by hilzoy
Frankly, I really didn't think that there was any upside at all to Zimbabwe's immiseration. Apparently, though, I was wrong:
"It's not only the prices of bread and eggs that are out of control in Zimbabwe, land of 4,000 percent inflation. For the man inclined to cheat on his wife, these are trying times. Keeping a mistress, visiting a prostitute or even taking a girlfriend out for beers is simply becoming too expensive, men say.But their strain is Zimbabwe's gain in its fight against AIDS. Alone among southern African countries, Zimbabwe has shown a significant drop in its HIV rate in recent years. A major reason, researchers say, is the changing sexual habits of men forced to abandon costly multiple relationships.
"Those extramarital relationships, they're getting tough to sustain," said Thomas Muza, 37, who is struggling to support his wife and a mistress on the shrinking value of a math teacher's paycheck. Worth $50 a month at the beginning of June, it's now worth $17 and falling almost every day. (...)
AIDS remains severe here, with an estimated one in five Zimbabwean adults infected with the virus that causes the disease, but surveys show that the number of new infections has fallen. Men report fewer girlfriends, fewer visits to prostitutes and less casual sex -- all indicators that in other countries have accompanied a retreating epidemic.
Nightclubs, cinemas and brothels have closed in Harare, the capital, and in some cases evangelical churches have taken over the buildings. Less visibly, men say they are abandoning what Zimbabweans call "small houses," a legacy of the polygamous marriages once common here.
In these relationships, married men pay rent and other living expenses for a second or even third regular sex partner. As in marriages, condoms rarely are used, creating webs of unprotected sex easily infiltrated by HIV if the man or any of the women become infected.
"Having a lot of girlfriends or having 'small houses,' you've got to have a degree of disposable income," said Godfrey Woelk, an epidemiologist at the University of Zimbabwe. "Being poor and being in love does not really work, no matter what the romantics say." (...)
The most recent nationwide survey, conducted in 2005 and 2006, put Zimbabwe's HIV rate for adults at 18.1 percent, still higher than in all but five other countries in the world. Researchers believe it peaked a few years earlier at about 25 percent."
18.1% is pretty horrific, but it beats 25%. Moreover, if this is true, Zimbabwe has cut its HIV rate by a quarter in a few years, which is astonishing. The article says that several alternate hypotheses have been considered, including the possibility that the economic implosion of the country might just cause a lot more people with AIDS to die. But apparently, it seems to be largely due to changes in behavior. I just hope the behavioral changes, and the resulting drop in HIV, outlast the economic collapse, because having an inflation rate that's expected to hit five digits is a pretty dreadful way to control HIV.
I just hope that the neocons don't try to spin this into "Look what lustful beasts African men are." Has there been any cause/correlation studies of corresponding cases in countries such as Thailand or Mexico? I assume that sex tourism, to those countries and elsewhere, is (praise Allah) similarly income elastic.
Posted by: Sajia Kabir | July 13, 2007 at 03:46 AM
Not much sex tourism to Zimbabwe, Saija, I should think. Read the article - it's about income-dependent polygamy, not sex tourism. I suspect that polygamy of this kind isn't as widespread in Mexico.
Also, wouldn't sex tourism increase if the economy was suffering, just because the exchange rate would be favourable for foreign tourists?
Posted by: ajay | July 13, 2007 at 06:32 AM
Well, in my case (not that I'm a neocon, but I so frequently get lumped in with them that...well, I give up) it's not so much that, as if it hurts when you do that, stop doing that.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | July 13, 2007 at 08:53 AM
I thought I read a long Harper's article about a year or so ago that argued HIV rates in Africa were overstated because the tests employed there are much more prone to false positives than those used, e.g., in the U.S./Europe. Which, IIRC, caused one doctor to remark that you can go from HIV positive to HIV negative merely by flying from Zimbabwe to France.
Maybe I'll try to dig it up.
Posted by: Ugh | July 13, 2007 at 08:57 AM
Ugh--
I remember reading that article too. Some of it, if I'm not mistaken, also had to do with the relative glamour (although it seems like a macabre term to use in this context) of AIDS relative to malaria and some other diseases. AIDS was assumed as a way of making the numbers even more dramatic.
Posted by: JakeB | July 13, 2007 at 10:00 AM
Ajay - didn't think that about the exchange rate. Although my point was about sex tourism as a mode of behaviour as pernicious as polygamy, undertaken by rich foreigners unlikely to get criticized for it. I grokked perfectly well that Zimbabwe didn't have any sex tourism going on, although rereading my comment I realize why you might have got that impression.
Posted by: Sajia Kabir | July 13, 2007 at 10:41 AM
re Sajia's comment:
I would also worry that religious conservatives might make the following argument: since major economic disaster causes people to behave more virtuously and also to become healthier, we should never intervene to help countries suffering from tremendous economic privation, or try to prevent this privation in countries teetering on the edge of it.
Posted by: LP | July 13, 2007 at 12:36 PM
Yeah, who needs condoms when you've got famine?
Posted by: Sajia Kabir | July 13, 2007 at 01:16 PM
"a mode of behaviour as pernicious as polygamy"
Oh yeah? Tell that to the Hendersons, Bill, Barb, Nicki, and Margene(now there's a pernicious third wife you can be proud of)
Posted by: Jay Jerome | July 13, 2007 at 01:58 PM
It just occurred to me: why bother empowering women in Africa to end the AIDS plague if a recession will keep their husbands from running around?
Sorry, that's what prolonged exposure to white male assholes online and offline will do to your trust in the good faith of conservatives. Believe me, somewhere in Redneckdom someone is already making these arguments.
Posted by: Sajia Kabir | July 13, 2007 at 05:43 PM
"I just hope that the neocons don't try to spin this into
'Look what lustful beasts African men are.'"
Is there a history of "the neocons" doing this?
Certainly it's an old racist trope, but I'm unfamiliar with its associational history with "the neocons": could you elaborate?
Posted by: Gary Farber | July 15, 2007 at 03:45 AM
"I would also worry that religious conservatives might make the following argument: since major economic disaster causes people to behave more virtuously and also to become healthier, we should never intervene to help countries suffering from tremendous economic privation, or try to prevent this privation in countries teetering on the edge of it."
Religious conservatives not having just come on the scene in the last six months, and the same for major economic disasters, it would seem reasonable to actually check reality to see if there are, in fact, any actual religious conservatives making any such arguments, before "worrying" about them.
Then one might want to investigate whether a significant number of people are making such arguments, whether that specific argument is in the national zeitgeist, is that argument gaining popularity, and so on.
Is this, in fact, the reality, and something therefore worth spending time worrying about?
Cites?
But perhaps this thread is dead.
Posted by: Gary Farber | July 15, 2007 at 05:15 PM