A challenge to change.

African Women, HIV/AIDS and Faith Communities Isabel Apawo Phiri (ed) (Cluster Publications, 2003, 290pp) 187 505 3425, SAR90

The Church in an HIV+ World: A Practical Handbook Daniela Gennrich (ed) (Cluster Publications, 2004, 190pp) 0 620 31611 X, SAR40

Responsibility in a Time of AIDS: A Pastoral Response by Catholic Theologians and AIDS Activists in Southern Africa Stuart C. Bate OMI (ed) (Catholic Theological Society of South Africa, 2003, 188pp) 0 620 30482 0, SAR70

In the winter of 2004, I spent three months in Durban, South Africa. The South African Catholic activist Dina Cormick took me to a meeting in March of the Concerned Circle of African Women Theologians where I had the pleasure of meeting Isabel Phiri, editor of the admirable collection of essays on Africa, Women, HIV/AIDS and Faith Communities. I also heard Fulata Moyo of Malawi describe the book she is working on, Red Beads, White Beads. When I heard the title, I thought that it might be about the rosary. How naive I was. Women theologians in Africa have far more weighty concerns on their minds. Moyo's work is a theological investigation into the vulnerability of women in Botswana to AIDS.

Traditional African culture forbids married women to discuss sex with their husbands. But there is a taboo against sex during menstruation. At the onset of their period, women silently hang out a set of red heads in the bedroom so the husband will not demand his sexual rights. White beads, signaling the end of bleeding, are hung out when they are sexually available again. A woman cannot request that her husband use a condom even though she knows that during her time of menstruation, he will have had unprotected intercourse with other women. But since the onset of the AIDS crisis, married women have started to leave the red beads hanging for several consecutive weeks. As a result, some conversations begin that can lead to awareness about AIDS prevention and the dangers of promiscuity.

I recalled this hermeneutic of the red beads as I was reading essays by other women theologians in Phiri's collection. The voices of African women theologians resonate from the pages of the text. Unlike the one-size fits all "Wal-Mart theology" promulgated from the desks of church CEOS in Rome, the work of these women theologians and their exegesis of scriptural texts is rooted in the flesh and blood, sweat and tears of Africa. They speak to Africa's soul.

WOMEN ARE AT THE CENTER OF the storm of the HIV pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Three-quarters of all 15- to 24-year-olds living with AIDS are female. Teenage girls are acquiring the virus at a younger age and from older men. As Phiri states in her introduction, increased violence against women has increased the vulnerability of ever-younger women. "Babies and older girls are raped at home ... outside the home their peers, teachers, neighbors, church leaders and strangers rape them ... rape and other forms of sexual torture are now regularly used as strategies of war." (p. 15)

The AIDS pandemic is a moment of crisis and challenge for faith communities in Africa. Phiri makes no bones about the contours of this challenge as it plays out within the churches: "The church is being called to account for its actions towards women and children and church doctrines and teachings on the humanity of women are being questioned." (p. 16)

This questioning is elaborated in other chapters. These women do not mince their words. "The Mother's Cow: A Study of Old Testament References to Virginity in the Context of HIV/AIDS in South Africa" by Patricia Frances Bruce and "Talitha Cum! Calling the Girl Child to Life in the HIV/AIDS and Globalization Era" by Musa Dube present HIV/AIDS in Africa within the wider context of global structures of inequity.

The impact of globalization has increased the vulnerability of women to AIDS through the privatization of public health services, the trade in women as sex workers and the mobility of male labor and consequent increase in casual unprotected sex. African women who do the bulk of local farming, and who are already decimated by sickness, are being cut off from world markets and are sinking deeper into poverty. Orphan girls drop out of school early to care for ailing parents and are then left in charge of households. They often fall back on giving sexual favors in exchange for food until they themselves fall sick and die.

The challenge of this desperate situation is addressed, though less effectively, in another volume of theological essays, Responsibility in a Time of AIDS, a collection of presentations at a conference held at St. Augustine's Catholic College of South Africa in 2002. I found this book less engaging because the issues are dealt with in a more abstract, cerebral way, perhaps because the burden of institutional Catholic dogma weighs more heavily on the presenters, the majority of whom are Catholic priests or religious.

There is, nonetheless, a refreshing candor that includes the insistence on the part of several authors that the Catholic response to AIDS must move beyond the condom issue. Author Jennifer Slater insists that AIDS is a justice issue "that concerns the social relationships that help to spread and fail to alleviate AIDS." (p. 26) The ABC--Abstain, Be Faithful, Use a Condom--is not a feasible option for the majority of African women and girls because culturally ascribed gender roles do not permit them to refuse sex or insist on safe sex.

Alison Munro OP cites a more comprehensive ABCD code initiated by the Association of African Catholic Tertiary students and approved by the South African bishops' conference: "Abstain from crime, corruption, substance abuse, littering, vandalism and irresponsible sexual behavior. Be faithful to yourself, your body, your friends and your community. Change your lifestyle if needs be by making conscious choices, developing your conscience, living your African culture, experiencing a culture of love, or you could be in Danger of not living life to the fullest, of becoming a criminal or a drug addict, spoiling the environment or contracting HIV/AIDS." (p. 45)

THE MOST INTERESTING PAPER IN this volume is that of Virus Sipho Ncube whose research is based in northern KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Ncube examines in detail the challenges and possibilities of African culture. An individual is always viewed as embedded within his or her wider relationships with both the living and the dead. Ancestors play a huge role in African family culture. Traditional African cultures often view the onset of HIV as a result of ancestral wrath. And rather than examine the systemic causes of AIDS, some family members prefer to assign blame to the victims, to the work of the devil, to angry ancestors, to witchcraft, to an American plot to destroy Africa, to the general promiscuity of blacks and even to a punitive God. All of this can delay the appropriate diagnosis of the disease and contributes to its virulence. But, on the other hand, the extended family tradition and the African ethic of Ubuntu--I am a person only through other persons--can provide support and healing for victims and their families within the wider community and especially the family of the church.

The third book, The Church in an HIV World, is a comprehensive, readable and non-judgmental handbook that deals with the issues in a way that is accessible to a wide audience. This welcome addition to African-centered literature on AIDS grew out of the ecumenical South African Christian Leadership Assembly of 2003. The contributors adopt a clearly proactive stance that begins with the statement that "The Body of Christ has HIV." In the third chapter entitled "What is God Saying to us as Christians through the HIV/AIDS epidemic," there is a key question: "How is it that we as a society, of which we Christians are an active part, have let things get this far?" (p. 42) Stories from the ministry of Jesus are cited in order to show that the churches are called to practice compassion and not condemnation. There is also detailed advice on how to include AIDS education in every aspect of church life. The book is attractively presented with extensive illustrations that enliven the text. I would highly recommend it to anyone engaged in education or ministry in a church setting.

Together, these three books address the heart of the HIV/AIDS challenge from different perspectives, but all with Africa and its particular history of colonialism, Christian missionizing, cultural traditions, economic isolation and gender relationships as the fulcrum of both challenge and change. Women have a central role to play in generating an authentic African theology. Centuries ago, the African theology of St. Augustine of Hippo played a critical role in the development of church doctrine on sexuality. One can only hope that the Vatican and other church leaders will be open to another inculturation from contemporary African theologians, and be converted to a more authentic practice of Christianity in the process.

JOANNA MANNING, a Catholic theologian, feminist, social activist and former nun is the author of Is the Pope Catholic? A Woman Confronts Her Church, (Malcolm Lester Books, 1999) and Take Back the Truth: Confronting Papal Power and the Religious Right (Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002).