by Mitchell Plitnick
When I started getting serious about action on the Israel-Palestine conflict and the associated US foreign policy, I found it imperative to convince people that the Oslo Accords were doomed to fail. There were the obvious critiques of the accords: the lack of any sort of human rights framework, the absence of consequences for failing to abide by conditions or fulfill agreed upon commitments, and the formal recognition of Israel without any mention whatsoever of a potential Palestinian state. But I saw an even bigger obstacle.
Conventional wisdom has it that Jerusalem is the most difficult stumbling block. But I have always maintained that it is the Palestinian refugees that were the most serious obstacle to a negotiated solution.
When various compromises were discussed about Jerusalem, they were always regarded as controversial and difficult to sell. Yet in my experience, people on both sides saw pretty clearly how a compromise could be crafted. Israel was willing, at least in the past, to permit the Islamic Waqf to continue administering the Temple Mount while official sovereignty would belong to both sides–the Old City would be divided and the border of East and West Jerusalem would be part of the agreement on borders more broadly. No one thought this would be easy, of course, but Israel appeared willing to compromise on this issue, in part because it understood that this was not just a Palestinian issue, but one that the entire Muslim population of the world had a stake in. The parameters of an agreement were visible.
When the matter of the Palestinian refugees came up on the other hand, there was a visible disconnect between the sentiments among the Palestinians, both in and outside the Occupied Territories, and the diplomatic framework that was being discussed. Many observers believed that the path forward on the refugees was clearer than that for Jerusalem, even though this was an area that Israel, no matter who was in the prime minister’s office, was going to be a lot less flexible on.
They believed that to be the case because, from available evidence, it seems that Yasser Arafat was assuring the Israelis and Americans that he was prepared to essentially sacrifice the refugees’ right of return settling for some token number returning to Israel while the rest would get some sort of compensation package and some limited option of returning to the presumed Palestinian state. This was, of course, not what he was telling the Palestinian people, to whom he continually pledged that he would not compromise on the right of return.
While many hold Arafat responsible for the disconnect between diplomacy and reality, obviously not without some justification, the real problem was the disinterest that Israeli and US diplomats routinely showed toward the Palestinian people. One need go no further than to read books by key figures such as Dennis Ross or Aaron David Miller. While the complexities of Israeli politics were always dealt with in careful detail, the Palestinian side was ignored to such an extent that virtually everything you see in the writings of these and other diplomats of the day about Palestinian opinion was obtained simply by asking the Palestinian leaders. Can anyone imagine Israel being approached that way?
The Palestine Liberation Organization leadership (PLO) under Arafat was neither prepared to hold the difficult national dialogue about possible compromise on the refugee issue nor to admit to their Israeli and US interlocutors that the right of return was as core a national Palestinian value as the land itself and that public sentiment strongly opposed the sort of compromise that Israel had, not without reason, come to expect.
This held true after Arafat’s death and Mahmoud Abbas’ assumption of the leadership. In truth, even Hamas has not specifically spoken about the refugees very often, although that is largely because its agenda, unlike the PLO after the mid-1970s, remained focused on liberating all of Palestine, which would mean the refugees could simply return. The result is that the national conversation on this issue never occurred, and all through the Oslo talks, even if one believed they had any chance of going anywhere, the refugee issue hung over the table like a pendulum with a razor-sharp blade, coming nearer to splitting the table with every passing swing.
The biggest danger was that, in the case of a miracle where Israel and the Palestinians were able to agree on a lasting peace deal, the refugee issue would shatter it. In several incidents, most recently with the revelations contained in the “Palestine Papers,” confirmation of the framework around the refugees caused great concern among Palestinians.
It is not always easy for others, including myself, to fully grasp the importance of the refugee issue to Palestinians. Nor is it fully understood by others how deeply Israeli Jews fear this issue. For the Palestinians, refugees are a deeply personal as well as a national issue. After all, the accepted estimate of the number of Palestinian refugees is approximately five million, and the total global population of Palestinians is eleven million. So, pretty much every Palestinian has refugee relatives, many of them living outside the Palestinian Territories. Families, in other words, have been sundered for 66 years.
Then there is the reality, often vastly underestimated, of how central the refugees are to Palestinian nationalism. They are as core a value as the land, Jerusalem, anything. The key to the lost home in Palestine is the overriding symbol of Palestinian nationalism, and it is the symbol of the refugee.
This is not to say that some practical and negotiated agreement cannot be reached on the issue. But thus far, that hasn’t been even remotely attempted. Instead, Israel has insisted that the right of return be forfeited and their Western allies have concurred, as have, in a more circumspect fashion, many of the regional Arab leaders, Lebanon being the main exception. That makes the issue even more sensitive, if that is possible, because for most Palestinians, the framework in which the refugees have been discussed is a surrender, and one that they do not believe the PLO leadership has the authority to make (many Palestinians argue that the right of return is an individual as well as a collective right and as such cannot be negotiated away in a collective bargaining framework. There is considerable basis for this argument).
What is needed is a national conversation, and that will take time. The debates need to happen in communities, in coffee shops and in mosques as well as on the internet and in the halls of the Palestinian Authority. Over time, a general consensus of what is and is not going to be tolerable for the majority of Palestinians, including the refugees themselves, will emerge. From there, realistic negotiations on the issue can manifest.
This needs to happen because it is the only way to turn the refugee problem from a poison pill that would almost certainly torpedo any agreement into part of the solution. The Israeli public also needs to know what the Palestinians want from the right of return.
There is no subject that the Israeli Jewish public is more united and rejectionist on than the refugee issue. Outside of the radical anti-Zionist left–a small portion of the population–you will be hard pressed to find an Israeli Jew who would agree to any significant return of refugees. You’ll find it equally difficult to find an Israeli who would acknowledge any right of return. The refugees, you see, touch on the most intimate identity crisis for Israeli Jews: the fact that Israel could have only come into existence by forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out.
This “original sin” is not something that Israelis can simply live with as we in the United States can live with the legacy of slavery and the genocide of the native population here. In the US, we have left too few natives to be worried about any claims to the land, and they are far too disempowered. Slavery is considered a historical shame, but the ongoing issues of racism are largely seen by whites as the legacy of Jim Crow laws (read: apartheid) rather than of slavery. These horrific crimes are regarded by most of the white US as history, however sordid.
Israeli Jews cannot do that. No doubt, the leaders of the Zionist movement in the 1940s believed that, by now, the Palestinians would have resettled in various Arab countries and that Israel could make peace with that past in a similar way to the United States. But that view did not take into account the fact that Palestinians were going to be in refugee camps nearby, would refuse to assimilate (or be barred from it) into the countries they fled to, and would maintain a sense of national identity that kept them–much like Jews throughout the centuries–as strangers in strange lands.
The reality of the Palestinian exodus from Palestine from 1947-49 was largely known in Israel all along. In the late 1980s, Israel’s “New Historians” produced controversial, but generally accurate tomes documenting that the Palestinians did not leave of their own volition or in response to broadcasts from Arab leaders telling them to do so. They either fled or were very frequently driven from their homes.
Many Israelis are aware of all this. But, as with most nations, the people of Israel want desperately to believe in the righteousness of their country’s creation. Moreover, there is enormous fear of what the world would think if this history became more commonly known, especially in the United States and other friendly Western countries where, among supporters of Israel, this history is largely unknown or papered over with some rather incredible myths (e.g., the Palestinians of 1948–all 800,000 and more of them–just picked up and left). Even acknowledging the Palestinian right of return threatens this, creating a situation where history, even when known, produces a visceral discomfort and threatens the Jewish self-image of a just and decent people trying to finally create a home for ourselves.
By itself, that could be overcome. But for Israelis, that sensitivity is piled on top of a fear of Palestinian return that borders on hysteria. And this fear is greatly exacerbated by the lack of clarity about Palestinians’ ambitions regarding the right of return. Israeli Jews treasure, more than anything else, having a homeland where they are the majority. Having such a homeland is also very important to many Jews living in the diaspora. That importance is every bit as strong as worldwide Muslim concern over the fate of Jerusalem.
Israelis are desperately afraid that if they cease blocking the right of return, even to the extent of merely acknowledging the existence of such a right, there would be a massive influx of Palestinian refugees into Israel, which would ultimately make Jews a distinct minority. True, many argue, Jews are doing pretty well as a minority in many countries; but many countries in the world are completely bereft of any Jewish population, especially in the Arab world. And, while they won’t name it, Jews also have the same visceral fear of Palestinians that white South Africans, whites in the US and in other places have had of those they oppressed: the fear that anger over those years of oppression will result in yet another incident of Jewish persecution.
It’s easy for me to say that the fear is born only out of prejudice and misplaced feelings, that the truly hateful among the Palestinians, like the truly hateful among the Jewish Israelis can be dealt with much more efficiently when Palestinian grievances, so long left to boil, are finally addressed. But for most Israelis and Jews in many other places, they look at the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda, places where the cycle of oppression kept spinning with death greasing the wheel. Given Jewish history, it’s an understandable fear.
But it’s also a fear that must be dealt with, not pandered to. When Arafat convinced Israelis that the PLO had backed off liberating all of Palestine and would settle for the lands Israel conquered in 1967, it made a big difference in Israeli perceptions of Palestinians. Even in the toxic atmosphere of 2014, such clarity from the Palestinians on refugees would have a similar effect. This will be true even if the Palestinians’ stance turns out to be (as I believe it would if the popular will was reflected) that each and every refugee should be offered the options of return, return to a Palestinian state (if a two-state solution is ever reached) or compensation, and it is up to each to choose for her or himself. At least Israel would know what the bargaining position is.
The International Crisis Group undertook what I consider to be the first serious effort at finally taking the veil off this critical issue by releasing a report entitled, “Bringing Back the Palestinian Refugee Question,” on Oct. 9. It is a serious and pragmatic analysis of what Palestinian leaders and people can do to begin to bring this question out of the shadows and, crucially, to the center of diplomatic efforts. The recommendations include renewing and revitalizing local leadership councils in refugee camps, improving conditions for refugees as well as supporting refugees in building lives wherever they are without worrying that they are sacrificing their claims as refugees, and beginning the sort of national dialogue I have been discussing.
Now is the perfect time for such efforts, although Israel and the United States will oppose them. Even Abbas has realized that his old strategy has failed and he needs a new one. Refugees, long marginalized, have an opportunity to raise their voice and have it impact Palestinian negotiators in the future. And, despite the fact that Israelis would be vexed by such a development, it is an absolute necessity if there is ever to be a resolution to this conflict, be it one state, two state or whatever else.
This strategy will be uncomfortable for the Palestinian Authority. But it must materialize for the region to move towards substantive rather than illusionary visions of peace. We must hope that good sense can overcome fear.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Once again, in his speech Wednesday at the United Nations, President Obama revealed the reduced importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on his agenda. He also revealed just how out of touch his entire country is with respect to reality.
The Israel-Palestine conflict was the last specific global issue mentioned by Obama in his address to the UN General Assembly, and his wording was straight out of the playbook. It was also only mentioned briefly and without any hint that the United States would be taking any action at all on the issue.
Here’s what he said:
Leadership will also be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. As bleak as the landscape appears, America will never give up the pursuit of peace. The situation in Iraq, Syria and Libya should cure anyone of the illusion that this conflict is the main source of problems in the region; for far too long, it has been used in part as a way to distract people from problems at home. And the violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace. But let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort – not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region, and the world will be more just with two states living side by side, in peace and security.
Could this have been any emptier? Just last month, Israel and Hamas were engaged in the biggest uptick in violence since the Second Intifada was in full swing.
The message from Obama comes through, though: We’re no longer interested in forcing the parties to the table. The subtext behind that is a US surrender to the stubbornness of the far-right wing government running Israel these days. The US will stop pressuring Israel for talks, and indeed, it already has. The question this raises, of course, is how the Obama administration will respond when and if the Palestinian Authority makes good on its repeated threats to bring this issue to the UN and the International Criminal Court.
In such a case, Obama will undoubtedly condemn the Palestinians’ “unilateral action”—de facto US policy dictates that when the Palestinians take action, it is to be condemned, but when Israel does the same thing, it is, at worst, “unhelpful.” Yet the real question for the Palestinians is whether the United States will have any other response outside of some pro forma public statement. Obama’s hands-off approach seems to imply that it will not, though Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be unwise to count on that.
But there’s another piece of this statement worth examining. Obama said, as he has many times, that the situation is unsustainable. He also notes that one myth that has long been held by many has been exposed as false by recent events: the notion that Palestine is the key source of instability in the region.
Obama is correct about the exposed old myth, but he merely spouts another in its place. Of course the occupation will not remain the same as it is today. It has changed some of its characteristics, almost always to the detriment of the Palestinians, many times since 1967. But the essence of the matter, the relationship between an occupying power and an occupied people locked in a conflict over land, rights, narratives, nationalism and competing claims of justice, has endured quite well over those years.
The Israeli right-wing was long aware, and often stated, that their subjugation of the Palestinians was not the main cause of instability in the region. Of course, there was a time when there was a much stronger argument for that myth. When the many Arab regimes, throughout most of the 20th century, were comfortably entrenched in power, things were pretty stable, as they often are under dictatorships that maintain their control. Under those circumstances, the cry of “Free Palestine” was heard much more loudly, as it was the only one the dictators would permit. Due to many factors (especially the US invasion of Iraq), that stability was shattered and, as one would expect, much of the Arab world, while not forgetting the Palestinians, demonstrated a focus on the miserable conditions they themselves were living in, and conflicts within their own countries. Thus, the myth was exposed.
But we need no shakeup like the Arab Awakening to see that the claim that the occupation is “unsustainable” is a myth. We really need only see that it has endured for more than 47 years, and when circumstances did threaten the status quo, Israel adapted its occupation to meet those circumstances. The most obvious example of that is the massive tightening of the occupation and even more massive expansion of settlements that constituted Israel’s response to the Oslo Accords.
Of course, it is a truism that any oppressive regime eventually meets its demise. That is clearly not what Obama means when he calls the occupation “unsustainable.” Rather, he means what so many others mean: Israel cannot continue to hold millions of Palestinians without rights. But, like so many other myths around Israel-Palestine, this one doesn’t bear scrutiny. Israel has done this for 47 years, and can do it for the foreseeable future. The demise of the occupation regime will come, as the demise of all regimes eventually come. But there is nothing particularly unsustainable about this one.
The Israeli right has become the Israeli mainstream, and they are busily coming up with ideas for how to sustain this occupation or, as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman likes to put it, to “manage” the conflict. They recognize that the fear, ingrained in the thinking of many of the early Zionist philosophers of a Jewish Israel ruling over a majority of disenfranchised Muslim and Christian Arabs is unfounded. It turns out that contrary to the expectations of the early Zionist thinkers, Israelis can live with denying rights to Arabs, and the world is prepared to tolerate it, despite the clucking of tongues it evokes.
This issue can be traced back all the way to Theodor Herzl, and it was actively dealt with by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and, most notably, by the person in charge of land acquisition for the Jewish National Fund both before and after the State of Israel was established, Yoseph Weitz. In modern times, this notion has been expressed as a “demographic time bomb,” most notably by Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert.
But there’s no reason to believe this is really a problem. After all, according to the February 2014 report of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, there are about 6,119,000 Jews in Israel and the West Bank. Between the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, there are some 5,894,631 Palestinians, according to the CIA World Factbook. Given the different population growth rates, Palestinians will be a majority very soon, but the day that happens, what is going to change? On the ground, in day to day life, what will be different than the day before?
The answer, of course, is that nothing will change and the Israeli right wing understands this. The United States, on the other hand, does not appear to. More to the point, the many activists who believe that Jews going from 51% of the population to 49% of it will suddenly mean that Israel is an apartheid state, as both Olmert and another former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak warned, also do not understand that when that line is crossed nothing will change. Nothing will change when that so-called demographic time bomb goes off.
So, while right wing leaders like Naftali Bennett consider ways to continue to “manage” the Palestinians indefinitely, Obama and a great any others, in the United States, Israel, Europe and even some among the Palestinians, continue to engage in myth-making and wishful thinking.
If this conflict is ever to be resolved, the only path to it entails full acknowledgment of the realities, on the ground, in the international diplomatic sphere and in politics. Anyone who truly believes that the demographic counter clicking down to under 50% Jewish will somehow shock the Israeli people and their government into recognizing the injustice of the occupation is engaging in fantasy. Such demographic changes are gradual, and this cushions the change so it is not a shock. In 1960, Whites, who were always an overwhelming minority, made up less than 20% of the population of South Africa, and Jews are unlikely to ever be anywhere near that small a minority in Israel-Palestine.
This is only one of many myths that need to be abandoned for any kind of resolution to be possible. It’s no less important to dispel these fanciful notions than it is to counter the stereotypes of Palestinians that are so widely held in the United States, Israel and elsewhere (like “they just want to kill the Jews” for instance). One way we will know people are serious about taking on this vexing conflict is when we see them abandon false notions and recognize that Israel-Palestine can contribute to a better world simply by ending the injustice and violence. When that’s the motivation, and it is applied to both sides, we’ll be getting somewhere.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Today, I’m asking my readers to please support the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group has been working hard on some new legislation and it’s really important to help get this bill to the floor of the Senate and the House.
According to a report in Buzzfeed, [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Today, I’m asking my readers to please support the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group has been working hard on some new legislation and it’s really important to help get this bill to the floor of the Senate and the House.
According to a report in Buzzfeed, AIPAC has been working with congressional staff members for months on the bill, trying to find the formula for success. The bill would “…aim to prevent U.S. companies from participating in the (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel) campaign without infringing on Americans’ First Amendment rights to political speech. It would also try to make the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated between the U.S. and E.U. conditional on whether the E.U. takes action to stop BDS.”
And how would they prevent US companies from participating in BDS? By “…authorizing states and local governments to divest from companies deemed to be participating in BDS,” and by denying “…federal contracts to such companies.” This bill should be at the top of the agenda for American activists in the United States who wish to see our country change its policies towards Israel and Palestine.
AIPAC hasn’t been doing very well of late. Their attempt to weasel a provision into another bill that would have allowed Israelis to enter the United States without a visa while Israel refused to make the same arrangement for US citizens raised a lot of hackles on Capitol Hill, even in some offices that are very AIPAC-friendly. The proposed provision was killed. AIPAC was unable to sway the Senate against the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. Nor has it been able to significantly impact the Obama administration’s efforts to reach an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.
There have been a lot of failures lately, including the failure to get Congress to push hard for an attack on Syria last year. But this bill, if it ever reaches the floor, could be the biggest bust of all, with some serious ramifications for the powerful lobbying group.
Let’s just start with the First Amendment issues this raises. If this bill ever sees the light of day, AIPAC is going to try to convince people that it is similar to the laws passed forty years ago in response to the Arab League’s boycott of Israel. Put simply, it isn’t.
Those laws–the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA)–were drawn up narrowly, to apply only in the case of abetting or cooperating with a boycott directed at Israel by other countries. The mentions of boycott “by a foreign nation” or similar words are so frequent that the meaning cannot be missed. This is no surprise, of course; Congress is loath to dictate to US businesses, and it is especially tricky where a national interest is not clearly and immediately at stake. So these laws were contrived so that they only barred supporting boycotts by foreign countries against Israel.
In the case of BDS, no government is running this program, not even the pseudo-governments of the Palestinian Territories. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has not endorsed boycotts of Israel and is, itself, completely incapable of boycotting Israeli goods and services. It is in most ways a captive market to Israel. Hamas has, frankly, paid little attention to such measures, though they have encouraged them rhetorically from time to time.
There is a call for BDS from Palestinian civil society, but that is not covered by the 1970s laws. Moreover, any law that would target BDS would need to be constructed in such a way so that it would not have made boycotts of Apartheid South Africa illegal. Those boycotts also came in response to a call from the African National Congress. If businesses could not engage in such activities, there would be great outrage.
So the Arab League boycott is moot as a basis for anti-BDS legislation. The right to boycott is also not limited by what the government decides is an acceptable boycott and what is not. People, and businesses, are free to choose with whom they will do business. Congress making such decisions violates the very essence of the First Amendment, and it is highly unlikely that such a law could pass as a result and, if it could, even less likely that it could withstand legal challenges.
The bit about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is even more toxic. The point of TTIP is to make international trade between the United States and European Union easier, to reduce tariffs and lessen bureaucracy. The idea is to significantly improve the speed, and thus the volume and value, of trade between the two economic giants. Adding stipulations like ensuring that EU states are working against BDS is precisely what TTIP is designed to avoid. Whatever my own objections to TTIP (and they are many), it clearly holds great appeal for businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.
It is one thing for US citizens with influence in Washington to go along with the powerful lobbying forces defending Israel’s ability to act with impunity in the region; for the most part, that has not had a negative effect on trade. But this would be a very different matter. Now we are talking about AIPAC going up against powerful, domestic business interests. That is a whole new ballgame.
Even bringing the bill to the floor would demonstrate in a clearer way than ever before that AIPAC is willing to compromise US commercial interests and even one of the most cherished and basic freedoms the US prides itself on for the sake of Israeli interests.
Consider also that the overwhelming majority of boycott actions, divestment decisions and even popular proposals for sanctions against Israel have focused squarely on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. They have not targeted Israel as a whole, with the exception of some of the attempts at cultural and academic boycott. But these are not major concerns for Israel nor do they have the same impact potential as economic boycotts and divestment. So, the threat to free speech and to international trade that this bill represents would be demonstrably in the service of the settlement enterprise, the siege of Gaza and the occupation regime more generally. The mask would be off.
In reality, I very much doubt any such legislation is ever going to move forward, at least not from AIPAC. They know the problems as well as anyone and, while I don’t doubt that they are working constantly with their closest friends in Congress to see if something could work, I don’t think they’ll be successful. But if you want to see AIPAC suffer major damage, such a bill would do it. I can’t think of a better strategy to oppose AIPAC than to do everything we can to make sure this sort of doomed anti-BDS legislation hits the floor in Congress with a resounding thud.
]]>Although years before my gender reassignment surgery, I [...]]]>
Although years before my gender reassignment surgery, I presented myself as the female that I was. I found it thrilling that the caramel-skin, Don Juan-looking guy from the neighbourhood was interested in intimacy, while fully aware of what would be displayed by the time he would strip off my negligé.
Our first sexual encounter was planned according to the clichéd foam-bath-with-candles-and-rose-petals recipe. A Sunday morning would be best, I proposed. We would be alone for four hours while my mother, with whom I lived in Cape Town, would be tending to her regular ritual of church and visitations.
The romance of round one did not disappoint. Round two and three were more carnal. HIV was then a distant disease relegated to the white, promiscuous, homosexual male population of the United States. In South Africa, one could indulge with “gay abandon”, even bareback – or so we thought.
Transactional sex drives HIV infection among young women, study says. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS
Soon it would be time for him to leave. And then he stunned me with a demand that nearly made me regurgitate the champers and chocolates I had been fed at bath time.
He wanted payment for “services rendered” – in cash or in-kind! I could hardly stutter nor splutter a response, except to insist that sex is an exchange of mutual pleasure, not goods or cash.
Despite his veiled intimidations, I did not pay. I had yet to receive my first job pay cheque, was my defence. Eventually he left, but not before he raided my cupboard for some choice items. I’d just become an unknowing victim of a form of transactional sex.
A risky exchange
Since time immemorial, transactional sex has flourished in many forms. In South Africa (as I’m sure in many parts of the world), one such form widely practiced is that of teenage girls and young women trading their bodies for luxury goods. However, they commonly disassociate their actions from prostitution.
In early April, transactional sex in South Africa was in the news. Alarmingly, we learned of a spike in HIV infections among young women, mostly due to engaging in transactional sex, in the latest report of the Human Science Research Council.
I was shocked to read that young women aged 15-24 have the highest incidence of HIV. In 2012, they accounted for a quarter – 113,000– of all new infections.
While the girls’ expectations are of expensive jeans, trendy takkies (shoes), a new cell phone or gold earrings, they are actually paid with HIV, the virus that has infected 6.4 million South Africans.
When I recall my first (and last) encounter with transactional sex, I still feel that bitter sense of powerlessness.
However, as the episode subsided and I received my first wages ever, I felt a sweet sense of empowerment. I could replace the goods taken.
Years later, I’ve earned many salaries and I’ve been in several relationships, both short and long term. Of course, I’ve received a gift here and a necklace there from a guy or two. But I know that it was given out of love, respect or like.
Those are the modes I advocate that we, as women, young or old, receive the things we like – not trading our bodies for it, and certainly not for HIV!
Simone Heradien is an artist, activist, journalist, maximalist (likes things big), always on the ball. But come sunset, to unwind, you’ll find me dancing on a bar counter in some or other music hall.
Wait! Is it human nature or just lack of discipline?
This happens to me in the area of … yes, weight gain! No amount of knowledge I acquire or books I read help me [...]]]>
Wait! Is it human nature or just lack of discipline?
This happens to me in the area of … yes, weight gain! No amount of knowledge I acquire or books I read help me to get off my rollercoaster ride of weight gain and loss.
Well, I see teenage pregnancy in South Africa in the same light. Having loads of information is not enough to change our behaviour.
Teenage pregnancy is not just an issue of reproductive health, but rooted in women’s gendered social environment.Credit Mercedes Sayangues
One would think that young people today have enough tools to avoid unwanted pregnancy: contraception is available and sexual health information is a fingertip or a cell phone away.
But many girls still fall pregnant before finishing high school. In 2011 alone, more than 51,000 school girls, mostly black and poor, gave birth in South Africa, according to the United Nations Population Fund. This not only endangers their education and their future but places a huge burden on their families.
The number of 51,000 pregnant school girls means that as many boys and men impregnated them. Hey, it takes two to tango.
Shoo!
Why does this happen? What perpetuates this cycle? My curiosity led me to research.
An insightful study from 2009 by researchers Jewkes, Morrell and Christofides aptly summed it up: “Teenage pregnancy is not just an issue of reproductive health and young women’s bodies but, rather, one of its causes and consequences, rooted in women’s gendered social environment.”
Sad but true. Our environment influences young women hugely. In some South African communities, young women are pressured to prove their fertility at a young age, and so they fall pregnant, simultaneously risking the dangers of sexually transmitted infections and HIV.
And if that’s not enough, they are often left to raise the babies alone because the father is ”unknown” – a term for saying that he is either married, or not ready to assume this responsibility, or does not want a child, or is still too young so he gets to continue with his education – while she (the expecting mother) likely drops out of school to care for the baby.
In addition, young women have to wrestle with the societal expectations that they must be conservative and passive.
We are also expected to prove our social status – to look a certain way, wear certain clothes, and be seen possessing certain material things. Dating someone older to provide these status symbols or necessities seems the easier route – no matter the cost.
However, experience has taught me otherwise: nothing is ever for mahala, meaning there are no freebies in life. What you do today will determine your future.
Check these figures reported last week about AIDS in South Africa:
- Among teenagers, girls have eight times the HIV infection rate than their male peers.
- Girls aged 15-19 are more likely than boys the same age to have sex, and sex with older men.
- Condom use has dropped significantly among young people.
To change this gut-wrenching reality, we must ask some hard questions:
- Can we honestly see progress in South Africa when so many girls still fall pregnant and/or contract HIV daily?
- Can we not take advantage of the booming social networks and other creative platforms to create safe spaces for dialogue around the real reasons why young black girls are falling pregnant today?
We should change our way of dealing with this sensitive social issue. Let us be less prescriptive about the young girls’ behaviours and meet them where they are.
Hearing their voices when messages and programmes are designed will help us address the real issues behind teenage pregnancy in South Africa.
To walk the talk, I am developing an interactive session for a group of high school students aged 14-17 in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. We use applied drama and theatre methods to build a platform for dialogue around teenage pregnancy. Will keep you posted!
Zandi “Princess Zar” Mqwathi is a confident, innovative young leader and a former radio personality with a zeal and drive to use her craft and experiences to educate and empower other young women.
]]>I was 19 when the news of my status came to light. That was in 2008. Sick with TB and other opportunistic infections, bedridden and scared, I began to question the meaning [...]]]>
I was 19 when the news of my status came to light. That was in 2008. Sick with TB and other opportunistic infections, bedridden and scared, I began to question the meaning of it all, what spaces I could now occupy, and what I could and could not do.
After initially vowing to never have sex, Phindile empowered herself through education to discover and embrace her sexuality following her HIV diagnosis. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS
Although the AIDS epidemic had raged through my country, South Africa, for more than a decade, I had only heard about HIV through hushed whispers at school. HIV was something that happened to the proverbial other. With my private school education, I was exempt of it. HIV was not a part of my history or of my future. HIV was not a possibility. But now, it was a reality.
I had been told that my parents had died of “respiratory infection”. It turned out that they had died from AIDS when I was young and I had been born with HIV. But my adoptive parents did not know this. I grew up sheltered from the reality of my parents’ and my own HIV-positive status.
I was a fairly well-behaved teenager, who was afforded the opportunities that most don’t have. Well before the HIV diagnosis, I understood the emotional implications of having sex. For the wide-eyed, naïve romantic and wannabe writer I was, it only seemed right that I wait it out. I wanted the experience to be as amazing and life changing as possible. Love-making for the first time should be with someone I trust, love and respect.
After the shocking news, I wondered about the sexual encounters I might have had, had I decided not to wait; about the week spent with my peers enjoying sandy beaches and more alcohol than my teenage life had ever seen, at the end of my high school year; about how seriously awry things could have gone, and how I might have been responsible for other people’s pain and shame upon finding out they live with the virus.
Stuck in bed, left with my own thoughts and teenage ideas of HIV, I resolved to never have sex, as long as I lived.
Although my adoptive mother got me the best medical treatment, it was emotional treatment that I needed most – someone to talk to about what being HIV-positive meant, beyond taking ARVs and CD4 counts, but that day never came.
Reading, learning and changing
It was only in my first year of university, with my first boyfriend, and the emotional and physical challenges this presented, that I started to research, finding everything I could about my self-imposed chastity belt, my scarlet letter.
Through research papers and articles online, I started to navigate the tricky line of my sexuality. Eventually, I realized that I didn’t have to withhold from sex. I learned about safe sexual practices, to use a condom and keep my partner safe, although it took me a while to engage in any sort of sexual activity.
Had I not had access to the internet or the knowledge to decipher those articles, my life would have been spent in the baggy t-shirts and jeans that I wore to conceal my femininity when I found out about my HIV status.
After many years of research, I have taught myself, like a baby learning to walk, the limitations and opportunities available to me, and how, for this still wide-eyed but a little less naïve young woman, loving and making love is a real possibility.
Phindile Sithole-Spong is a red-lipped, wannabe yogi and sexual anthropologist living in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she splits her time between writing, cooking and running her company Rebranding HIV, an HIV consultancy company that applies branding strategies to HIV/AIDS.
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The death of Nelson Mandela last December at the age of 95 brought forth an outpouring of prepared grief and remembrances worldwide. Here in the United States, leaders and politicians of all stripes stepped forward to the cameras, eager to praise the former South African President. One by one, they eulogized Mandela as [...]]]>
The death of Nelson Mandela last December at the age of 95 brought forth an outpouring of prepared grief and remembrances worldwide. Here in the United States, leaders and politicians of all stripes stepped forward to the cameras, eager to praise the former South African President. One by one, they eulogized Mandela as a statesman, the father of a democratic South Africa, a historical figure whose tolerance and forgiveness for his former captors held a divided country together.
But with remembering comes forgetting and so it is with the post-apartheid regime in South Africa. It’s hard to imagine now, but for much of the 1980s the American public and media held South Africa in ill repute as a fallen member of the international community, a nation wicked enough to supply the public imagination with villains high and low, from the implacable P.W. Botha to the bad guy in Lethal Weapon 2. A charter member of that decade’s version of the Axis of Evil, the apartheid state for years had no rival for notoriety other than Iran, the Soviet Union and perhaps Qaddafi’s Libya. 
Iran’s turn?
South Africa’s transformation and redemption during the 90s is instructive as relations between the United States and Iran improve–a thaw made possible by the surprise election of Hassan Rouhani to the presidency this past June. Rouhani and his foreign policy team, led by the indefatigable Mohammad Javad Zarif, have taken a two-track, “high/low” approach to diplomacy, one that aims to deny US policy elites the moral high ground in the international realm, terrain ceded by Iran for most of the past decade to the Americans, while simultaneously seeking out direct dialogue with the broader American public through acts of online and public diplomacy. Planned and impromptu exchanges in venues like Facebook and Twitter serve the strategic goal of improving Iran’s image abroad by helping Americans forget the Iran of Ahmadinejad and the Iran of Argo.
However, while the Rouhani Facebook and Twitter campaigns have drawn considerable media attention, attributing the improved image of Iran to online “charm offenses” confuses cause for effect. Palace tweets from Tehran are the symptoms of an Iranian public tired of being viewed as a pariah by the international community, a fact conveyed to me repeatedly in interviews carried out during a research trip to Iran this past summer.
Elections have consequences, even in Iran, and if Rouhani and Zarif are in a position to carry out their Twitter campaigns, that’s because they were put there by a public anxious to see their country’s good name restored. A politics of honor and dignity informs the foreign policy of the Rouhani government, not just as a practical means for ending sanctions and warding off military intervention, but also as a domestic goal valued for its own sake.
The roots of Iran’s present rehabilitation run deeper still, to the 2009 Green Movement and the original “twitter revolution.” A summer of protest transformed ordinary Iranians into heroes, fit to be fêted on concert stages by the likes of U2 and Bon Jovi. Reporting out of Iran suddenly became about more than the hejab and scary murals. Most importantly, the broadcasted images of Iranian protestors marching by the millions while demanding that their votes be counted–and being arrested, beaten, or worse for doing so–made it possible for Americans to insert their imagined selves into this narrative. Suddenly they were fellow travelers in Iran’s struggle for democracy, a struggle seemingly sponsored by made-in-the-USA technology.
No nukes, no problems
Regime change and the end of apartheid finally, fully, rehabilitated South Africa. However, there will likely be no Rainbow Nation ending for Iran–regime change is neither necessary nor sufficient for the country’s redemption amongst the American public.
This past November’s breakthrough in Geneva between the P5+1 and Iran–and the ongoing fascination with Rouhani as a latter-day Gorbachev–revealed what has been obvious for some time: the American concern with Iran is, at the end of the day, related to the security of the US and its allies in the region. The US’ Iran policy commitments run no deeper than resolving the nuclear portfolio and containing Iranian aspirations to regional hegemony; these commitments are reflected in a sanctions regime designed to punish Iran for its nuclear program and not its systematic violation of human rights.
The stakes were always greater with South Africa, a staunch Cold War ally that nonetheless presented a continuous security and moral dilemma for the US government from the 1950s to the late 1980s. Apartheid was an embarrassment, a vulnerability that undermined South Africa’s utility as a bulwark against the Soviets. The end of the Cold War resolved this contradiction and pushed the moral imperative of ending apartheid to the forefront of US foreign policy. Deprived of the communist bogeyman and out of excuses, the continued disenfranchisement of the majority black population in their own country simply became untenable, and not just for the white government in Johannesburg. Domestic politics and a sordid racial history of its own made anti-apartheid a cause that the United States had to see through to the end.
Yet there is no analogous moral imperative with Iran, no pressing bottom line needed to secure democracy or to resolve Iran’s human rights portfolio. The strategic focus on security thus presents an opportunity and a trap for the United States, a situation that more savvy observers of the Iranian scene have already recognized. Under these circumstances, achieving détente will require a relatively straight forward exchange of assurances and guarantees: Iran will limit its nuclear program and scale back its sponsorship of proxy groups hostile to the United States and Israel, and in return the United States will lift sanctions and provide guarantees that it does not seek regime change in Iran.
However, a resolution of the nuclear standoff and the removal of sanctions will likely undo the electoral coalition that brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place, a disparate group of reformists, ordinary Iranians scandalized by the 2009 election, and traditional conservatives determined to preserve the Islamic regime, all held together by an agenda of national reconciliation and an aversion to war, civil or otherwise. Whereas the ANC coalition in South Africa was forged during the transition from apartheid to democracy, Rouhani’s government emerged as an alternative to regime change.
Realpolitik renders this alliance fragile, a marriage of convenience perhaps fated for divorce. For many Rouhani supporters, resolving the nuclear issue is a first step, a foundation upon which to build a fuller, more inclusive democracy. Hardline elements within the regime are more likely to see any security deal with Europe and the United States as a ceiling, the price of preserving the regime and the revolution. For these stalwarts, Iran’s democratic system needs no reform as it is already without rival in the world.
A final deal with the United States and Europe will undoubtedly expose these contradictions. With the survival of their regime secured abroad, hardliners in the Iranian leadership may be tempted to turn away from conciliating their publics at home. Disillusioned voters may in turn abandon the political process now underway in Iran, leaving Rouhani exposed in the middle, his position as a centrist rendered a liability.
The endgame of the nuclear standoff between Iran and the United States will ultimately resemble post-Cold War US-Russia relations. More than 30 years after South Africa gave up its domestic nuclear program as a cost for being reintegrated into the world community, America will have to reconcile itself to an Iran that exists as a regional power with limited if not latent access to nuclear technology.
The satisfaction of a cold peace will have to do. Power politics and the persistent violations of human rights will prevent a full reconciliation between the two countries, though these will not be significant enough to override the shared benefits of détente. The status of US-Iran relations is likely to settle somewhere between the turban and the crown, to borrow from Said Arjomand–between the animosity of the first three decades of the Islamic Republic and the close partnership of the Pahlavi regime during its final three decades of rule.
That is, assuming that Americans are still paying attention. Nearly a quarter of a century after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, and less than 20 years since his election to the presidency, South Africa occupies little of the space that it once did in the public imagination of Americans.
Such is the fate of “rogue” states, current and former. Reputation and diplomacy will prove to be a mug’s game, subject to the fickle and distracted attention of an American public forever on the search for new demons and dragons to slay. In the end, Iran too will likely fade from view, relegated to the back pages of The New York Times alongside the latest, unnoticed outrage from some country in a lost corner of the world.
– Shervin Malekzadeh is currently an Assistant Professor at Swarthmore College. His research focuses on the politics of schooling, identity, and culture in postrevolutionary Iran. A regular visitor to Iran and a witness to the 2009 Green Movement, his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, Al Jazeera, Tehran Bureau, and Salon.
]]>Instead of highlighting the differences between some neocons and the Israeli right, Ross focuses [...]]]>
Instead of highlighting the differences between some neocons and the Israeli right, Ross focuses on the way neoconservatives try to have it both ways: promoting democracy (taking credit for Egypt as a after-effect of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq) and staunchly opposing figures like Mohammed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood. The contrast is between the “freedom crowd” and the “Islamophobes.”
Ross:
What accounts for this divide in neoconservative discourse? Nuances abound to be sure. For instance, while the case of Leon Wieseltier seems to be a horrified response to the fear that the Egyptian revolution bodes ill for Israel, a deeper pathology seems to be at work with the doctrinaire neoconservatives clustered around Commentary magazine. In a curious legacy of neoconservatism’s roots in Trotskyism, the neocon core seems to be characterized by a pathological insistence upon its internationalism, which leads them to their insistence that they are in fact witnessing the birth of a global democratic revolution. This also, it should be noted, seems to supersede any petty scores to be settled in defense of the Bush administration. Dana Perino amply covered that ground on Fox News, even to the point of embracing the Muslim Brotherhood.
On the other hand, the Anti-Islamist Scare that has gained full steam since the election of Obama appears to be a completely distinct phenomenon from historic neoconservatism, notwithstanding how opportunistically it has been embraced by figures like Bill Kristol and the Liz Cheney-led Keep America Safe. It is a phenomenon straight from the pages of Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style In American Politics. Whereas Hofstadter famously pointed to projection in the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan who “donned priestly vestments and constructed an elaborate hierarchy and ritual,” the backlash against the so-called Ground Zero Mosque—with its frank talk of “sacred ground”—reflected the desire to construct an American holy of holies.
Examining this same divergence, Daniel Luban has a similar article up at IPS. He explores the evolution of neoconservatism on democracy promotion, which brings the current divide into focus and hints at some disingenuousness among the ‘pro-democracy’ crowd. (Elliott Abrams, Dan notes, supported undemocratic regimes in Latin America when the region was in his portfolio during the Reagan administration.)
Luban (with my links):
“The U.S. should make clear in an unambiguous way that a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt is a danger to American interests and could even lead to American intervention,” David Wurmser, former Vice President Dick Cheney‘s senior Middle East [adviser], told the “Forward”, the largest-circulation Jewish weekly, Thursday.
This ambivalence among neo-conservatives over Egypt may reflect a deeper ambivalence over democracy promotion. Both neo-conservatives and their critics often portray democracy promotion as the central tenet of the movement, but the historical record undercuts this portrayal.
The early tone of the movement regarding foreign policy was set by Jeane Kirkpatrick’s 1979 essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” which argued for supporting “friendly” authoritarian governments against their left-wing enemies. Kirkpatrick’s vision helped guide neo-conservative foreign policy throughout the 1980s, when neo-conservatives – notably including Elliott Abrams – helped prop up or defend military dictatorships throughout Latin America, and even apartheid South Africa, as Cold War allies against the Soviet Union.
While the movement became more explicitly committed to democracy promotion in recent decades, its democratisation efforts have unsurprisingly been far more focused on hostile, rather than friendly, regimes – left-wing governments during the Cold War; more recently, governments that are seen as antagonistic to either the U.S. or Israel.
When elections have brought enemies rather than allies into power – as occurred in 2006 when Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections – neo-conservatives have been among the first to call for punitive actions.
Thus, when John Bolton, the hawkish former U.S. ambassador to the UN, cited Jeane Kirkpatrick in a Thursday interview with Politico to argue that the U.S. should support Mubarak, he could stake a claim to being as much the legitimate heir of neo-conservatism as the anti-Mubarak neo-conservatives themselves.
I’m still figuring this all out for myself, but these two commentaries are certainly helpful. (I’m traveling next week, but hopefully will have time to blog some of my developing ideas.)
But I will note that on the point of Dan’s original post — the split between Israel and the neocons — I do view with skepticism some commentaries (most of which come from neocons) that tout the narrative of: ‘Look! Neocons are not in the thrall of the Likud.’ (As a rule, because of his history of dissembling, I take anything Abrams writes with a grain of salt.)
This line, from the horse’s mouth, is attacking a straw man. We neocon-watchers at this site, at least, have never said that U.S. neoconservatives take marching orders from Likud, but rather that neocons are closely aligned with the rightist Israeli party.
Furthermore, if a Democrat criticizes something done by the Democratic Party (as happens quite regularly), it would be specious to say, ‘Look! She is not a Democrat at all!’
Likewise, I don’t think that neocons are a monolith, and this split between them reveals so much because it is public, whereas neocons, a politically adept group, have usually displayed great messaging discipline.
Nonetheless, the neoconservative disagreements on this issue (both among themselves and with Likud) seem to show that the upheaval in Egypt is coming home to the U.S. discourse on Middle East policy. Here’s hoping the shift is productive.
]]>I just attended the Grassroots Women’s International Academy on Home Based Care in Johannesburg, South Africa.
It was a mixed bag of fun meeting women from all walks and works of life from Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zambia, [...]]]>
I just attended the Grassroots Women’s International Academy on Home Based Care in Johannesburg, South Africa.
It was a mixed bag of fun meeting women from all walks and works of life from Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zambia, Ghana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
Caregiving in Mozambique. Photo: Janine Morna
The Huairou Commission and the Land Access Movement of South Africa brought us together to share experiences of home-based care.
It is fascinating how in Malawi the care givers alliance has moved forward. Victoria Kalomba, of the Malawi Group of Women Living with HIV and AIDS told us that the ministry of health and social development had spearheaded a campaign to raise awareness about people infected and affected by HIV.
The process had the ministry informing the support groups of individuals who had tested positive after visiting clinics so they could be reached and helped.
I am worried about this way of outing positive people even in the aim of mobilizing support groups. I feel that it is a human right violation to have to give information of someone’s HIV status.
Victoria was less worried. She said that the government has passed a policy that makes any name calling of people living with HIV a criminal offence. Okay.
Yet there is always stigma, just like one hears sexist and racist comments daily. Just because it is punishable has not stopped people from abusing or victimizing others. So I am wary of this and rather uncomfortable.
Next move
For caregivers, the issues are:
· remuneration,
· training and recognition of care givers as professionals,
· logistic and material support,
· psycho-social support to care givers and
· gender equality, and encouraging men to participate in care giving
Our next move is to lobby governments to recognize care work as a profession.
Carers ease the burden of disease. Photo: M. Sayagues
My sense is that there is a need for an alliance to assist in forming one body to represent caregivers. Most women caregivers said they felt disrespected, as they are not recognised for all their care work in health. No thanks are coming their way. They are very sore and disheartened at this lack of recognition. To move forwards, they require a voice to represent them.
One caregiver from Ethiopia said: “I will be taking so much home! I have realised that there are other countries struggling with lack of government support in the area of care work. We hope to continue to be in touch, especially on the issue of the alliance”.
To be able to laugh, as we share these issues, gives one hope. It is a strategy that I feel will take these unsung heroes to greater heights and at some point their voices will be heard.
As we said farewell, I felt a strong bond of sharing experiences and a need to continue the network.
I am sure I will meet most of these passionate women at this week’s SADC Heads of State Summit in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where today GEMSA is launching its report “Making Care Work Count – A Policy Analysis.”
The study covers Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
GEMSA will strategize with civil society partners to lobby around care work in these countries.
]]>“It smells strongly of wine gone vinegary but it works ,” he says.
Last year, [...]]]>
“It smells strongly of wine gone vinegary but it works ,” he says.
The forest is their pharmacy. Photo: M. Sayagues
Last year, when he was scratching madly with chickenpox, his granny’s ointment of coconut oil and leaves relieved the itchiness.
When his friend Geane Castro feels a cold coming, his grandmother makes him a hot bath with water infused with leaves and bark, then a special tea with plants she gathers in the forest. Presto, he recovers.
I meet them at Teia D’Arte, an art gallery in Sao Tome, the capital of the tiny two-island nation of Sao Tome and Principe, off the coast of Gabon.
With a rich biodiversity of 600 botanical species and 132 endemic plants, the islands’ rainforest is a well-stocked pharmacy for herbalists.
Their knowledge is captured in a decade-long ethno-pharmacological study published last year. Researchers worked with 40 traditional healers, midwives and grandmothers to identify and classify 325 medicinal plants, note 1,000 recipes and test 25 plants in the lab. Many look promising for developing new medicines.
Generations of expertise
Across Africa, healers hold an impressive knowledge of medicinal plants, accumulated through generations and transmitted through years of apprenticeship.
The new generation of healers blends tradition with modernity. They throw the bones, brew herbal medicines, book patients by cellphone and negotiate the complexities of modern life. They follow tradition and break away from it.
Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde is a young Zulu sangoma – the word for traditional healer in South Africa. 
She works in Soweto, married her partner in June, and wrote a book about her life in an homophobic society: Black Bull, Ancestors and Me: My Life as a Lesbian Sangoma.
Today, 31 August, is the African Traditional Medicine Day, established in 2001 by the World Health Organisation.
Repressed by colonial authorities, condemned as witchcraft by churches, spurned by post-colonial Marxist governments, African traditional medicine is regaining prestige.
The WHO describes it as “heritage, knowledge and healing that is affordable, accessible, and culturally acceptable”.
For a majority of Africans, especially rural, traditional medicine is the main professional health care, sometimes the only one available,or the cheapest and closest. In the cities, many people will consult both a bio-medical doctor and a traditional healer.
In Africa, to cure is to restore human vitality and harmony with the universe. Body and soul are not separate entities; they are linked to nature, spirits and other people.
The timeless wisdom of healers is an essential part of African health. “It would be sad to lose this knowledge,” says Sousa.
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