| The proliferation of the HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe has been met with an equal proliferation of research and literature---and Internet traffic---on its epidemiology and impacts, social and economic. From an economic and policy perspective, HIV/AIDS spreads faster under conditions of poverty, gender discrimination and economic insecurity---and this is the lot of many Zimbabweans. AIDS is more rapidly fatal where health systems do not adequately meet health needs, causes more serious effects where household resources are sparse, and depletes skills and savings at a time when economic demand for these inputs is high. The overall impact on those with skills and experience is substantial with long term consequences. From an anthropological and historical perspective, AIDS can be seen following the fault lines of long established indigenous practices, the colonial legacy, and present-day political economy.;However, HIV's trajectory is not reducible solely to these practices, processes, and structures. Our ability to comprehend and respond effectively to AIDS will depend on careful analyses and strategies which take these very forces---history, cultural practices, and political economy---into full consideration. This account focuses on a significant, though mostly overlooked, piece of this complex picture: traditional healers, or n'anga in chiShona. In particular, it focuses on how broader socioeconomic forces become embodied as risk for HIV and how it is that n'anga interpret and manage these processes of embodiment in the capital city, Harare. N'anga interpretations demand that we be aware of a long-standing history of structural violence perpetrated on the average Zimbabwean (and how such forces and processes structure risk of infection), first under colonialism and, currently, under the contemporary Zimbabwean state where virulent strains of economic, political, and social inequity abound. Like AIDS itself, 'modernity'---and especially 'development'---can be metaphorically read as a form of misfortune that must be carefully managed. For while colonial and postcolonial institutions and experiences were seen as routes to an improved material existence, these same institutions and experiences have also come to be associated with people "forgetting their culture and taking on Western ways" and, most importantly, for making them susceptible to AIDS. |
