SWAZI WITCHDOCTORS AND AIDS

Here’s a film about how modernity and tradition make awkward bedfellows in Swaziland.

It is about the AIDS pandemic and how traditional medicine is sometimes used in the ‘treatment’ of AIDS. In the film a ‘traditional healer’ claims that he has cured people of AIDS and the fee starts at E2 000 (about 300 US dollars).

The film isn’t really about a rip-off merchant. I suspect some of the people featured are sincere (but misguided). Needless to say (this is Swaziland after all) church pastors also believe they have a role to play in curing AIDS.

The film was made by Jaron Gilinsky, an independent film maker from Israel.

The film is available on Current TV which is both a television and a web-based channel which among other things broadcasts independent productions.

Jaron came to Swaziland in 2007. Explaining the background to the film, Jaron wrote this on his blog.

My story was on a school for vulnerable and troubled youth and one schoolgirl in particular, a 9-year-old girl with full-blown AIDS, no parents, and a caretaker who refused to take her to a hospital for treatment. I chose this story not for its uniqueness, but for its ordinariness. Nodogoze’s story is all too common in Sub Saharan Africa. An American volunteer at the Moyeni school named Amy Paderta took a personal interest in the child, convinced her caretaker that AIDS cannot be cured by traditional medicine, and took Nodogoze to the hospital where she is receiving Anti Retroviral Treatment. Hopefully it will not be too late and she will respond to the treatment. I interviewed her doctor who revealed too me that Swazis only get two ARV treatments and if they don’t respond to either, then there is nothing that can be done. AIDS patients in the West have many more options available if the two rounds of ARV treatments are ineffective.

You can see the film, which lasts about six minutes, below, or click on this link.