Everyday Violence and AIDS over the Life Course
Juma died of an overt and extremely brutal act of violence. That act, however, resulted as much from the long-term and cumulative effects of everyday violence as it did from the hands of the individuals who perpetrated it. AIDS was a major factor in Juma’s life, but, like the circumstances surrounding his death, its impacts are best understood against a larger backdrop of violence and suffering.
Violence manifested itself over the course of Juma’s life through an increasing number of events and circumstances characterized by social and economic insecurity; the lack of choice; and mental, emotional, and physical vulnerability. While such events and circumstances can and must be linked to macrostructural and political– economic processes, Juma experienced them through a lens of local meanings and social relationships. Additionally, some of the more important forms of everyday violence—in terms of their impact on the course of Juma’s life—were exacted more directly on members of his immediate household (and his mother in particular). AIDS and its impact on Juma’s life—and the lives of a growing number of East Africa’s children—are best understood when situated in a violence framework that critically examines the links between broader structural factors in East Africa and such things as local and household power dynamics, affiliations between immediate and extended kin, and constructions of gender and sexuality.
As with so many children in East Africa, Juma’s story begins by being born into a rural household that was already under considerable economic stress. The economic security of his household was steadily undermined throughout his early
Everyday Violence in the Time of AIDS 109
childhood for a number of reasons: (1) a shrinking and increasingly unproductive land base as large-scale farmers and private interests competed for space in the region, (2) insufficient land to maintain sufficiently long fallow periods from a sustainability perspective, (3) a steady decrease in prices for cotton on the global market, (4) an increase in the costs of agricultural inputs like labor and fertilizer, (5) a growing debt and dependency on a private cotton trader, and (6) a general loss of support over the years because of a shift in state services to support large-scale capitalist enterprises. In addition, the household experienced the negative impacts of a liberalizing and largely unrestricted mining industry via an unsustainable increase in household membership and the subsequent breakup of the family unit under considerable duress.
The factors characterizing the disintegration of Juma’s rural household (and, ultimately, the death of his father) are important because they can be directly related to Tanzania’s neoliberal turn and implementation of SAPs since the 1980s. In fact, there is growing evidence that these policies have combined with decades of failed colonial and postcolonial rural development schemes in Sukumaland to create a political economy that effectively undermines the security of small-scale farmers and farming households (Havnevik and Harsmar 1999; Madulu 1998).
AIDS becomes relevant in this context, since there is considerable evidence from sub-Saharan Africa associating higher prevalence rates and increased risk with sit- uations where household security is undermined (UNAIDS–UNCF–USAID 2004). In Sukumaland, the regional boom of the mining industry that characterizes a large part of its cash economy is particularly noteworthy, since the social dynamics that define migrant labor enclaves generally and mining centers specifically serve as es- pecially effective diffusion points for sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS (World Economic Forum 2002). Violence manifested as household insecurity and forced migrations—and its relationship to the spread of AIDS—are thus linked to the unique political economy of the region.
Following the death of Juma’s father, the structural forces and impacts of Tanzania’s neoliberal development policies conjoined with traditional land-tenure practices and gender meanings to disempower Juma’s mother and undermine her position within the shamba. Her experience is not unique; among the sources of inse- curity during the liberalization period has been the increased incidence of “land grab- bing” by in-laws and the inability of women to acquire their own land (Havnevik and Harsmar 1999). Despite the passage of legislation in Tanzania designed to al- low women to inherit, hold, and dispose of property, there is a strong social bias against female ownership of land, which has been exacerbated by the scarcity of fertile land, the costs involved in acquiring it, and the huge extent of land alienation by the state. Under these circumstances, there is evidence of a growing number of overtly violent encounters and discriminatory practices between widows and in-laws (Lockhart 2005). Like Juma’s mother, such conflicts often lead to forced migration under difficult and traumatic circumstances and an exodus of landless women and their children to the city.
In this context, AIDS emerged as a potent and particularly stigmatizing accusa- tion against Juma’s mother. This incident reflects a growing phenomenon in East Africa in which previously married women2 are being blamed for the spread of AIDS (Ntozi 1997; Lockhart 2005). Such accusations have strong historical precedents
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and are deeply rooted in cultural meanings that legitimate a woman’s identity in terms of marriage and motherhood, while denouncing the unmarried and previously married woman as a potentially malevolent and destructive force (Ntozi 1997). The steady increase in rates of divorce, separation, and widowhood in the contemporary social environment are of special concern because Tanzania’s current political econ- omy seemingly has little role for them. Under these circumstances, and as was the case with Juma’s mother, the concurrent spread of AIDS has become an easy and effective weapon to use against women to discredit them and undermine their civil rights. In this respect, conflicts over inheritance and property rights in rural areas are one of the most pronounced examples of how AIDS as accusation interacts with gender and violence.
In Mwanza, everyday violence continued to be a defining feature of Juma’s household, specifically in terms of the situation of his mother and the ways in which failed economic liberalization programs played out along gender lines. As is the case with almost every urban center in Tanzania, Mwanza’s infrastructural investment has not been able to keep pace with the rapid influx of rural migrants, resulting in the slow emergence of a skilled labor force, rising unemployment and crime rates, shortages of goods and services, and the substantial growth of shantytown settlements (Lugalla 1995). Throughout Tanzania, the formal cash economy of its cities has remained a place almost entirely dominated by men, and women have largely been excluded from the development process (Tripp 1997). Like so many women, Juma’s mother turned to the informal economy, working as a petty trader and local food distributor. However, she did not earn enough money to survive and was compelled to combine activities and diversify her survival strategies while removing Juma from school to help with domestic duties and to earn extra income.
Ultimately, Juma’s mother was forced to engage in “survival sex,” or a series of sexually and economically dependent relationships with men. As a practice rooted in social and economic impoverishment, engendered power disparities, and the lack of choice, survival sex is both a form and consequence of everyday violence. The ways in which survival sex obscures the line between sexual practices and meanings and various forms of symbolic, sexual, and physical abuse give it a particularly hegemonic quality. As in the case of Juma’s mother, the practice must also be situated against a temporal background and the long and progressively limiting set of circumstances that bring an individual to that point.
For Juma’s mother, survival sex as a form and consequence of everyday violence ultimately led to her death from AIDS. Her case illustrates how violence contributes in both a long- and short-term manner to women’s sexual and economic dependency on men, which is a growing phenomenon among women throughout sub-Saharan Africa (Wojcicki 2002). As such, it is an important framework for situating behav- ioral and group risk for AIDS, as well as for understanding how individuals might conceptualize their personal risk for the disease.
Like his mother, Juma also became the victim (and perpetrator) of everyday violence as represented by his engagement in kunyenga activities, or a form of survival sex unique to street boys. Following his mother’s prolonged illness and eventual death from AIDS, he was forced into a world where the imperative of day- to-day survival was established by a hierarchical network of relations among street boys. In this world, power and respect were determined by acts of sex and violence
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on a daily basis and reinforced by a distinctly masculine ideology of toughness. As with many street boys, Juma’s life on the streets was all-encompassing and related to a spatial disciplining via the internal dynamics among gangs of street boys, as well as the “containment policies” of a crumbling and overwhelmed social service sector combined with the often brutal acts of the private militia groups known as sungu sungu. To use a term from Bourgois (1996), such containment policies led to an “inner-city apartheid” in which multiple forms of violence were made meaningful and could circulate unchecked.
In terms of AIDS, the meanings and practices that made up kunyenga activities among street boys blurred the lines between sex and overt acts of violence, in addition to increasing Juma’s personal risk. At the same time, everyday violence and the ways Juma experienced it on the streets created a culture of pragmatism and immediacy that shaped risk and pushed AIDS to the horizon of consideration.
Future Directions
Situating AIDS in a violence framework that highlights individual life histories and trajectories focuses attention on those factors that force individuals down paths that steadily (or abruptly) increase their vulnerability to the disease. While it continues to highlight the ways, for example, that poverty and gender construct specific practices like survival sex, it also traces the precipitant life events and circumstances that led an individual to that point in the first place. It follows the ways in which violence and AIDS weave in and out of the life course and can contribute to a downward spiral and vulnerability over time. In East Africa, as Juma’s case illustrates, it draws attention to sweeping and largely unregulated privatization and structural adjust- ment policies and how they conjoin with local conditions to affect the sustainability of small-scale farming households, land-tenure and property inheritance practices, migration patterns, the security of female-headed households, and the capacity of health and social services.
While such an approach demands large-scale policy changes at the highest levels, it can also inform specific changes to (or simply enforcement of) regional and local regulations, policy measures, and economic initiatives that could have a significant positive impact on the life trajectories of individuals like Juma and his mother. For example, identifying ways to enforce Tanzania’s land-tenure laws and protect the inheritance rights of widows in rural areas could have a significant impact on the lives of women and dependent children in a manner that does more to reduce their vulnerability to AIDS than any number of public health and education strategies could possibly do. In urban areas, there is growing evidence of collective efforts among women to eliminate and overcome the dependencies and constraints that surround survival sex, and that supporting their small business ventures and informal economic activities (such as neighborhood-based lending societies and cooperatives) is key (Lockhart 2005). With respect to street children, programs that combine economic and educational initiatives (as the one Juma himself viewed as a means of achieving his dreams of becoming a doctor) have proven especially effective in Tanzania (Rajani and Kudrati 1993, 1996). These programs provide children with opportunities to demonstrate knowledge while combating the widespread fatalism and resignation associated with life on the streets. They also situate AIDS and sex
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education initiatives within a more comprehensive framework that focuses on the whole life experience of the child. Practices such as kunyenga are best approached and discussed with children in this manner.
Again, the effectiveness of such measures are greatly strengthened by (and in some cases dependent on) broader changes to development policies at the national and international levels. Otherwise, they are at risk of devolving into a set of strategies that continually target the consequences and “ripple effects” of violence rather than their root causes. Delineating the limitations and potential of agency given various scenarios and under different circumstances is a critical issue in this regard.
Addendum
On a return trip I took to Mwanza shortly after Juma’s death, a group of his friends approached me and showed me a book of drawings that Juma had made. The book was comprised of 32 pictures illustrating the story of his life up to that point and the future he saw for himself. The latter entailed a very deliberate and well-thought-out series of steps that included seeking help from the local street children’s organization, reconnecting with his sister, completing school and entering the University of Dar es Salaam, becoming a doctor, raising a family, and, ultimately, working with orphans and street children. While we had discussed his future on many occasions, I had never realized or appreciated the comprehensiveness and purposefulness of the life he saw for himself.
Juma’s friends asked me to make copies of his book and deliver them to each member of the sungu sungu group suspected to be present on the night of his death. With the help of some key individuals, I dutifully complied. In turn, I asked Juma’s friends if I could also send copies to a variety of development officials. While they did not fully understand my reasons for doing this, they gave me permission to do so. Finally, and because Juma was a close friend of mine, they gave me a copy as a gift, which I accepted as such, and for reasons of my own that are not always easy to articulate or embrace.
Notes
Acknowledgments. This work would not have been possible without the unbounded sup- port and compassion of Gay Becker, who served as my Ph.D. advisor throughout the initial phases of my research in Tanzania. I hope it does some small justice to her memory and to her immeasurable capacity as both teacher and friend.
1. It was generally believed that the lack of street girls had to do with the unique dangers they faced on the street. Related to this belief was the practice of taking young girls who were alone and utilizing them as live-in servants—or “house girls”—before they reached the street. In some cases, girls were taken directly off of the street for such purposes. This phenomenon effectively reproduced the male-oriented ideology of violence, toughness, and aggression that permeated Mwanza’s street culture and garnered respect among the street boys.
2. The term previously married women refers to women who are divorced, widowed, or separated.
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