Anita Isaacs: starting life anew with HIV and Aids.

Destroying the stigma and silence that surrounds HIV and Aids is an important part of winning the fight against the disease. Going public with her HIV status and giving others the courage to speak out did not come easy for Anita Ndalulilua liyambo-Isaacs, but throughout her extraordinary life, she has never been one to give up.

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Drawing on the strength of her past, Anita advocates for women's rights and for people living with HIV and Aids, and works tirelessly to fight the social stigmas that trap us in violence and illness.

Growing up between south and north

Born in Luderitz in December 1959, Anita's early life was split between the south and the north. Her father, a contract labourer, brought his wife south from Ovamboland, but after his death in 1963, her mother had to return to the north with their five children, as she had no independent right of residence in Luderitz under apartheid rule. Anita spent her primary school years shuffled between Luderitz and Ovamboland, but eventually stayed in the north in order to help her mother.

Joining the liberation army

During her secondary school years, Anita Isaacs experienced the brutality of the colonial forces first hand. At Oshakati Senior Secondary School, the students were regularly harassed by soldiers, who often surrounded the girls' hostel in the middle of the night. Instead of accepting the injustices of South African apartheid rule, Anita, along with four other young women, decided to go into exile.

On 23 March 1978, just eighteen years old, she crossed the border at Ruacana to join the liberation movement Swapo in Angola. She received military training, and after the attack on the Swapo camp at Cassinga two months later, she was sent to Lubango to guard the camp where the survivors of the massacre were taken.

Further military training followed at the Tobias Hainyeko Training Centre, where Anita was made political commissar for a company of 250 soldiers, whom she mobilised and motivated into action.

Studies in Cuba and Dar Es Salaam 

In 1979, she was sent to Cuba to study politics. Just twenty years old, and the only woman among eighteen men, Anita went to learn all that she could in one year. When she returned to Angola in 1980, she was pregnant with her first child. She worked in Kwanza Sul, and later Dalatando as a political instructor, helping to train expectant mothers and women with small children, before they were sent to other countries to study or to the border to fight.

Two years later, Anita Isaacs was transferred to the Swapo headquarters in Lubango to serve as Administrative Officer for the Department of Political Mobilisation and Orientation. After further study in Dar Es Salam, this time with a focus on financial management for development, she returned to Angola in 1989 and became the Assistant Coordinator for the Repatriation Programme as Namibia's independence drew closer. Throughout her military career, Anita held power in a world traditionally dominated by men.

Returning home to a new struggle

Returning from exile, she continued with the repatriation programme and then worked on national census surveys with the Central Statistics Office for a number of years, and conducted business training courses for the Rossing Foundation. In 1999, she moved south again to work in early childhood and community development in Keetmanshoop. It was here that she became seriously ill and learned that she was HIV positive.

Her husband left her, but her five children stood by her and gave her the courage to fight the disease. She asked for a transfer back to the north to be with the rest of her family, but it was there that she truly felt the stigma of being HIV positive, especially from her mother and younger sister. "They told me I had brought Aids into the house. My sister told me I had to go out and get a home with my children. They wanted to throw me out of the family home," Anita recalls. Sometimes, she would come out of the hospital and feel so mistreated that she would fall into a depression. Skipping her medication or not eating, she would inevitably end up in hospital again. Two weeks would pass without a visit from her mother or sister.

Breaking the silence to challenge the stigma

Anita Isaacs was not willing to suffer quietly. "I knew from my past that I was a mobiliser and an organiser. I had sat with traumatised soldiers and helped them to understand why they were in the struggle. Could I not do the same with HIV and Aids?" she wondered. She began by speaking to her Regional Aids Coordinator, who arranged a meeting with other HIV positive people in the region. Anita found that they all shared similar stories of discrimination. She realised that they needed to break the silence in order to help themselves and others. Along with six other women, Anita went public on 30 November 2002.

Going public and forming a network of HIV positive people helped Anita to stay strong. Now on anti-retroviral treatment, she started gaining weight and came back to life. Her immune system got stronger and her family began to accept her again. "When I went public, the doors opened for me, especially my family. I later realised that they lacked education. They didn't know that Aids is in the doorway, whether you like it or not."

Supporting others to live positively

Once she began speaking out publicly, organisations from all over Namibia and the world were seeking her support. Groups wanted to hear her speak, and to attend workshops given by her. Individuals came to be counseled. She started a support group for the women who had gone public, as they wanted a safe space where they could come together to share their experiences. Anita asked the regional governor for an office and got one. She was becoming more and more dedicated to her work with HIV and Aids and eventually left her job at the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare in June 2005 to join the YWCA project on violence against women and children, focusing on the link between violence and the spread of HIV and Aids.

Challenging violence to stop Aids

The project was planning to build a home for survivors of domestic violence, but Anita expressed her doubts. Before a structure could be built, a consciousness had to be built. "You can't just start building a house for abused women. People won't come to you to ask for shelter because of tradition, the cultural background, and the taboos we have. We have to start first with awareness creation. Let the community know what violence is, what forms violence takes. People don't know about the Domestic Violence Act, about the Rape Act. These are the things we have to start with, creating awareness."

She finds the Owambo culture to be very hierarchical and closed. "People keep quiet about things that are happening inside the house. It's too tight. When there are problems, they build and build and only become worse." Family violence and illness are sources of shame. They are private matters to be kept within the family.

Working with traditional leaders

Anita is now conducting workshops and training community facilitators to address domestic violence. She wants to create a culture where people can open up, but it is a struggle. Her approach is a unifying one. She works with local and regional counselors and with community chiefs. Instead of isolating traditional leaders and presenting her work as a women's rights issue, Anita speaks of domestic violence as an issue that affects everyone. "When we approach the problem this way, they come up with a lot of issues that women face. I tell them we are not only concentrating on women. Let's also talk about men and how they are violated, but most issues raised by the communities themselves are about women."

Anita believes that many Namibians are still living in a state of denial when it comes to HIV and Aids. People are still reluctant to go for an HIV test, often waiting until they are already too ill to benefit from life-saving treatment. She says that men in particular do not want to admit that they are ill or having problems. One of her role models is the general in the Ugandan army who disclosed his HIV-positive status at an Aids conference a few years ago, saying that he had lived with the disease for 20 years and was planning to die of old age, not illness.

Starting life anew 

Speaking out on radio and to local communities, Anita continues to battle the stigma. Her message is simple: "When you are diagnosed HIV positive, that is the start of your life. That is when you start planning your future, when you put your goals into place and become conscious that you don't live forever. Despite being HIV positive, you can still be the best you can be. You can still grow to be old and wise."