Aids and Africa's inequalities

A few days before the International Aids Conference in Toronto, a report on HIV-Aids in Africa by the mainly evangelical agency Tearfund has concluded that church congregations all over Africa are in the front line in dealing with the depredations of Aids. Working with extended families, they are particularly notable in the care they give to the millions of orphans the epidemic has produced. The report calls for a more sophisticated understanding by Western governments and agencies of the value of channelling resources through these traditional structures of the community. They could make a significant impact, for instance, on reducing mother-baby transmission, one of the major routes through which the epidemic spreads. 

But while Churches could be a central part of the solution they are also part of the problem. Stigma and taboo stemming from traditional sexual morality lead to ignorance, which is a major catalyst in spreading the disease. Perhaps as few as 10 per cent of those infected know about their condition because of a fear that a positive test result might lead to social ostracism.

Where this report goes further than most is in its willingness to defy Western silence concerning discussion of gender equality in Africa, and the very poor deal most African women get from their male sexual partners, usually their husbands. Many African women have had only one sexual partner when they marry, and their husbands infect them having already contracted the HIV virus from prostitutes or casual sex.

The debate about the use of condoms to prevent transmission of the HIV virus is usually conducted without reference to its social and cultural context, which for a change this report supplies. For while it supports the standard "ABC" strategy (Abstain, Be faithful, use a Condom), it comments realistically that it will "remain ineffective until gender inequalities are tackled". It is men who flout the ABC code, but women who live with the consequences. This is why some experts who do not object to condom use on moral grounds nevertheless see it as irrelevant, for the real issue is the culturally sanctioned sexual exploitation and abuse of women by their menfolk. The coercion of girls into sex at a young age is common in many African societies, and violence against them is accepted as normal. The point at which they discover they are infected, when they first become pregnant, is often the signal for the man to move on. 

This is a complex issue, riddled with underlying contradictions. Clearly double standards in sexual morality are as rife in Africa as they were in Victorian England. Male sexual misbehaviour is tolerated but not talked about; females who are victims of sexual exploitation are seen as "fallen" and shunned. But dispensing with conventional morality to remove the shame attached to it, as the report suggests, will by itself simply let men off the hook. Insisting men use condoms, likewise, will do nothing to curb the underlying exploitation. What is needed is for the morality to apply equally to men. And any apparent authority for the subjugation of women, from church teaching or the Bible, has to be dealt with. It is a criticism of this otherwise brave report that it does not fully explore these paradoxes. Just to call on Churches to lift the stigma attached to Aids, as it does, is not enough of an answer.

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