was massively relocated, and the spread of AIDS information was halted, all leading to an increase of causal sex, and a decrease of safe sex. The use of condoms alone dropped by 20% after the evictions. With neighborhood businesses destroyed, many women were forced into prostitution as their only possible source of income. Young women are increasingly becoming more vulnerable to the AIDS pandemic. The strict sexual standards towards women in Zimbabwe often do not allow them to instigate condom use. As a result, of those who tested HIV positive and are between the ages of 15 and 24, 80% are women.
However, it is not just Operation Murambatsvina that is worsening the AIDS problem in Zimbabwe. Mugabe’s government, which is believed to have fixed elections to stay in power, has created new legislation aimed at driving non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) out of the country. The organizations can hardly function due to the intense restrictions. While some neighboring countries receive over a hundred dollars of aid for each AIDS infected citizen, Zimbabwe receives a mere four dollars per person.
While the NGO’s are quickly finding they cannot survive under Mugabe’s restrictions, governmental organizations providing retroviral treatments continually deny treatment to those qualified. The standards for treatment are often warped and put into confusing terms that citizens cannot understand. As a result, massive amounts of HIV positive Zimbabweans in critical condition are not receiving the treatment they deserve, and desperately need.
It is of crucial importance that the AIDS pandemic, especially that
of Africa, is not overlooked. With glaring human rights violations,
such as those being committed in Zimbabwe, it is shocking that developed
countries such as the United States and Britain have not come to the
aid of the Zimbabweans and helped to drive out Mugabe, who is widely
considered to be a dictator. Hopefully, through organizations such as
Human Rights Watch, who are actively putting pressure on both the governments
of the US and Zimbabwe, the international community will begin to work
to end the regimes of all dictators—even those in sub-Saharan Africa.
Sources
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/27/zimbab13865.htm
http://hrw.org/reports/2006/zimbabwe0706/2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Murambatsvina
http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/od/gap/countries/zimbabwe.htm
http://www.avert.org/aids-zimbabwe.htm
http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/global?page=cr09-zi-00#S1X
http://www.madd.org/under21/4847
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/LegalDrinkingAge.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_Act
http://www.youthrights.org/drinkingage.shtml
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=2136644
http://www.gothamgazette.com/iotw/smoking/
