AIDS Now Compels Africa to Challenge Widows' 'Cleansing'

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/11/international/africa/11malawi.html?hp&ex=11157
84000&en=9f608f4a771b6c9b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

MCHINJI, Malawi - In the hours after James Mbewe was laid to rest three
years ago, in an unmarked grave not far from here, his 23-year-old wife,
Fanny, neither mourned him nor accepted visits from sympathizers. Instead,
she hid in his sister's hut, hoping that the rest of her in-laws would not
find her.

But they hunted her down, she said, and insisted that if she refused to
exorcise her dead husband's spirit, she would be blamed every time a
villager died. So she put her two small children to bed and then forced
herself to have sex with James's cousin.

"I cried, remembering my husband," she said. "When he was finished, I went
outside and washed myself because I was very afraid. I was so worried I
would contract AIDS and die and leave my children to suffer."

Here and in a number of nearby nations including Zambia and Kenya, a
husband's funeral has long concluded with a final ritual: sex between the
widow and one of her husband's relatives, to break the bond with his spirit
and, it is said, save her and the rest of the village from insanity or
disease. Widows have long tolerated it, and traditional leaders have
endorsed it, as an unchallenged tradition of rural African life.

Now AIDS is changing that. Political and tribal leaders are starting to
speak out publicly against so-called sexual cleansing, condemning it as one
reason H.I.V. has spread to 25 million sub-Saharan Africans, killing 2.3
million last year alone. They are being prodded by leaders of the region's
fledging women's rights movement, who contend that lack of control over
their sex lives is a major reason 6 in 10 of those infected in sub-Saharan
Africa are women.

But change is coming slowly, village by village, hut by hut. In a region
where belief in witchcraft is widespread and many women are taught from
childhood not to challenge tribal leaders or the prerogatives of men, the
fear of flouting tradition often outweighs even the fear of AIDS.

"It is very difficult to end something that was done for so long," said
Monica Nsofu, a nurse and AIDS organizer in the Monze district in southern
Zambia, about 200 miles south of the capital, Lusaka. "We learned this when
we were born. People ask, Why should we change?"

In Zambia, where one out of five adults is now infected with the virus, the
National AIDS Council reported in 2000 that this practice was very common.
Since then, President Levy Mwanawasa has declared that forcing new widows
into sex or marriage with their husband's relatives should be discouraged,
and the nation's tribal chiefs have decided not to enforce either tradition,
their spokesman said.

Still, a recent survey by Women and Law in Southern Africa found that in at
least one-third of the country's provinces, sexual "cleansing" of widows
persists, said Joyce MacMillan, who heads the organization's Zambian
chapter. In some areas, the practice extends to men.

Some Defy the Risk

Even some Zambian volunteers who work to curb the spread of AIDS are
reluctant to disavow the tradition. Paulina Bubala, a leader of a group of
H.I.V.-positive residents near Monze, counsels schoolchildren on the dangers
of AIDS. But in an interview, she said she was ambivalent about whether new
widows should purify themselves by having sex with male relatives.

Her husband died of what appeared to be AIDS-related symptoms in 1996. Soon
after the funeral, both Ms. Bubala and her husband's second wife covered
themselves in mud for three days. Then they each bathed, stripped naked with
their dead husband's nephew and rubbed their bodies against his.

Weeks later, she said, the village headman told them this cleansing ritual
would not suffice. Even the stools they sat on would be considered unclean,
he warned, unless they had sex with the nephew.

"We felt humiliated," Ms. Bubala said, "but there was nothing we could do to
resist, because we wanted to be clean in the land of the headman."

The nephew died last year. Ms. Bubala said the cause was hunger, not AIDS.
Her husband's second wife now suffers symptoms of AIDS and rarely leaves her
hut. Ms. Bubala herself discovered she was infected in 2000.

African leaders are condemning a funeral tradition in which a widow must
have sex with one of her husband's relatives because it helps to spread
H.I.V.

But even the risk of disease does not dent Ms. Bubala's belief in the need
for the ritual's protective powers. "There is no way we are going to stop
this practice," she said, "because we have seen a lot of men and women who
have gone mad" after spouses died.

But even the risk of disease does not dent Ms. Bubala's belief in the need
for the ritual's protective powers. "There is no way we are going to stop
this practice," she said, "because we have seen a lot of men and women who
have gone mad" after spouses died.