InterPress News Service (IPS); Thursday, 22 February 1996.
Patience Rusere

That was in 1989, one year after she married the man she had been dating for five years. She says it is only after their marriage that she found out that her spouse, who has since died, was promiscuous.

"My husband had a lot of girlfriends, so much that he infected me with STDs," Tsitsi (not her real name) told IPS. "I tried refusing but he would practically rape me. At times he would take off the condom.

"It's unfair for people to think that AIDS is a disease for the promiscuous. What about my case? It was my husband who brought it home, while I had been faithful to him."

In this Southern African nation where women are still expected to be obedient to their husbands, including in bed, there are many cases like Tsisti's.

Says Priscilla Misihairambwi, coordinator of Women and Aids Support Network (WASN), a non-governmental organisation (NGO): "A lot of women come here to tell us how their husbands deliberately infected them with HIV, and I am talking of women in monogamous relationships, not commercial sex workers."

This is largely due to the unequal relationships between men and women," she explains. "Women do not have the power to say 'no', neither do they have the means to protect themselves."

According to the National Aids Coordination Programme (NACP), an arm of the health ministry, the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) -- which is caused by HIV -- claimed 48,882 lives from 1987 to September 1995, 21,099 of them women.

Information on AIDS is around for anyone who wants it. Awareness programmes are run regularly on radio and TV. So are ads promoting safe sex and single-partner relationships, while 'The Herald', a semi-official daily, runs a health page that deals with AIDS and sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs).

While there are indications that the use of condoms has increased, some men still refuse to wear them. Moreover, many have multiple partners -- hardly surprising in a society where philanderers are admired by their peers -- and in most cases, their wives are forced to put up with their behaviour for economic as well as social reasons.

"Most of the women we deal with do not want to leave their promiscuous husbands because they do not have anywhere else to go," explains Misihairambwi. "Even the economically independent women are forced to remain in life-threatening relationships because of the negative attitudes society has towards women who leave their marriages."

In Tsitsi's case, her mother told her to "stick it out and be strong". "All men have girlfriends, she used to tell me," she recalls.

As in other African nations, women here are also exposed to HIV and STD infection because of economic need.

Only two percent of Zimbabwean women above the age of 15 are formally employed (the rate for men is 10 percent). Most of the rest are in the informal sector or depend on their husbands or relatives, while some turn to prostitution, which is illegal here.

"There are women whom are having to sleep with men for as little as 10 dollars (1.05 U.S. dollar)," says Misihairambwi. "We need to make sure our women are empowered economically, so that they do not have to have sex with someone without some form of protection simply because they are desperate."

Some women's groups here feel that one way the government can help women protect themselves against AIDS and other STDs is by making the femidom, a device which is inserted in the vagina and serves the same purpose as the male condom, available to them.

"We did a experiment on the femidom a few years ago and the results were quite good," said Misihairambwi. "But that is just as far as the story went."

"When I talked to the minister of health about the femidom, he started talking about how prostitutes would be tempted to use one femidom for all their clients," she charged. "This shows that he is not sensitive to the needs of women."

Advocates of the femidom say one of its biggest advantages is that a woman does not need her partner's permission to use it.

Lynd Francis, an AIDS counsellor with the People Living With Aids (PWA -- an NGO), was also involved in the experiment. "Some of the women said their husbands didn't even realize they were using a femidom," she told IPS. "This means at least the woman was in charge of the situation".

For femidoms to be marketed here, they need to be registered by the state, which has not yet done so. "Their excuse is the cost (higher than that of male condoms)," says Misihairambwi, "but they subsidise quite a number of family planning devices."

But Margaret Mehlomakhulu, assistant programme coordinator at the NACP, argues that government cannot put the femidom on the market without being absolutely sure that it is effective.

"If it doesn't work people will point fingers at us," she says. "Even with the condom a lot of research had to be done before we could register it." (END/IPS/PR/KB/96)

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