Rising AIDS rate poses new threat to African democracy
Pastor Dale Morgan
Rising AIDS rate poses new threat to African democracy*
By Bate Felix
Reuters
Monday, June 4, 2007; 6:12 PM
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - AIDS may be killing elected officials in some
Southern African countries faster than they can be replaced, creating a
new threat to democracy and governance in the region, a new study said.
The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) said a study of
mortality patterns in South Africa, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania
and Senegal indicated Africa's HIV/AIDS crisis was reaching deep into
elected governments.
"Our findings have shown there has been a sharp rise in the number of
elected leaders that have died prematurely of illness," Kondwani
Chirambo, head of the governance and AIDS program at IDASA, said at a
recent conference in Cape Town.
"If you compare the trends before the onset of the pandemic and after,
we do see that patterns of death mimic the mortality pattern of the
general population," he said.
Chirambo's research casts a new light on southern Africa's HIV/AIDS
problem as South Africa prepares for its biannual AIDS conference in
Durban, which begins on Tuesday.
While the epidemic's toll in human lives and medical expense is well
documented, the study showed that HIV/AIDS is also responsible for
political power shifts and extra strain on treasuries that have to
organize by-elections, IDASA said.
Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for about 25 million of the 39 million
people worldwide infected with HIV/AIDS, a crisis that is increasingly
felt across social classes.
Few deaths of public figures in Africa are openly attributed to
HIV/AIDS, reflecting the deep stigma that continues to accompany the
disease across the continent.
But signs are AIDS is taking its toll among politicians, just as it is
with ordinary Africans.
In Malawi, a recent study showed that a total of 42 MPs have died
between 1994 and 2006. In an official statement in 2000, the speaker of
the national assembly attributed 28 of these deaths to AIDS-related
causes, Chirambo said.
In neighboring Zambia, in the 20-year period between independence in
1964 and the first reported AIDS case in 1984, only 14 out of 46
by-elections were held as a result of death. Between 1985 and 2003, 102
by-elections have been held and, of those, 39 were a result of officials
dying in office.
Between 1994 and 2006, 23 vacancies have been recorded in the South
African parliament as a result of death.
Alan Whiteside, director of health economics and the HIV/AIDS research
division at the University of KwaZulu Natal, said the new research
showed the pandemic is having a cumulative impact on Africa's
institutions but that many countries are not equipped to deal with it.
"HIV/AIDS is having an impact not just on electoral institutions, but
also on government and governance, and we have underestimated this
impact," Whiteside told Reuters in an interview.