James Hall Swaziland’s parliamentarians this week voted to ban miniskirts in schools in an effort to retard the spread of HIV/Aids and considered a motion to sterilise all people with the disease. The man behind the Swaziland Senate directive banning miniskirts in schools was Majahenkhaba Dlamini, the son of a former prime minister and chief, Bhekimpi Dlamini, who once banned women from wearing trousers.
Dlamini insisted Aids control motivated the new rule requiring girls 10 years and older to wear knee-length dresses in school, although a plea for traditional values crept into his submission to the Senate.
“We need to address the problem of dress code among students because the problem of Aids starts from there … students are no longer wearing acceptable uniforms.” The House of Assembly meanwhile considered a motion to sterilise all HIV- positive people in the kingdom, a move that would potentially affect one-quarter of the population.
A source at the health ministry, which would ultimately have to mount a nationwide sterilisation campaign, says: “The policy would increase rather than decrease the spread of Aids. “Already, people shun blood tests because they don’t know if they are going to die from an incurable disease. You can be doubly sure they won’t allow themselves to be tested if they may face sterilisation.” The latest projections on the effect of the disease in Swaziland show that by 2010 life expectancy in the kingdom will be 30 years, compared with 38 today and 56 10 years ago. According to a Times of Swaziland commentary, national consciousness on the disease has been propelled from “apathy and denial to panic”.
It is taboo in Swaziland to disclose one’s HIV-positive status, and to admit you have Aids is to invite a lonely funeral. Only a handful of the 22,5% of the population infected with HIV (according to health ministry figures; a United Nations study pegs the infection rate closer to a third of the population) have admitted their HIV status. They have done so as part of HIV/Aids-awareness campaigns mounted by health NGOs. “Government’s HIV/Aids education programme is ineffectual,” says Manzini nurse Khosi Dlamini, who treats Aids patients. As proof she cites Parliament’s sterilisation proposal, which would do nothing to stop the spread of HIV, as intended, because the virus would remain in the blood and be communicable via accident or sexual intercourse.