"We sat there half the day asking questions, but they were unable to tell where AIDS comes from...". Local interpretations of AIDS in Botswana

Georgia A. Rakelmann

Africa Spectrum, 2001, vol. 36, issue 1, 35-52

Abstract: Nearly one third of the sexually active population of Botswana is infected with HIV. This wave of infection follows a push towards modernisation in the 1990s which fundamentally changed private circumstances and lifestyles. Botswana has a public health system whose capabilities also include the distribution of antiretroviral remedies. Apart from a well-consolidated health and care system, the AIDS epidemic is also met with education and information campaigns whose model is the modern, educated individual with a self-designed future. During the course of their illness, however, the infected not only visit the institutions of modern biomedicine, but also healing churches and traditional healers whose therapies, along with natural healing methods, include cleansing rituals and community generating ceremonies. At the moment, "Tswanification" of the delocalised AIDS disease, furnished with local images and imaginations, is still in its beginning stages. Traditional medicine hardly shares its description of AIDS with biomedicine; the discourses about the disease stand side by side with little or no connection. The rapid enlargement of the modern medical system has literally left traditional medicine behind and (despite its popularity with the diseased) has banished it to the pre-modern era. However, as the argument makes clear, the success of AIDS-campaigns also depends on the respect and the readiness to communicate with the independent local interpretations of illness and healing.

Date: 2001
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