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Comments on article "Multiple concurrent partnerships: Are small houses a key driver?"
June 2007

These are comments off a Health & Development Network listserv which circulated the article "Multiple concurrent partnerships: Are small houses a key driver?" Some are anonymous, but they enhance the discussion around this issue, and so we share them more widely.

Comment: The story of Zimbabwe - Are small houses a key driver? (1)
Mai Ngondo

http://www.healthdev.org/viewmsg.aspx?msgid=F0FD27F4-61AA-49F9-9208-EF051735FFE6

I am glad someone has decided to write about these small houses, women who to me, are women who don't have any self-respect for why would any God-fearing, HIV-fearing and intelligent woman be irresponsible in this day of HIV and AIDS. Yes the men in these relationships are equally lacking in self respect but for me it is the woman who allows herself to be used, that is the worst of the two.

If they all refuse to be at a married man's back and all, we will be fine. Yes a married man only sees a small house when time permits, when there are no commitments at home and when he feels like indulging himself away from reality, reality of bills, of school fees, of helping his own children with homework and other stuff like that.

If these women would go out and get their own men instead of taking another woman's scrapings, then we would not have these alarming HIV statistics we are having. We would not be having married women becoming so highly vulnerable as they have become. As a married woman myself, who is faithful to her husband and who prays that the husband is also faithful I just think small houses need to be sued because of the risk they are putting not only themselves, but us the main houses and the children we are getting out of all these unions.

It is painful to get AIDS because somebody just had to be stupid!

If we could all just think long and hard, both men and women, about whether we really have to be unfaithful to our partners and not use condoms too (yes, in these unions no protection is used)

I am sure some of us would change out minds before the dice is cast.

Comment: The story of Zimbabwe - Are small houses a key driver? (2)
Anonymous

Dear members,

I appreciate the fact that finally people have opened discussions around small houses as a key driver of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe and beyond. I disagree with the paper that portrayed small house as the key driver of HIV and AIDS. What both Mai Ngondo's paper and Lois' lack is an analysis of why do men and women engage in this behaviour. Lois chooses to dismiss reasons that men put forward for leaving the big house. Mai Ngondo describes it as "stupid" and insists that these women (small houses) should find their own men. As a small house myself I tend not to agree. I did not deliberately choose to become a small house. I had a boyfriend from the time I was doing "A "level and during my time at University who left to undertake studies in another country and did not come back. I waited patiently like any other woman would have done to no avail. During the waiting period the clock was ticking by the time it sunk that he was not coming back it was too late to go through "normal co urtship" again and get married "normally". Many women have similar stories.

Like all women in the main house I need love, I need the respect society accords to married women. What most people do not realize is that for a woman it is difficult after a certain age to get a man. I have a circle of five friends who are professionals, very descent according to all standards but failed to get a man during the "peak" period and then ended up being small houses. We are very faithful to these men who are "married" to us. These men are not running from responsibility because we have children and extended families that they are looking after and they do it so well. The difference between the main house and us is that we are full aware that there is a big house so we go an extra mile. But most importantly the man is free to discuss with us the mistakes that the big house makes so we make sure we perfect all that. The disadvantage for the big house is that the man does not discuss these mistakes with her. For my friends and me it is not about money (we have well paying jobs) but about companionship that both sides are looking for anyway. It is not true that we are cash cows. It is not true that these are secrete relationships, they are only secrete to the main house and her children. For us lobola has been paid and these men attend all our family functions and I also attend funerals from his extended family. For my relatives I am "married" in every sense and they are unaware that their "Mukwasha" is a double Mukwasha (son in law)

Yes the dangers of contracting HIV are real but for once those women who consider themselves "main house " are the key drivers of HIV, they drive these men away from their homes. In addition they burden these men with having to make double investments. So, married women please stop driving HIV. The small house is actually doing you a service by keeping your husbands. Usually once a man has a small house they settle. My friends and I have been in these relationships for an average of ten years and I have not suffered from STI s so far and I regularly go for VCT and I am negative. The new trend is that these married women once they realize that they have been left by these men they are the once who seek sexual satisfaction from anyone that come their way from gardeners to young irresponsible men without an income

To me married women are the key drivers. In their anger they think they are fixing the men but engaging in sexual activities with anyone that comes their way. More importantly because of the African culture they do not have anyone to turn to in order to discuss their problems. The aunts from both sides will advise them to wait patiently for the man to come back, and if they try to discuss with the husband nothing materializes but the usual "hitted" arguments and men ending up leaving the house in hurry. I feel sorry for the main house because for me I can engage in a very fruitful discussion with the same man and get what I want. When there is a problem it is amicably resolved after all I know how the main house does it and what the mean despises about it.

Comment: The story of Zimbabwe - Are small houses a key driver? (10)
Regis Mtutu

After reading comments on the small house saga and having resisted responding for the simple reason that I am a man and by and large we are the culprits I felt a strong need to put my views across. I think the discussion has largely strayed from the original discussion initiated

Lois Chingandu, I think it's clear that the small house is one of the key drivers. But it would be too simplistic to end it there. Small houses build upon the unequal power relationships in sexual matters especially in Zimbabwe. But this is not peculiar to Zimbabwe alone as we know that patriarchy, negative masculinities, negative cultural practices and the largely economic power that men have has led to circumstances where women do not have much say over how, when and with whom they engage in safe sexual practices.

So the small house is just one manifestation of all these inequalities. It is no use trying to justify unfaithfulness from men's' or a women's' perspectives as we know that this unfaithfulness inevitable leads to one party (often very loyal/monogamous) being unknowingly infected. As a man and having been involved in working structurally and systematically with different kinds of men who are in these kinds of relationships I would put the responsibility squarely on men to acknowledge that we are the drivers of this phenomenon. We initiate these relationships where we do not initiate them we experience a sense of power and triumph that we have been approached particularly if a younger woman is involved. We feel like real men. Real men defined in so many definitions that we as men have contrived just to satisfy our sexuality. We often define our sexuality in ways and means that add ego to our definitions and notions of manhood and fatherhood. Just think of a 47 seven year old me n married for 15 years and has four daughters in his family, now enters a small house relationship and out of wedlock a son is born!

Of course certain women will try to justify their involvement with married men based on quite a number of rationalisations. This is always a difficult one as some women will claim that they are exercising their power and choice over whom they want to consort with, that they are independent, that they are actually safe as they will insist on having protective sex which women in a married situation often cannot or will not do for various reasons. As I already point out these reasons may have to do with the power relations in a sexual relationship founded on cultural practices (lobola) and religious beliefs (muchato/wedding). More critically choosing to be in a small house relationship finally is seen as giving women equal footing with men on sexual matters. Often women in such unions have much more sexually freedom, and have more than one male sexual partner, as such women often have a younger male lover whom they consider as the boyfriend! While this may be so it is politicall y incorrect and while having difficulty in saying so, it is morally wrong. But the question of morality is another issue. Perhaps we should rather say this is ethically wrong. We have to live in a world where we do not have to cheat on our partners whether lobola has been paid or not, whether its cohabitation or not, or whether one is a common law wife/husband.

So we need to begin to find solutions to the small house. My conviction is that as men we need to define a new set of values that we live by that enable us to be able to discuss our sexuality upfront without feeling that by doing so we are lesser men. As men we have to find the strength in ourselves that say it is wrong to be within a small house relationship, that we need to open up to our female partners what is it that excites us in small houses and create that excitement within our own bedrooms and homes. To the women, well help us build on these values and jointly let us look at our relationships and see where as parties we go wrong. For the young women and not so old women who believe in a liberated sexuality, choosing a lover now and again may be the answer, others will see this as morally wrong, but then you have your condom in your hand bag, you choose who you want to sleep with rather than be a sexual slave or some kept woman in a small house. This is something that we need to explore on how sexual relationships have evolved in modern Zimbabwe and what it means to be a young woman or man, perhaps a single parent who yearns for love and sex. Until we can openly do so we shall continue going around in circles inventing phenomenons such as the small house which only add to the pain, misery and tragedy that HIV sometimes brings into our lives. We need to do better than this and find lasting ways to end this epidemic. It is not easy, there are no quick fixes, but we owe it to the next generations to give it our best go.

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