Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - August 6, 2001
Carmel Rickard

Instead, Noma died last October, leaving her five-year-old daughter, Nwabisa, to become another Aids orphan.

Mqwambi, 26, who has taken in her niece to live with her, believes that her family's suffering over Noma's painful death, her knowledge as a community health worker specialising in Aids, and her membership of the Catholic Church more than qualify her to comment on this week's statement by the Catholic bishops.

"I would like [the bishops] to look at this question again," she says. "They are just on top and they do not know what is happening to us on the ground."

Mqwambi and her seven siblings were brought up by parents who were pillars of the church. She wears a rosary under her shirt.

"I am a strong Catholic," she says. "We are living in a place where there are mainly Catholics. But if you look at the graveyard here, you will see that the youth of this place are lying there, many of them dead because of the virus. We buried three young people a day last month."

Mqwambi says that as a Department of Health worker, she knows about the A-B-C approach taught in Aids awareness seminars: abstain, be faithful, and, if you can't, use a condom. And she is worried that the bishops undermine this campaign by offering people only A or B and claiming that condoms are "an immoral and misguided weapon" in the fight against Aids, and by saying that condoms might actually be "one of the main reasons for the spread of HIV/Aids".

"If I could have spoken to the bishops, I would like to have told them that we as Aids educators do not say that people must just go out and sleep with anyone and use condoms. We explain A and B thoroughly," Mqwambi says.

"But it is their choice. They must take care of their lives. Not everyone in this world is a Catholic or a Christian."

She says many young people want to be faithful to their sexual partners, but have no way of being certain that their partners are not having other sexual relationships and will not infect them - as happened to her sister.

"People want to protect themselves against the virus. They want something they can see and touch to prevent infection. You cannot hold 'faithful'.

"In the deep rural areas where I work, there is little employment. There is no way to live without money and food.

"The father is supposed to go to Durban or Johannesburg to find work. But when he gets there, he cannot manage to cook and clean, and some woman will be happy to help him and sell her body," she says.

"He will for sure get the virus and bring it back to his family. And that is why we are having such a big problem about orphans, and why it is so painful to hear that the bishops are only speaking about A and B."

Mqwambi fears that the bishops' rigid line will split the Catholic Church: "People, especially young people, will go to other churches which say 'A-B-C' and give people a chance to choose."

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