Back to Index

Collective responsibility needed to curb AIDS
Janah Ncube
June 25,2003

Mr Editor

I read with disappointment a letter from K Chihwayi of Glen Norah (23/6/03) who thinks husbands should stop wives from cross border trading.

I was reminded of how my mother raised the 13 children who lived under her roof. Indeed she had a job as a factory worker and my father had a job as a cashier at a beer hall but their incomes were very small. Our livelihood was supplemented by mother's industrious informal trading initiatives. Several of my friends whose mothers were not formally employed where schooled, clothed and fed from monies generated by their mothers who sold locally made doilies, cross stitched seat covers and so forth in South Africa and Botswana.

Many women are burdened with having to fend for their families' basic needs and with the ever increasing unemployment levels, our mothers should be celebrated for having the intelligence to find ways to market
Zimbabwean products across the border while generating incomes for their families, creating employment and bringing in forex into our country.

We are far from dealing with the HIV/AIDS problem in this country if we think like Mr Chihwayi that these informal traders are the ones spreading the HIV virus. We need to stop pointing figures at each other in blame but take individual and collective responsibility for this killer disease then maybe we can survive it.

Janah Ncube Harare
Director
Women in Politics Support Unit (WiPSU)

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP