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Siyayinqoba Beat It! 2006 Episode 9 -

Faith Based Communities

The official Catholic belief states that people should not use condoms under any circumstances, despite the fact that they could contract HIV through unprotected sex. What implications does this have for the faithful in a country with the highest incidence of HIV infection? Siyayinqoba went to Wits University to meet young Catholic students to discuss their response to the use of condoms in this insert.

Shalom Ncala: {Sesotho} [Hello and welcome to the Siyayinqoba Beat It! Support Group. My name is Shalom Ncala. In the Siyayinqoba Support Group we are all living positively with HIV. Each week, we get together to discuss issues that affects our lives with HIV, from nutritional supplements to disclosing to our loved ones. Siyayinqoba is your guide to better living with HIV. If you are living with HIV, or you have a partner, a family member or a friend who is HIV positive, Siyayinqoba is for you. Like most main stream churches, the Catholic Church has many excellent programmes in place, providing care and support to people infected with HIV. The official Catholic belief states that people should not use condoms under any circumstances, despite the fact that they could contract HIV through unprotected sex] How are we to understand this confusing situation? What do young people themselves feel about this? Join us as we talk about these issues on Beat It! today. Siyayinqoba went to Wits University to meet young Catholic students to discuss their response to the use of condoms.

Johannesburg, Gauteng – Does your church promote the use of condoms?

Nana Yeboah-Asuama (Association of Catholic Tertiary Students, ACTS): Basically ABCD is a lifestyle orientation developed by the Catholic Church in the year 2000 and basically it tries to better the lives of general Catholics or general people across the board. The A stands for Abstain, which means abstain from generally everything that is bad i.e drugs, crime, corruption and obviously premarital sex because that is also against the Catholic order. B stands for Be faithful and if you are faithful then obviously you wouldn’t need a condom because you are faithful to yourself by not having premarital sex. And the C stands for Change of lifestyle. Now in change of lifestyle, basically it’s telling you to change from everything or anything in your life that is bad sexually i.e. premarital sex, so therefore you wouldn’t need a condom. And the D is change from the dangers which you are engaged in. Let’s say you are using a condom and having premarital sex then stop using a condom and stop premarital sex and your problem will basically be solved.

Duduzile Kubheka (Association of Catholic Tertiary Students, ACTS): When it comes to condoms, I do honestly think that the church should start to accommodate more people because it’s very unrealistic to think that people are not having sex. Because even here on campus, I’m sure 80% of the people here are having sex. I’m sure many of the people who come to the Catholic mass are having sex. And for us to just say: “No abstain and condoms are not good”, that’s not fair. It’s not fair on these people because they are putting their lives in danger.

Nana Yeboah-Asuama: In terms of the church seeing that the youth are having sex, obviously they know this that is why the C is there – for change of lifestyle. They are agreeing to the fact that these people are having sex so they want us to change our lifestyles to the point where we know our status, we’re not engaging in premarital sex. They’re not saying you’re not engaging so don’t do this, they’re saying you’re engaging, so change, that’s why the C is there. So you can’t say that they are being naïve in saying that we’re not having sex.

Pascal Mukenge (Association of Catholic Tertiary Students, ACTS): The point behind the church saying no contraceptives, no condoms or whatever is the church is against the use of sex for anything other than promoting a loving relationship between a man and wife.

Lebogang Nthekang (Association of Catholic Tertiary Students, ACTS): I think that each and every couple when they are going to get married, should get tested. It’s important for that to happen because you have to know where you stand or whether your partner is HIV positive or not.

Duduzile Kubheka: Being married does not prevent HIV, if someone already has it in the marriage, it will not prevent you from catching it from them just because you are married.

Pascal Mukenge: The difficulty that the church has right now is that they are in a position where they actually need to be sending out two messages, they need to be saying that if you’re having sex then use a condom in order to prevent STDs, prevent premarital pregnancies etc. The problem is that at the same time, they need to be educating young people as they’re growing up not to have premarital sex. The church isn’t some organisation that has got employees that it has to look after, the church is working for God. We can’t give a solution that’s going to work for the next 50 years, you can’t do that, it just doesn’t make sense.

Duduzile Kubheka: But if this condomise is not encouraged in the next 50 years, our generation will be wiped out.

Support Group

Shalom Ncala: Begicela ukwazisa wonke umuntu ukuthi sizamile ukuthi si-invite i-representative ye-Catholic church but baye ba-refuse ukuyithumela ‘which leads me to the question’ yokuthi kufanele siwavumele yini amasonto ukuthi asiphoqelele ukuthi si-engage ezosi-harm ekugcineni {IsiZulu} [Just to inform everyone, we’ve tried to invite a representative from the Catholic church, but they refused to send him, which leads me to the question: “Should we allow churches to push us into acting in ways that will harm us in terms of not protecting ourselves when we’re engaging in sex, what do people think about that?]

Lihle Dlamini: Mina Shalom ‘I think’ ukuthi amasonto ‘should be there as a guide’ ukuthi uphila kanjani. ‘But then they shouldn’t force you’ ukuthi wenze ama-decisions ‘that you are not ready to take. We know’ ukuthi baningi abantu abatsha ‘in churches who are having sex. How many people’ abakhona esontweni abashadile? Bangaki oobaba abamithisile ngaphandle, abakhona esontweni? ‘Is that supposed to mean to them’ uba kufuneka bashintshe i-lifestyle yabo? ‘What if’ uye esontweni ‘just because’ ufuna into ezokuhilisha ‘and then you are just told that change your lifestyle,’ i-lifestyle oyiphilayo ‘is not ok. Or are they saying’ ungasebenzisi i-condom when ungekho emshadweni? ‘Are they saying’ ungaze uphinde, wenza isono, ‘you are wrong and now’ usowutholile ke manje i-punishment yakho. {IsiZulu} [I think churches should be there to guide us on how to live as people. They shouldn’t force us into taking decisions that we’re ready to take. There are lots of young people in churches who are having sex. How many married people are there in churches? How many fathers in church have children outside their marriages? Is that supposed to mean to them that they should change their lifestyles? What if they went to church in search of spiritual healing, and then you’re told to change your lifestyle because the lifestyle you are living is not ok. And another question I would have liked to ask a person from the Catholic Church is what message are they sending to people who are married and are already infected with HIV, are they not also supposed to use a condom because a condom is a sin? Or are they only saying, do not use a condom if you’re not married? What are they saying to those people who are using ARVs? Are they saying don’t ever have sex again? You have sinned, you are wrong and now you have received your punishment, so don’t ever do sex again, stay like that until you get married. What if you don’t get married?

Nokubonga Yawa: Mna kwelam icala ndingathi icawe zethu ezininzi mna phofu ndizothetha ngeyam endikhulele kuyo eyasekhaya. Ecaweni yasekhaya, kulapho kufuneka uba uyintombazana akufunekanga uheve i-sex until ufumana umtshato. Uba uyintombazana awunonxiba ibhlukhwe nazo zonke ezozinto. And then sesikhona singoo-Nokubonga siwophulile umthetho kaThixo then sayiheva i-sex singekawufumani umtshato, sabanabo abantwana, sayifumana i-HIV. Kufanele ukuthi thina sesikhona ecaweni sizame ukwenza i-education ezicaweni kwabanye abatsha abaza emva kwethu then kuthi noba bayaheva i-sex bayazi into yoba mabazikhusele. Andiyiboni kakuhle lento because xa siyenza i-education ezicaweni ibangathi si-promote i-sex ecaweni. Siyabakhuthaza ukuthi mabaheve i-sex, ibangathi thina njeng’ba siwophulile umthetho kaThixo ingathi thina sifuna balandele ekhondweni. {isiXhosa} [I’d like to speak about my own church, the one I grew up in. They’d say that girls are not allowed to engage in sex before marriage. If you are a girl, you are not allowed to wear pants. So here we have Nokubonga, who has sinned before God; who has had sex before marriage, who has a child and who has HIV. We should educate those who are younger than us, so that if they happen to have sex, they should protect themselves. But this is not always appropriate because they think we are promoting sex at church. They think that because we have already sinned, we want them to sin.]

Thami Mthembu: I also left the church that I grew up in years ago and I refused to go to church. I mean I wasn’t HIV positive back then but I was being stigmatised for something else in church and I felt that there was no point in being somewhere where I was being judged all the time. I think I really started going back to church when I found out about my HIV status, I started asking questions and I started personalising religion for myself.

Nokhwezi Hoboyi: In my church they believe that you are not supposed to have an affair at all, you will wait as Nokhwezi, being me, I will wait for that particular guy that I don’t know who will go to the priest and say: “I want to get married to Nokhwezi.” You don’t know this person, you don’t know their status, you don’t know where they’ve been, with who they’ve been, you’ve never met anywhere before, you’ve just met one another during the collection or during the regions within the church or during the concerts and then I’m supposed to say: “Yes Vuyani, I will marry you.” I love my church, I love going to church but the one thing that I don’t understand is that they don’t believe in the existence of HIV whereas here I am, I grew up in that church, I was infected, there are other people within the church that are also infected. But these people believe that once HIV is undetected in your blood then it’s gone, you’re cured. They are not promoting the use of condoms, the use of ARVs what’s worse within the very same church, there’s polygamy. So if a church is promoting polygamy, it should promote condoms.

Fanie de Villiers: Wat hier gebeur, spesifiek rondom MIV is ons kyk na ‘hulle en ons’ en wat ons ook nou baie kere gedoen het in werkswinkels in, waar ons fasilituurders oplei met spesifiek MIV om terug te gaan om hulle kerke te mobiliseer doen ons ’n ‘questionnaire, highly confidential questionnaire’ maar as jy gaan kyk waarmee hulle besig is, en onthou net ons sê ook vir hulle, [But what happens, specifically with HIV, is that we look at it as ‘them and us’. What we’ve done in our workshops, where we train facilitators about HIV, to go back and mobilise their own churches, and then we give them a highly confidential questionnaire. But when you look at their activities, and remember we tell them] its excluding your marriage partner and then you have to think back of what your sexual experiences; your masturbation is very high, heavy petting, is ook relatief hoog op die lys. Jy kyk, ons vra seks met ’n prostituut, jy kry persentasies [is also high up on the list. We ask, seks with a prostitute and there are percentages of sex with a prostitute.] And you must remember we are looking at the church leadership, people that’s in the church, our pastors, our priests, our reverends, those people. En ek dink net ’n mens moet, dit is ’n baie mooi ding om te besef: “Maar luister hier!” Dan gee ons terug vooring na die groep toe en dis waar die groep eintlik besef: “Maar luister hier ons kan nie meer praat van hulle wat besig is om seks te hê daar buite nie en ons, ons is in ’n kerk, ons is hierso nie.” [And I think that’s an important point to realise. We take the results back to the group where they realise that: “We can no longer talk about them who are having sex out there, and we’re in a church, we’re here”.] And if I sit here and if I’m a reverend, for instance, and I have the correct and the right information about the usage of a condom and I don’t give that option to a person I might be talking too aren’t I contributing to this disease. {Afrikaans}

Support group Vuyani Jacobs: The moment they acknowledge the usage of condoms, they think that they are acknowledging their own sexual behaviours. Do you know this other good guy who’s a great bishop, Gideon Byamugisha. He’s a bishop, he’s living openly with HIV, his wife died of HIV and of course he was great in Uganda to actually come up openly and he actually challenged the church itself but here’s a funny thing; he’s got his own collar, you know Bishop Tutu with his collar and the nice thing, so he wears the same thing. So he goes up to the shop and picks up a few condoms then he puts them on the counter and the guy who is actually putting the till is like: ‘Huh’ – like he’s thinking: “A bishop and condoms.” And I think that’s what we need to do and I’m sure that encourages that person at the end of the day, that look I have HIV, I’m going to have sex with my wife or my partner and I’m going to engage in safe sex.

Fanie de Villiers: I don’t think the church is in the spolight enough because in Uganda, they turned their statistics around. Fact. But what happened there? The church became visible together with government. Ek dink as ’n mens nou net daarna gaan kyk, {Afrikaans} [I think if one looks at that,] it says a lot. Our churches aren’t doing enough, I’m not saying that they are not doing anything at all but they’re not doing enough and they’re not visible enough.

Thami Mthembu: And what’s scary about that Fanie is that South Africa is a predominantly Christian country, the majority of South Africans are in the Christian faith and if the church doesn’t want to take responsibility, the church doesn’t show people the way or give people options then where are people going to get those options from?

Shalom Ncala: {Sesotho} [We’ll talk more about the faith based churches and HIV after the break.]

Shalom Ncala: {Sesotho} [Welcome back to the Siyayinqoba Beat It! Support Group] – the programme for everyone infected and affected by HIV. Today we are talking about the role of churches and religious leaders living with HIV. Joining us is Reverend Nokuthula Dladla from ANERELLA, the African Network of Religious Leaders Living or Affected by HIV. How are you? Sijabulela ukuba nawe namhlanje. {IsiZulu} [We’re happy to have you today.] To get us into the discussion, let’s go with the Siyayinqoba team to Mafikeng and meet with Pastor Neo Moepi who is a member of ANERELLA.

Mafikeng, North West – “Testing HIV positive doesn’t mean God is punishing you”

Pastor Neo Moepi: {Sesotho} [ANERELLA is a network of priests from different congregations. Its role is to try to and mobilise resources and fundraise for treatment. I would like to encourage people in this church to go and test. The first time I disclosed my HIV status, pastors were no longer inviting me to church. They said I’m not qualified to lay hands because I’m HIV positive. There is a belief that when you are HIV positive, God is punishing you. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that I am positive because I am a sinner and God is punishing me. Some of us are HIV negative, I pray that you Lord keep them negative. … When you are positive…]

Support group

Shalom Ncala: Mfundisi bengicela ukwazi kabanzi nge-ANERELLA. {IsiZulu} [Can you please explain a bit about ANERELLA?]

Studio guest Rev. Nokuthula Dladla (ANERELLA): i-ANERELLA yi-African Network of Religious Leaders ‘living with or personally affected by HIV.’ Ya-launch ngo-2003, kwabakhona u-Rev Canon Gideon Byamugisha owaphuma out ne-status sakhe ‘as the first religious leader’ owayephila ne-HIV. {IsiZulu} It was launched in 2003 when Rev. Canon Gideon Byamugisha revealed his HIV positive status as the first religious leader to disclose.

Lihle Dlamini: If they’re living with HIV openly and bayashumayela emasontweni, [they preach in churches] how much impact do you think ingenzeka ebandleni nanokuthi idrowe abantu [would that have on churches in terms of drawing people] inside the church? As you have heard before ukuthi besikhuluma [people talk] and some of us say they ended up dropping esontweni. [church.] {IsiZulu}

Rev. Nokuthula Dladla (ANERELLA): Those abakwi-membership, ‘they are open about’ i-status sabo and kune ‘impact’ ngendlela emangalisayo ‘whereby if a leader’ engema. ‘The important thing is that’ akubalulekanga ukuthi umuntu uyithole phi i-virus, into ebalulekile ukuthi ‘how can we help. We can bring change’ emasontweni ethu. {IsiZulu} [All members are open about their status. There is great impact when a leader stands up and says ‘you know, Iam living with a virus’ and we’re also saying that it’s vital that you as a leader know your status before you can tell somebody that ‘go and test’ at the end of the say you don’t even know your status. We don’t force anybody at ANERELLA that they need to go public about their status. But what we are saying is that it’s important that people must know as leaders, there’s no way that will not infect us and there is no way that we are immune to the virus. The important thing again is it should not be an issue how you contracted the virus. It should not be an issue how you contracted the virus. The important thing is how can we help because it is important as leaders that we should help to be agents of change, that’s basically what’s important.] We can bring change in our churches in a way of preaching positive information, accurate information whereby it’s going to be wasy for people to come in front of to come to me and talk about their status.

Shalom Ncala: {Sesotho} [We talk more about the role of churches and church leaders after the break. Don’t go away.]

Shalom Ncala: [Welcome back to the Siyayinqoba Beat It! Support Group – the programme for everyone infected and affected by HIV. Today we are talking about the role of mainstream churches and their leaders in fighting the epidemic in South Africa.

Nokhwezi Hoboyi: Icawe enfikuyo mna, abefundisi andiqondi ukuthi bayahamba baye kwi-Bible school, bafundiswa kwapha ecaweni ukuthi ukuze ube ngumfundisi nantsi indlela ekufuneka uziphathe ngayo, niye nizithini iinkonzo ezinjalo? Ukuze nabo bakwazi ukuthetha ngee-condoms ezicaweni zabo, bathethe nge-sex ne-HIV/AIDS? {IsiXhosa} [The reverends in my church don’t attend bible schools. They are taught in church on how to be a reverend. What do you do with such churches so that they can be open about condoms, sex and HIV/AIDS?]

Rev. Nokuthula Dladla (ANERELLA): Inkonzo nenkonzo ine-protocol yayo, like uma sikhuluma about i-calling, i-calling yi-calling, uNkulunkulu usibizele indlela ezingafani. There are those ones ababonayo ukuthi ukuze bandies ulwazi lwabo baye e-Bible school, there are those ones aba-decide ukuthi ufila ukuthi u-right but then they are open ukuthi bangaya bayo attenda ama-workshops and bazi-equipte more. So it’s about i-calling thina esingangeni kuyo but into esingena kuyo it’s about ukuthi come let’s talk on the issue of HIV, ukuthi bona bazenzelani, isonto nesonto lizenzelani ngoba amasonto namasonto anengqubo eziningi. We’re not concentrating ukuthi umuntu ubuya in whatever protocol eyenzakalayo esontweni. {IsiZulu} [Each and every church has its own protocol. Like a calling, the Lord calls each of us for different reasons. There are those who want to expand their knowledge by going to bible school. There are those who feel content with what they know, but are open to go to workshops to equip themselves, that is where we don’t get involved. But we do involve ourselves in saying: “Come let’s talk on the issue of HIV.” We know that different churches operate differently. We are not concentrating on where one comes from or which protocol they use, but we’re talking that you are in a leadership position, come let’s talk on the issue of HIV.]

Shalom Ncala: {Sesotho} [Today we’ve learned that many churches run great treatment, care and support programmes. We hope that you enjoyed the show and are feeling the Siyayinqoba spirit – together we can beat it. We value your comments and questions. You can contact us on the numbers on your screen now. Join us again next week in the Siyayinqoba Beat It! support group. Until then, stay healthy, stay positive.