MY POINT OF VIEW ON CIRCUMCISION AND HIV/AID / First it was a woman called Yoanina Nanyonga who, in 1991, sent thousands flocking to Sembabule District, somewhere in mid-western Uganda, and made them eat soil, claiming it could cure HIV/Aids. Folks ate soil with more passion than Yankees eat burgers, or Germans drink beer…or Russians sip vodka. Lord knows it certainly didn’t work, but it showed how desperate Ugandans were to get even with the Aids pandemic. When the Anti-Retroviral (ARV) therapy was introduced a few years ago, we witnessed a return to sanity for the most part until in the last couple of years when two things hit town: First we had some people in Yumbe District, West Nile, injecting themselves with the blood of a reptile, locally called Lepe – a white-throated monitor lizard whose biological name is Varanus albigularis albigularis – believing they’d get cured of Aids. Mercy me! Anyway, many of these were little people, wearing I’ve-been-through-hell kind of faces, cocooned in a little world of their own where poverty, disease and death are a way of life. You can’t blame them too much. But then came the current craze; this time all the way from the big timers in the United Nations and the powers that be by whatever name called, perpetual peddlers of hope both true and false, and in the habit of disembarking from planes at Third World airports, carrying a basket labelled “solutions for the world”. This time round, the basket had male circumcision as the new panacea for Aids. Chop, slice or remove the foreskin somehow, they said; and you’ll be good to go. That is why some countries – Uganda inclusive - have invested big money in mass male circumcision drives, allegedly to protect Africans from Aids. Nobody has asked why the Americans and Europeans are not circumcising at all. You’d think only the Africans are capable of catching Aids. Writing in this column some weeks ago, I explained that the circumcision lie is only a ploy for big – and mean - shots in high places to eat money. And by inference also a ploy to ensure that our young people fool around and die like flies. I have since received a plethora of responses from all over the world. I am glad that there are many people out there who agree that Africans must come out to unmask the circumcision lie and protect our people from dying foolishly. Those of us who were here when Aids showed up and have buried countless numbers of friends and family courtesy of Aids, can tell you that the circumcision lie is one sad phenomenon. Apart from the big monies being eaten freely by bureaucrats in the United Nations, government and civil society organisations, the keen eye will have noticed by now that other monies are being enjoyed by fast-moving entrepreneurs around Uganda, with many places now advertising that they perform circumcision…for a fee of course. And with Uganda’s crazy birthrates that makes rabbits chirp in envious protest, there is plenty of money being collected in circumcision fees. African society must be galvanised around a new cause: mitigating the damage caused by the circumcision lie. We need more voices to come out and sing a different song, telling people that Aids does kill and nobody should tell you that just because you are circumcised, you will fool around and not pay the price. People must be told that there is no need to lose your precious foreskin because you will die anyway. And Africans must be taught that we need to crosscheck every so-called solution that our friends in the West prescribe, not swallow it wholesale. The fly that has nobody to advise it follows the corpse to the grave.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 18:43:46 +0000
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