Chicago Tribune - June 19, 2002
Connie Lauerman, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune wire services contributed to this report

Speaking to a group at the University of Illinois-Chicago College of Nursing, Musaba-Mphele said that poverty and hunger concerned the women in the East Cape Province of South Africa more than the deadly virus, which was number 13 on their list of priorities.

"There is a link between poverty and the spread of HIV," she said, noting that the epidemic has reduced the life expectancy to only 37 years in sub-Saharan Africa.

Musaba-Mphele founded the Empilisweni Woodlands Center for AIDS Prevention in King Williams Town in the East Cape Province of South Africa. It serves 21 villages in the surrounding area. Her approach was to establish income-generating activities for the women, such as community gardens, poultry farming and crafts.

"The answer [to the epidemic] may lie in assisting and empowering women," she said.

"Eighty percent of the women with HIV/AIDS are monogamous mothers. But there are high levels of violence against women in southern Africa, a lot of rapes. It's a taboo subject to ask partners, especially husbands, to use condoms."

Her program seeks to involve men as well as women, "but it is difficult. Because of cultural reasons, men don't always have the willingness to make the sexual act safe," she said.

After her formal talk, Musaba-Mphele, a native of Zambia, said that women who are financially dependent on men feel unable to negotiate for safe sex for fear they'll be thrown out. She also said that poverty drives women into risky behavior, such as affairs and prostitution, to get money for basic needs, thus spreading HIV.

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Terrorist fallout: Italian writer Oriana Fallaci has come under fire in France, where an anti-racism group started legal proceedings to stop distribution of her latest book, "The Rage and the Pride," calling it "a scathing Islamophobe attack."

Fallaci, who is best known for her probing interviews with world leaders, wrote the book in angry reaction to the terrorist attacks in New York, where she lives.

The Movement Against Racism objects to such descriptions in the book as "the children of Allah spend their time with their bottoms in the air, praying five times a day" and a charge that Muslims "multiply like rats." Mouloud Aounit, the movement's secretary general, said his group believes in freedom of expression, but contends that Fallaci's book "incites racial violence."

Fallaci said she reserved "the right to sue MRAP for the insult 'racist.' "

The book is due out in September in the United States.

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Widows walk: Four New Jersey homemakers whose husbands died in the World Trade Center attack marched through the halls of Congress last week demanding an independent inquiry into the events surrounding Sept. 11.

Democrats have largely been the ones calling for the establishment of a blue-ribbon panel like the commissions convened after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. President Bush has said that Congress can handle the job.

But Republican lawmakers may change their minds as more determined women converge on their offices.

Mindy Kleinberg, of East Brunswick, N.J., a mother of three who lost her husband, Alan, on Sept. 11, said she had many unanswered questions: Why were fighter jets not dispatched to intercept the hijacked planes? How could future attacks be prevented?

"I want to be able to look into the eyes of my children and tell them the evil is over there, that they are safe and that their country is secure," Kleinberg said. The march was planned two months before recent disclosures about intelligence lapses.

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Another widow: A judge in Pakistan last week dismissed a move by defense attorneys to summon the widow of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl to testify in the trial of four men accused of his kidnapping and murder.

They had asked that she travel from Paris to London to testify before a special panel.

Previously, Mariane Pearl was dropped from the prosecution's witness list, after her attorney said she could not travel to Pakistan for medical reasons. She gave birth to a son May 28.
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