Inter Press Service - January 24, 2002
James Hall

"We wish to categorically denounce this superstition, and say that traditional healers reject this dangerous practice," says Gogo Shongwe, secretary of the Swaziland Tangoma Association.

Tangoma are diviner/healers who undergo rigorous training to become herbalists and spirit communicators.

Last month, the South African Traditional Healers Organisation released a statement at its headquarters in Durban, South Africa strongly condemning both the belief that having sexual intercourse with a virginal girl cures AIDS and those healers who prescribe the "treatment" to HIV positive patients.

"Sleeping with virgins does not cure AIDS, it spreads the disease," the organisation said.

Darron Mkhombe, a South African inyanga, or medicine man, has long been critical of fellow healers who have endorsed the intercourse with a virgin "cure" for AIDS. He is glad his organisation, which claims to represent 10,000 South African healers, has come out strongly in an effort to end the practice.

"We (healers) have no cure for AIDS in our herbal medicines, and there is a desperation among some healers who are unable to assist dying patients, so they resort to popular superstitious beliefs," Mkhombe says.

Behaviour amongst South African men with HIV may not immediately change because of the stance of traditional healers' organisations. "No doctor can tell me who I can sleep with," says Sam, a Swazi bus conductor in his early 20s. "Doctors should not bother themselves about our cultural beliefs."

Anthropologists and medical historians are uncertain where the belief originated. Dr. John Kunene, who heads Swaziland's AIDS containment effort, feels, "People will turn to any practice when they are in a state of hopelessness or panic. Swaziland and Botswana have the highest incidents of AIDS in the world. In parts of the KwaZulu/Natal Province of South Africa, one third of the population is infected with HIV."

A study conducted by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) pegged the number of Swazis infected by HIV as 30 percent, though the ministry of health sets the figure at 20,5 percent. The ministry has not conducted a thorough survey of the country, however, and reliable statistics such as mother to child transmission of HIV remain elusive.

But anecdotal evidence that many Swazis and South African men who are HIV positive are seeking out virgins as "cures" has prompted the media to call upon traditional healer organisations to censor their members who endorse the practice.

The controversy has gone international. Last week, the influential U.S. newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, condemned South African traditional healers for prescribing sex with virgins as an AIDS remedy.

"Traditional healers are often the health care practitioners of choice among many rural people and even some town dwellers," says Dr. Rebecca Malepe, director of the Swaziland Psychiatric Centre.

Malepe has worked with tangoma and knows several traditional medical cures. "In some instances, there are no clinics or hospitals nearby, but traditional healers also provide holistic care, and people identify with them culturally, as neighbours," she says.

Overworked clinic doctors cannot provide the patient attention offered by traditional healers, whose lack of formal medical training causes tension between them and modern doctors, nurses and medical organisations. Dismissed by the modern medical establishment as dabblers in superstition and ineffective medicine, the healers tend to be defensive when speaking of their work to outsiders.

"Whenever something goes wrong with one of our patients, you hear about it from the doctors," a Swazi healer named Inyoni told a reporter. "But when we save a person or cure an ailment, you never hear about that."

It was an important step for the traditional healer organisations to drop their defensiveness and condemn some of their own when the South African and Swazi healers leaderships came out against the practice of sleeping with virgins to reverse the effect of AIDS.

"As more men are infected, the danger to girls is worse all the time," says one Swazi healer. "In a polygamous society like Swaziland and parts of South Africa, older men are looking for virgins anyway, and multiple wives spreads the disease."

Joyce Vilakati, a counsellor with the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse, who counsels rape victims, says, "Recently, the traditional authorities revived stiff penalties to protect maidens. It was said to be done in an effort to slow down the spread of HIV in the country, but there was also a belief that the elderly polygamists who form the leadership wished to keep a new crop of maidens pure for their own use."

Whatever the motive behind the "sex ban" that calls for heavy fines against unmarried girls who fall pregnant and their seducers, most health workers welcome the return to traditional values during a dangerous time of a rampant incurable disease.

"Now the traditional healers are calling for the protection of maidens. Vulnerable girls are receiving the attention they deserve, and an evil superstition is being discredited," says Vilakati of the anti-abuse group. HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. "The estimated 3.4 million new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa in 2001 mean that 28.1 million Africans now live with the virus," according to a recent UNAIDS report.

It is estimated that 2.3 million Africans died of AIDS in 2001, says the report.
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