- The term "quack doctor" takes on a whole new
meaning when you consider the situation in Southern Africa. There are more
than 400 tribal groupings in South Africa. All of them come from a tradition
in which ancestor worship is the norm and evil spirits cause misfortunes
and disease.
-
- According to this belief system, there are only three
reasons for something bad happening to you:
-
- 1. Someone has bewitched me and caused this to happen
to me
- 2. The ancestral spirits are angry with me
- 3. Evil spirits are haunting me and making me sick
-
- Someone who has grown up with this belief system will
not embrace such notions as "human immunodeficiency virus." Rather,
they will tend to believe: "I have been poisoned. Witchcraft medicine
was mixed into my food and that is why I have contracted the flat tire
disease (AIDS)."
-
- It is the norm for people who live with these beliefs
to take revenge for the actions of the person whom they believe poisoned
them. Sometimes it means eliminating the people whom they are convinced
did harm to them.
-
- Not surprisingly, there are 200,000 traditional healers
who carry out more than 80 percent of the country's medical consultations.
"Traditional healer" is one of those marvelous politically correct
descriptions that Americans are worn away like a collective pumice stone
to accept despite the fact that the collective consciousness knows what
a nonsense it is. These days, instead of emerging from a mud hut to toss
the bones, the sangoma or traditional healer is likely to have a suite
next to your nice Dr. Stott.
-
- Western medical practitioners in South Africa are finding
it increasingly difficult to bridge the chasm between Western science and
indigenous voodoo.
-
- Although mainstream traditional healers (nyangas and
sangomas) say they don't recommend rape, it is not an uncommon prescription
in Africa for everything from boosting a business to exorcising the evil
spirit in your mother-in-law. Yet these "traditional healers"
are rarely prosecuted. Why, the victim or victim's family wouldn't dare
go to the authorities, lest the traditional healers casts a spell on them!
-
- In a country ravaged by AIDS, the number of child rapes
grows like Hydra's heads. In a story written this week by Afrikaner activist
Fred Rundle, it is claimed that there are 961 child rapes a day in South
Africa. In the small town of Theunnissen (population 40,000) in the Orange
Free State, there are six children raped every week. Says Rundle, "It
must be clear that all the rapes are committed by blacks."
-
- According to Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala, an anthropology
lecturer at the University of Durban Westville, as the deadly virus tightens
its stranglehold on South Africa, the myth that sex with a virgin will
cure AIDS is become standard received wisdom. This could certainly account
for the horrific rape statistics that emerge from that troubled land. Justice
officials and AIDS workers say that in KwaZuluNatal alone at least five
rapes cases involving girls under eight are being dealt with daily in every
magistrates court in the province.
-
- There are similarities between the way in which sexually
transmitted diseases were dealt with in Europe in the 19th century and
modern day "treatments" prescribed by some "traditional"
healers. In the 19th century, it was widely believed that sex with a child
would provide a cure for syphilis. Quack doctors kept brothels in Liverpool
in the United Kingdom for this purpose. But as a noted British journalist
pointed out, "This is the 21st century and not the 19th. What the
ANC's Marxist rule has done in effect is drag the country back two centuries.
Except few people dare to say so for fear of being seen to be 'racist.'"
-
- AIDS researchers in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Nigeria confirm
that the myth also exists in these countries where the rate of child rape
is also high.
-
- Black men believe that raping a child will cleanse them
of AIDS and also acts as a preventive measure to avoid contracting the
HIV/AIDS virus from older women.
-
- A 23-year-old black respondent told an AIDS worker: "Everybody
over 12 years old in the township might already have the virus, so its
better if you go for the 6- or 8-year- olds. ..."
-
- Another 20 year-old added: "If I have HIV, I can
just go out and spread it to 100 other people so we can all go together.
Why should they be left behind having fun if I must die?"
-
- The overwhelming silence over AIDS and the lack of real
discussion about sexuality among Africans is where the real problem lies.
-
- "People back off the issue. It has become a taboo
within the AIDS taboo," says Jan Lamprecht, author of "Government
by Deception."
-
- Stephanie Shutte, a counselor for Childline in the Western
Cape thinks the increase in child rape is directly related to the way HIV
and AIDS is understood in the community. (The community is another PC word.
It actually means "the herd of sheep.") The belief is that the
cleanliness and pureness of the child will strip the virus away. Both girls
and boys are being raped because of this belief. A dose of purity is rendered
ineffective with a condom.
-
- While Americans continue to export cargo-loads of condoms
to the continent, they remain blithely ignorant of the true uses to which
the condoms are put. The current favorite use is to put jelly in the condom
and throw it at a car windshield. When the driver stops and attempts to
clean it off, he will be attacked while the other hijacker speeds off in
his car.
-
- Rape perpetrators are not often arrested and brought
before the court. In the rare cases that they are, they seldom acknowledge
the offense, so it is difficult to know the motivation that lies behind
the crime. Sometimes the motivation is a complex mix: "I'm HIV positive
and angry, I want to take revenge and infect as many people as possible,
but raping a baby will cure me. ..."
-
- In a country ravaged with disease, there is deep irony
in the fact that the country's health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang,
is up for a prestigious award from the World Health Organization.
-
- Just as Hillary Clinton's vision for health care promised
to be all encompassing, so does Tshabala-Msimang's politically correct
and terrifyingly asinine vision threaten the populace. Not long ago, South
Africa was shocked when a 2-year-old boy was discovered near Soweto. His
thumbs had been cut off and there had been an attempt to gouge out his
eyes. It is a known fact that muti (the "medicine" used by traditional
healers) is considered more powerful if the innocent victim is still alive
when the parts are removed.
-
- It was also reported that a man had slaughtered his 6-year-old
like an animal (at his home in Diepkloof). He emasculated him, split open
his chest, removed his heart and cooked and ate it. The dead child's genitals
were in his pocket when he was arrested. According to Johannesburg's muti-king,
Dr Kessavan Naidoo, "Thumbs are used as medicine to call up ancestors,
while human eyes are gouged out and ground into a paste which users apply
to their foreheads in the hopes of obtaining 'third eye vision' enabling
them to see the spirit world."
-
- In the new South Africa, these "traditional healers,"
who throw the bones and prescribe what you have read above have been co-opted
into the South African Department of Health.
-
- They are embraced in the same way as practitioners who
hang their certificates from Edinburgh University on the wall and carry
out complicated brain surgery. They consult alongside specialists in state-controlled
health facilities.
-
- In the country where the world's first heart transplant
operation took place, primary health care has become primitive health care.
Yet no one will say, "The emperor isn't wearing any clothes."
-
- Such is the madness that exists in South Africa today.
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- <mailto:auntma@juno.com>Jani Allan is a British-born
journalist and talk-show host. She spent many years in South Africa.
-
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