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AIDS burdens Zimbabwe's old with orphans and illness

by Jeffrey Moyo | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thursday, 27 July 2017 15:04 GMT

A mud thatched bedroom hut is seen in Norton, Zimbabwe, May 3, 2017. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Jeffrey Moyo

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"I don't know anything about my grandchildren's HIV status; maybe they have the disease or maybe not"

(Fixed typo in second para)

By Jeffrey Moyo

NORTON, Zimbabwe, July 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - J abulani Zilawe lost all 11 of his children to AIDS. Now he is the only one left to care for their orphans.

"This has become my life - with my grandchildren. All their parents died. AIDS killed them. I had 11 children, six of them were girls who had moved to South Africa to seek better life, but they all came back dead - one after the other," Zilawe told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as he surveyed his small grandchildren scrabbling around him.

Zilawe lives in a dilapidated homestead just outside Norton, a town lying 40 kilometers outside Harare, the Zimbabwean capital.

His bedroom is a thatched mud hut that sits near 12 mounds marking the remains of his wife and children.

"My sons, who became illegal gold miners, also suffered from AIDS before they died. You can see the graves here; the additional one belongs to my wife, who also died some two years ago, leaving me to look after our orphaned grandchildren," said the 76-year-old grandfather, as he craned skywards for more sun.

Nearby, a scattering of his grandchildren wrestled over a pot of leftover porridge. None is in school; instead, like their grandfather, each child passes the day at the homestead, idling and seeking a spot to bask in the sunshine.

Some of the little ones fall ill - regularly, said Zilawe, who didn't know if any carried the virus that had killed their parents.

"I don't know anything about my grandchildren's HIV status; maybe they have the disease or maybe not," said Zilawe.

OLD AND ILL

His life is tough. Yet many other Zimbabweans in Zilawe's age bracket are not just care-givers but are also coping with AIDS diagnoses of their own.

"It's sad. It's worrying when you look at the rate of HIV/AIDS amongst aged persons here. The percentage of elderly persons aged 60 years and above living with HIV is around 15.3 percent," said Marck Chikanza, national coordinator of the National Age Network of Zimbabwe (NANZ), an organisation that caters for older people's needs.

NANZ said more than 115,000 older people are living with HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe, one in ten of the 1.2 million Zimbaweans who the United Nations says are living with HIV/AIDS.

"There has been a decline in the rate of people living with HIV across all age groups except in the 50+ age group where there has been a rise from 13.8 percent to around 14.3 percent," said Tadiwa Pfupa-Nyatanga of the NAC organisation, which coordinates the government's response to HIV/AIDS.

According to 2016 official statistics, about 185,000 AIDS-orphaned Zimbabwean children are living under the guardianship of their grandparents. Men like Zilawe, who struggle to cope.

"Most aged persons here hardly have the capacity to produce nor buy food on their own. And most of the orphaned kids they look after are far too young to be working to produce food for their families. And the burden, at the end of the day, rests with the grandparents - who, in a true sense, are also dependents," Anatalia Mabeza, who chairs an HIV/AIDS support group in Norton, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Jabulani Zilawe, 76, poses for a photo in Norton, Zimbabwe, May 3, 2017. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Jeffrey Moyo

CRY FOR HELP

Some orphaned children say their grandparents offer little or no medical help for the health problems they inherited.

"I was openly told by my mother before she died that I was born with the HIV/AIDS condition, but now as I live with my grandmother, who is in her sixties, she has never bothered to monitor my condition," said Lillian Muranda, 14, who lives in Caledonia informal settlement, 25 kilometers east of Harare.

"She tells me I was bewitched, but I'm always ill and absent from school most of the time," Muranda told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

As Muranda delved deeper into the bewitching story, her grandmother stepped in sharply to intervene:

"Why do you bother her? You news men are very bad. You want to rule out witchcraft from my granddaughter's illness. Leave us," ordered Agnes Muranda.

Superstitious beliefs like this hinder government efforts to combat AIDS, and even if a grandparent has good information and plenty of intent, it doesn't mean that help will follow.

"We have no means to support our AIDS-orphaned grandchildren besides the treatment drugs they receive from government health care centres. What we can only do is to make sure they take their medication. Remember, we are also victims of a failing economy and there are also many amongst aged persons who are living with HIV," said Jonathan Mandaza, who chairs the Zimbabwe Older Persons' Organisation.

As Zilawe sees it, he is shunned as an ageing irrelevance yet is left to pick up the pieces of his children's lost lives.

"As older persons, we are not consulted on HIV and AIDS issues, yet there is also a strong misconception that sex matters don't concern us. As such, access points for condoms and other HIV/AIDS services only favour younger people, leaving us out," said Zilawe.

(Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)

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