In Swaziland, 'Secret Lovers' Confronted in Fight Against AIDS

The makhwapheni campaign cast that conventional wisdom aside in what von Wissell said was a desperate bid to force Swazis to take responsibility for protecting themselves, and their loved ones, from AIDS.

The ads were designed to look like cellphone text messages. Perhaps the most brazen was written as a sexual invitation from a married woman to her secret lover. Beside the image of the cellphone screen, the words "why kill your family" were written in English. In smaller letters, in siSwati, the dominant language in Swaziland, was the slogan "makhwapheni uyabulala" -- your secret lover can kill you.

Another ad, also in siSwati, bore a similar cellphone message, but next to it were the words "watifaka elubishini," which mean "and more orphans were left behind."

But some Swazis, such as activist Gcebile Ndlovu, 44, who had spent years battling the stigma surrounding AIDS, said they felt insulted and undermined by the campaign.

Ndlovu, a mother of three who has a round face and graying hair that she wears in braids, had watched her husband shrivel up and die from AIDS eight years ago. The makhwapheni ads outraged her, she said. They blamed the victims. And, she said, they would increase the stigma that she and other activists carrying the virus had struggled to ease.

"Who wants to be called a makhwapheni?" Ndlovu said as she wiped tears from her eyes. "Is this campaign going to encourage people to test, so that they know their status? Or is it going to drive people underground?"

For activists, the campaign painfully recalled an earlier era of the epidemic, before the arrival of antiretroviral drugs here made AIDS a chronic but survivable disease for many. AIDS activists also objected to the moralizing tone of the makhwapheni ads. They preferred messages urging wider use of condoms.

"Don't tell me how many people to have sex with," Ndlovu said. "You can't dictate that to me. I go to bed with someone. That's my choice. Rather, tell me how to be safer."

In just a few days, Ndlovu and another AIDS activist organized one of the largest demonstrations in Swaziland's limited history of democratic protests. Hundreds of men and women, many wearing T-shirts with the words "I am HIV positive," delivered a petition to the office of the prime minister. Then they marched on von Wissell's office, singing "Away with makhwapheni!"

Von Wissell refused to meet the throng, but a few days later, he gave in to the complaints and suspended the campaign.

The word makhwapheni, however, was not so easily erased from the minds of Swazis. All over the country, it continued to dominate conversations. When cellphones buzzed with the arrival of text messages, some would joke, "Is that your makhwapheni?"

Radio host Bongani Dlamini, 50, who used one of Swaziland's most popular shows to defend polygamy and other Swazi traditions, attempted to eliminate the word on his show, out of deference to von Wissell's decision. But his callers would not follow such edicts. They kept calling, and they kept demanding that Swazis abandon their makhwaphenis.