The depiction of black women in popular songs and some poems on AIDS in post-independence Zimbabwe

Abstract

ABSTRACT The most serious health concern in Zimbabwe today is the alarming spread of HIV/AIDS. Since 1987, the state radio stations, television channels, public and private print media have been at the forefront, giving information about the AIDS pandemic to the people. But as Danlabi Musa observes, ‘diversity’ and bigger audience are not the function of channel multiplicity’ but have also to do with “…access and programming” (Musa, in Gecau et al. 1996:23). This chapter looks at how the prevalence of AIDS in Zimbabwe is influencing the construction of the identity of black women in Zimbabwe, as is revealed in the popular songs and some oral poems. Unlike television, which only the rich have, access to newspapers, messages which depend on the taught skill of reading, songs, oral poems can be more open and democratic forms. Both are oral and aural and can break the boundaries imposed by writing or reading. Anybody can appropriate them for different purposes. Although male or female singers in Zimbabwe have been singing about the plight of women as minors in private and public circles, negative images of black women continue to be produced, circulated and consumed through song and some oral poetry. This chapter argues that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe has produced a new moral discourse in which women are objectified as “dangerous” and “loose” on the one hand, and are expected to become “respectable” and “disciplined” to attain the newly projected status of a “proper” women on the other.