Africa’s Silent Shame

The death notice arrived in the form of a blood test from an AIDS clinic. Ennie cried her heart out, but when the tears would come no more, she picked up the telephone.

“I was raped by my own dad when I was 16,” Ennie said the morning after learning she was infected with the virus that causes AIDS. Her last name is not being disclosed to protect her privacy. “The love I had for him failed after that, and I couldn’t stand seeing him. But I called him yesterday. He is very sick and couldn’t talk much. He said, ‘Sorry if I was the one.’ ”

Her father is bedridden and failing. Her mother died in April. She knows that she will be next.

An alarming growth in rapes of children, often by relatives who believe that sex with a young virgin brings mystical powers or can even cure AIDS, is devastating families across much of Africa by spreading the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, to otherwise sexually inactive girls.

Police and court officials, social workers and women’s rights activists say sexual violence against children is becoming a significant--although mostly unspoken--contributor to the disease among the youngest generation of this AIDS-stricken continent, where new data show overall infection rates skyrocketing in the last few years.

“It is hard to find a virgin of 16 nowadays, so men are turning to babies under 10,” said Mamelato Leopeng, an AIDS counselor at the Esselen Street Health Center in Johannesburg in neighboring South Africa. “They are looking for clean blood. It is all based on ignorance and a lack of education.”

Confronting sexual issues is so taboo in most African cultures that rapists are frequently let off the hook--and, some say, implicitly encouraged--because few families will endure the public shame of acknowledging the abuse, even when they suspect HIV may have been transmitted.

Some Healers Prescribe Pedophilia as Cure-All

Unscrupulous practitioners of traditional herbal and spiritual medicine, which is hugely popular across Africa, are fueling the problem by prescribing pedophilia as a remedy for everything from money woes to AIDS. In some instances, poor relatives quietly tolerate the crime, allowing a daughter to go with an older man for much-needed cash or as traditional compensation for a family debt or ancestral transgression. Others demand payment from the rapist and then remain silent.

“These problems with rape and AIDS are new, but they come from a familiar source: The girl child has no value in African society; she is a thing to be used to make men’s lives better,” said Zorodzai Machekanyanga of the Women and AIDS Support Network, a counseling group for abused girls and women in remote regions of Zimbabwe.

Although the increased infection among raped girls is too recent to be reflected in government health statistics--AIDS can take years to manifest itself, and large numbers of abused children never seek professional attention--some unofficial indicators already are illustrating the problem.

Health officials in South Africa say adolescent girls are twice as likely to become infected with HIV as boys, a reflection of their increased sexual activity, often unwilling, with older men. At her Johannesburg clinic, Leopeng said, about one-third of the HIV-infected men she encounters have bought into the belief that sex with a virgin will cure them, and they are further convinced that the needed “dose of purity” is rendered ineffective with a condom.

“That’s what they talk about in the shebeens in the squatter camps,” Leopeng said, referring to taverns in the country’s impoverished informal settlements where she does much of her work. “If you’re a guy with no education or job and no money to see a proper doctor, your friend’s advice to rape a girl sounds all right.”

A recent U.N. report says that about one-fifth of female AIDS cases in Zimbabwe involve girls in their teens or younger, while the equivalent number among males is one-seventh. Imbalances in infection rates among girls and boys exist in other African countries as well, in large part because of child prostitution but also, medical workers suspect, because of sexual abuse at home.

Veil of Secrecy Hides Abuse

The veil of secrecy surrounding child abuse in Africa prevents most girls from even realizing they are infected until they become deathly ill, said Dr. Mark Ottenweller, Africa director for Hope Worldwide. The charitable wing of the International Church of Christ runs AIDS programs in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa, he said.

“We see girls as young as 8 or 9 with HIV,” Ottenweller said. “We see a lot of abuse in the rougher areas of South Africa where it is so violent. But also in the rest of Africa.”

In Zambia, research conducted jointly by the government and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s organization, shows that the rate of HIV infection among teenage girls is five to seven times higher than among boys of the same age. Doreen Mulenga, a health officer for UNICEF in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, said the biggest contributor to the difference is “cross-generation infection”--older men passing the virus to young girls.

Because so few people will consent to an HIV test, she said, the men usually don’t know they are infecting the girls, although their main motivation in seeking a young partner is the belief that sex will be safer. The same reluctance to be tested, by both victim and perpetrator, also ensures that AIDS is virtually never raised as an issue in rape trials, she said.

Research conducted in the early 1990s in Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi also has pointed to higher infection rates among young girls and men older than 30. At that time, the phenomenon was largely attributed to the so-called sugar-daddy syndrome, in which teenage girls pursue relationships with well-to-do men to escape poverty.

“It is a very difficult area to address,” said Joseph Foumbi, an official with UNICEF. “In some places, it could be a sugar daddy; in some places, coercive sex. There is a cultural component that is different across Africa.”

Even with increased awareness of infection by sexual abuse, the overwhelming majority of the nearly 1 million African children with AIDS remains toddlers who were infected by their mothers prenatally or during breast-feeding. But clinics and hospitals from Kenya to South Africa are reporting small but increasing numbers of HIV-infected children too old to have been carrying the deadly virus since birth.

“The problem is definitely there, and it is staring us in the face,” said Dr. Tiziana Aduc, a specialist in child abuse at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa, the largest medical center in sub-Saharan Africa. “But, unfortunately, we have no way of tracing it. We are not actually checking for HIV when they are coming in. . . . And they often don’t go for the testing when they are referred to a clinic.”

Lucky Few Picked to Receive Drugs

While rape and child abuse are already heinous, authorities say the AIDS epidemic is imposing death sentences on traumatized victims so young they would otherwise have no reason to fear the disease. Unlike in the United States and other developed countries, drugs that prolong the lives of people with AIDS are either unavailable or too costly for most people in Africa, and many of them are never diagnosed with the disease anyway. Even when drugs are available, it is often on an experimental basis only, leaving authorities and counseling groups with the “Sophie’s Choice” of determining who the lucky few will be.

During the first three months of this year, 5,214 South African girls under 18 were reported raped, keeping pace with last year’s record of 21,404. Reported rapes in Zimbabwe have increased 30% during the last five years, and more than half of the cases in 1997 involved children, a large number of them under 5.

“It sometimes seems that we do nothing but rape cases, and we see only the tip of the iceberg,” said Jacqueline Pratt, acting chief magistrate of the criminal courts in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. “We even have cases of children still in [diapers] being raped. It is society gone upside down.”

With about one in four adult males infected with HIV in some parts of Africa, authorities say the growing risk for girls is a matter of simple arithmetic. Moreover, a U.N. report last year cited sexual abuse in the home as a significant factor in encouraging children to run away and thereby be exposed to the commercial sex trade and even higher risks.

“Viewed in the light of the raging AIDS pandemic, it is shattering to imagine what devastation [child rape] is having on our adults of tomorrow,” Zimbabwe’s deputy police commissioner, Godwin Matanga, told a police seminar on sexual violence. “This is further compounded by some members of our society . . . who in a way encourage such satanic acts by dissuading the bringing of such cases to the attention of the authorities.”

Army Captain Rapes 4-Year-Old Neighbor

In a recent case here, a 31-year-old army captain infected with HIV was convicted of raping a 4-year-old neighbor; authorities have not revealed whether the girl has contracted the virus. In April, a 38-year-old Harare man, also HIV-positive, was accused of raping his 6-year-old daughter in the bathtub; the girl later tested positive for the disease, authorities said.

In an earlier trial, also in Zimbabwe, a rapist who described himself as “King AIDS” was sentenced to life in prison for knowingly infecting an 8-year-old.

“What the accused did confirms the worst fears many people have entertained of rape becoming the wicked weapon by which some of the men who are HIV-positive will condemn women to death,” Magistrate Luke Malaba said in convicting Mereke “King AIDS” Mhone, who pleaded for leniency because he has two wives and five children who depended on his financial support. “It is murderous for a man who knows he is HIV-positive to rape.”

Across Africa, the burden and guilt of sexually transmitted diseases traditionally fall upon women; in Shona, the language of most Zimbabweans, AIDS and other sexual infections are even known as chirwere chevakadzi--women’s diseases. Leopeng, the Johannesburg AIDS counselor, says the desire to “get back at women” is the most common reaction among men when they are first told they are HIV-positive.

In extreme instances, HIV-infected men have even targeted young girls as an act of vengeance. In a case reported by South African police in May, members of a gang of unemployed men in Soweto were allegedly raping schoolgirls, telling their victims that they were HIV-infected and didn’t want to die alone.

“It is all tied up in the belief among [many] African men that a man has to perform sexually until he is put down into his grave,” said Mtana Lewa of Kenya’s Community Based Development Agency, which conducts health education programs on the country’s impoverished Indian Ocean coast. “One of the best ways to prove [his virility] is to always get someone younger. It makes him feel better about himself.”

In an increasingly common tragedy, Ennie, who is now 19, said her father was instructed to rape her by a traditional healer, who promised that the assault would improve the family’s troubled businesses.

The healers, sometimes known pejoratively as witch doctors, use herbal and spiritual remedies--including claims of communications with ancestors--to cure physical, psychological and social ailments.

In large parts of Africa, traditional medicine is the primary--and often only--available treatment; an estimated 70% of Zimbabweans, for example, depend on it. Anecdotal evidence of abuse has become so widespread, however, that some legitimate practitioners are beginning to speak out about the dangers of rape-based remedies, particularly when it comes to AIDS.

Ennie said her father, a respected merchant in a small town about 150 miles from here, had the support of the entire extended family, even though the traditional remedy did nothing to improve sales at his chain of food shops and ruined her life.

“When I said I was going to the police, my relatives said it wasn’t worthwhile because he would go to jail, and since he is the breadwinner, all of us will starve to death,” she said during an interview at the Musasa Project, a nonprofit women’s support group in Harare where she has turned for help. “I waited two years, but I did go to the police. But by then it was too late. I waited too long. He was acquitted. They claimed it happened while he was having a bad dream.”

Traditional Healers Rarely Held Accountable

Although mainstream traditional healers, known as nyanga and sangoma, say they never recommend pedophilia to patients, they acknowledge that child rape is not an uncommon prescription in some parts of Africa for everything from boosting the fall harvest to ridding a family of evil spirits.

Healers are typically highly regarded community elders and are rarely prosecuted, even for blatant offenses. Victims are reluctant to question the advice, and when they do, they are afraid the healer will place a spell on them if they go to the police.

In an unusual rape trial last year, an elderly Zimbabwean farmer publicly accused the village nyanga of complicity in the rape of a 13-year-old girl, who was described as a close paternal relative. The farmer admitted to the crime but claimed he was instructed to commit it to improve his crop yield. Their courtroom exchange provided a rare public glimpse into the controversial practice.

“Do I yield so much from my fields that I would advise you to sleep with your own relative?” the healer challenged the farmer in court, according to a local media account. “You have cattle to cultivate the fields, and I don’t. In fact, I am poorer than you.”

The farmer replied: “If I have cattle and wealth, then why did you give me your herbs and advice to sleep with my own relative? Even businessmen consult healers. Do you mean people with cattle do not consult healers?”

“Just admit you lusted for your own relative,” said the healer, who was acquitted by the judge.

Frustrated by their inability to cure AIDS but seeing the disease everywhere around them, some unscrupulous traditional healers have resorted to desperate remedies that earn them large sums of money and at least make infected men “feel good,” according to fellow practitioners.

Most often, the healers seize on deeply rooted superstitions about the sexual power of young girls. And since many healers are paid only if the patient feels better--even temporarily--most men who have been instructed to have sex with young girls are good for their money.

“There are the same kind of quacks in any medical system,” said Dr. Neil Andersson, a South African who is schooled in both Western-style medicine and traditional African practices. “In terms of the sangoma, rape translates into cannibalism; you are consuming the spirit of another person, and in some societies that makes you stronger and more successful. But it also makes the overall society very sick.”

Group Tries to Provide AIDS Education

Gordon Chavunduka, who heads the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Assn., said the organization has been holding workshops throughout the country to keep its 50,000 members up to date on AIDS and to dispel myths about treatment. The organization also has printed a brochure that clearly states any prescription involving sex with a child is criminal and not within the scope of accepted traditional medicine.

CIET-Africa, a private research group led by Andersson that is studying sexual violence, is trying to do much the same thing in South Africa by reminding traditional healers that they have an obligation to protect the health of an entire community, not just a few individuals desperate to be cured. Andersson said his group is trying to build in financial rewards for responsible healers so they can better resist the temptation to “cannibalize” young girls for quick profit.

But Chavunduka said that traditional healers here--and across much of the continent--are confronted with the persistent belief among the general population that the only way to avoid AIDS is to have sex with young girls. It is the same notion worldwide that has led to a tremendous growth in the child sex trade.

“We are being told over and over again that men fear having sexual relations with any woman in this society and have decided it is safer with small children,” Chavunduka said. “It may not make sense, especially if the man is already infected, but that is what is happening.”

The belief is so widespread that many women with young daughters are reluctant to leave them alone with their fathers or, if they are single mothers, even to invite a boyfriend to spend the afternoon. The Women and AIDS Support Network holds mother-and-daughter workshops in rural Zimbabwe to help prevent abuse by male relatives and friends, something that is requiring an extraordinary social adjustment among families.

“We come from a culture that values the extended family, and suddenly you can’t trust your own brother with your daughter,” said Machekanyanga of the nonprofit counseling group.

Dressed in a colorful skirt and blouse and clutching her handbag tightly, Ennie, the teenage rape victim, said her experience has left her saddened and confused. She suspects that her mother died after contracting AIDS from her father, though they never actually talked about it. She knows her father has the disease and will soon die, but until her recent telephone call, they had never talked about it either.

She had an interview for a receptionist’s job that afternoon, but she was spending most of her time going over the events of the last few years in her mind. The rape. Her father smothering her screams. The shame. A suicide attempt. The family betrayal. Even a bribe--a new pair of sneakers--to make her more accepting.

“There are things in our culture that people choose to accept and not to accept,” she said in a hushed voice. “Rape is wrong. The best advice is to report it right away. That is the only way to protect people. Otherwise, the rapists will go on raping.”

And, she stopped short of saying, girls will go on dying.