The London School of Economics and Political Science “An Ethnographic Analysis of HIV/AIDS in the Venda Region of South Africa: Politics, Peer Education and Music.” Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD. in Social Anthropology Fraser George McNeill 1 UMI Number: U615649 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615649 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ntish Library of Political 3d Economy Sc ercg-. I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. This work is dedicated to my mum (Monica), dad (Les), and sister (Jennifer), without whom it simply would not have been possible. For your constant support, and great sense of humour, I am truly grateful. And In loving memory of Humbulani Nekavhambe, who was with me every step of the way, but never made it to see the final product. 3 i i \ 1 ' b 4 - U ABSTRACT This thesis explores the dynamics of HIV/AIDS in the Venda region of South Africa through an exploration of post-apartheid traditionalism and the anthropology of knowledge at the juncture of planned AIDS interventions. It argues that current policies of peer education act to reinforce the patriarchal Venda aetiology through which men and older women explain sexually transmitted infections in terms of blood related taboos and the build up of pollution. This has resulted in a situation where many Venda men are more concerned with who they sleep with, rather than how “safe” the encounter may be, and has reinforced or even given rise to widely held idea that condoms cause AIDS. By looking at AIDS education through the political economy of traditional leadership in the region, the thesis locates concepts of AIDS, musical performance, power, generational authority, death and secrecy in the context of a post-apartheid struggle for the consolidation of political power between the royal houses of Mphephu and Tshivhase. This has exacerbated historical tensions between the rival centres of power, and encouraged the implementation of policies through which the ANC doctrine of African renaissance has taken centre stage. It argues that, in this context, official attempts to increase the frequency of female initiation schools have bolstered the generational authority of older women and increased the extent to which HIV/AIDS is understood through the “folk model” of blood taboos and pollution. Although peer education creates a space in which younger women - mostly through the singing of songs - promote biomedical notions of sexual health and healing, this space should not be conceptualised simply as a site of “resistance” against these structural forms of authority. It also provides them with a basis for securing positions of employment in health-related government programmes, and as such acts as a potential vehicle for upward mobility among the rural poor. Their desire to change the social/sexual health environment is thus matched by their desire to transcend and move away from it, given that it constructs them as vectors of the virus. 4 EXTENDED (POST-VIVA) ABSTRACT This thesis seeks to find an explanation as to why, in the Venda region of South Africa, groups of young women engaged in processes of AIDS education have been socially constructed as vectors of the disease. It argues that current policies of peer education act to reinforce the patriarchal Venda aetiology through which men and older women explain sexually transmitted infections in terms of blood related taboos and the build up of pollution. This has resulted in a situation whereby many Venda men are more concerned with who they sleep with, rather than how “safe” the encounter may be, and has reinforced or even given rise to the widely held notion that condoms cause AIDS. The ethnographic data presented here draws largely on a range of processes that are designed to facilitate the transfer of different types of knowledge in attempts to secure productive and reproductive capacities to act on the world. They represent various dimensions of engagement with a perceived crisis of social reproduction in the postcolony and with diverse localised manifestations of the liberalisation of the post-Apartheid state and economy. At the intersection between this current neoliberal moment and the perception of life-crises, contestations over the (re)production of value have become fundamental to the lived experience of daily life in the former Bantustan. Recourse to power is central to this, and power’s ambivalent qualities ensure that the values produced here are at once achieved, contested and reinforced. The thesis testifies to this, drawing out localised dynamics of the post-apartheid moment through a variety of ethnographic encounters. These reveal the micro-politics of individuals and groups, engaged in attempts to create and recreate connections with seemingly contradictory - but nonetheless essential - forms of power. In this vein, King Kennedy Tshivhase’s decision to promote “tradition” in the battle for paramountcy against his historical rival - through a dominant discourse in which state sovereignty trumps traditional authority - has seen chiefly legitimacy tested through the concurrent scrutiny of the state, the kingship and the citizenry. As a direct result of this “traditionalism”, further contestations in value - to be found beneath the realm of national political influence - have erupted between ancestral and bio-scientific forms of knowing about, and dealing with, sexually transmitted infections such as HIV that lurk within polluted bodies; given life 5 by “dirty blood”. The thesis demonstrates the importance of ethnographic approaches to patterns of speaking - and not speaking - about such taboo subjects, and builds a model for understanding the current failure of AIDS education projects through the analysis of stigma and secrecy in which avoidance of open conversation about AIDS must be seen in terms of “degrees of separation” that create distance between the speaker and immanent or actual death. Whilst current approaches to AIDS stigma emphasise the ways in which stigmatisation reproduces unequal power relations, the current study points towards the inherent ambivalence of AIDS stigma, even its potentially beneficial qualities for those engaged in AIDS education - and who are not necessarily HIV positive. The thesis exposes the perceived crisis of social reproduction, in this context, as a dualistic process hinging, on the one hand, on the desire for continuity in social, political and economic process, with the urgently felt need, on the other, to secure healthy physical, sexual, intimate relations. Moreover, this perceived crisis is being played out in a moment of emergency: a breach of normative relations in which sex and death have recently become inseparable and neoliberal policies constitute a challenge to securing a stable future; stripping men of their socially recognised recourse to masculinity through massive reductions in the extent of migrant labour whilst removing remittances from the household economies that were once managed by “stay at home” wives. In this context, extensive state welfare competes with an often violent criminality, whilst the lucky few conduct opulent lifestyles, made all the more envious for their public displays of capitalist success. The ethnography here, however, points to ways in which such a crisis is not necessarily experienced as incommensurable contradiction between diffuse poles of power or incompatible understandings of daily existence, but can appear in the guise of - or can be converted into - opportunity. Through initiatives that seek to seize a kernel of control over - and take advantage o f-th e neoliberal moment among the rural poor, material and symbolic entrepreneurial activities have become pervasive. Indeed, in the absence of significant or realistic structural frameworks through which to achieve legitimate economic viability in the post-apartheid era, the rural poor have been left with little option but to engage in diffuse forms of opportunist activity, through which they may inadvertently reinforce the perception of crisis. 6 The thesis validates such an assertion through recourse to various ethnographic accounts - all of which are intrinsically connected, but which also represent separate engagements with the processes and pressures of this neoliberal moment in the course of South Africa’s “development”. Thus, King Tshivhase’s “traditionalism” - whilst of its self representative of the royal polities’ strategy for the consolidation of “traditional” authority - has given rise to numerous “community-led” projects in which rationalised and commoditised versions of female initiation are invoked by groups of women in a quest to rediscover their ability to act meaningfully on the world, and to earn a living simultaneously by selling their knowledge of tradition. Through moral panics, poison scares are blamed on inventive - if immoral - individuals who convert tea-estate fertilizer and body parts into deadly toxin in exchange for unknown