South Sudan cries out to AU

Catherine Murombedzi
Women in South Sudan are crying out to the African Union to come to their rescue as they now live under fear from attacks and rape from rebels. The rebels know no limit and rape even women old enough to be their mothers. They loot and leave a trail of damage. Women are violated and raped willy-nilly. “Being a woman is hard in my country and is even worse for my sisters who are sex workers. They have no power to negotiate for safe sex and are not even given their dues but rather are gang raped as punishment,” said Ms Letio.

For women living with HIV opening up has been a challenge for decades now. Stigma is still rife and one even risks being an outcast in their family and community were they to disclose that they were living with HIV.

One woman who has weathered the stigma mountains in South Sudan is the founder of National Empowerment of Positive Women United (NEPWU) Ms Evelyn Letio.
Her script is from the same chapter as women who tested HIV positive before the advent of anti retroviral therapy. Strong will saw them through as one had to focus on a goal and kept that in sight.

“I am proud to say that I am now a grandmother 26 years after the death of my husband. My husband had been ill on and off for two or more years but as a loving wife I attributed that to over drinking. When he died in 1989 people murmured that he had died of an AIDS related illness and I dismissed it,” said Ms Letio who then was living in Uganda her husband’s home country.

“I was living in Uganda where we have a home in town. When my husband died I closed my ears to negative talk on my husband. He could not have cheated on me I told myself and dismissed it as cheap talk from jealous people. In 1991 when I was not feeling well I went to a local hospital where tests were run but I was not told of the outcome.

“I got medication and left for home. In 1993 I was back at the hospital with a minor cough and the nurse was surprised to see me.
“She said: ‘Aaah are you still alive’ to which I replied should I have died?” said Ms Letio.

Ms Letio again in 1993 revisited the clinic to silence a man who claimed that her husband had died from an AIDS related illness.
“I had visited the hospital because this man claimed my husband could have died of an AIDS related illness. I agreed to take an HIV test with him and the results came out three weeks later and I was HIV positive. I went home and became depressed.

I locked myself in my bedroom and stopped going to work. My employers sent me a warning that I stood to lose my job but that no longer mattered. I refused to eat or go to any hospital. As I kept myself locked, I heard a voice, very clearly saying: ’My child rise you have to live.’ I ignored it but it became louder and I realized The Lord was speaking to me. I woke up, opened the door and asked for food. That was it, I accepted my status and went back to work.”

Ms Letio later relocated to her home country Sudan in 2003. She found out that the situation in Uganda was enabling to people living with HIV than it was in Sudan.
“I told my relatives that I was HIV positive and was silenced as they risked being made outcasts. I had to speak, discrimination and stigma knew no boundary in Sudan.
My sisters told me to move out and I did but I continued lobbying for respect for people living with HIV. In 2011 the country split into North and South Sudan and I continued with advocacy work,” said Ms Letio.

“There is discrimination from the family, in the community and the government, too,” she said.
“The few that are employed are sent off from jobs because they have disclosed that they are HIV positive,” Ms Letio said.
South Sudanese society treats women who are infected with HIV differently from men who have the virus.

“When the woman is positive, they say it gives the right to divorce immediately and the woman is ordered out of the family home,” Ms Letio said.
“She is ordered to leave home and has no voice. If the man is HIV positive and the woman is negative in a family, the woman is forced by law to stay and look after the man.
This is the inequality we have as women living with HIV,” she said.

NEPWU encourages HIV positive women to accept their status and urges adherence to medication.
NEPWU runs networks for women living with HIV as they share experiences. They work in partnerships with other organisations that encourage people living with HIV/AIDS to start businesses so that they can earn a decent living.

According to UNAIDS 2012, the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in South Sudan is 2.2 percent.
Around 150 000 people in South Sudan are living with HIV, including 18 000 children under the age of 15, UNAIDS reported.
Ms Evelyn Letio is a board member of Pan African Positive Women’s Coalition (PAPWC) which is supported by UNAIDS.

She spoke on the sidelines of the PAPWC’s inaugural AGM and indaba in Lusaka on December 5, 2014.