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Article Title: "Indigenous African Rituals and Child-Feeding': Critical Reflections on the Shona Cultural Practices in the Context of HIV and AIDS, Zimbabwe
by Richard Shadreck Maposa and Oswell Rusinga

Abstract:
Next to the severity of the scourge of civil wars, HIV and AIDS is an epidemic that has caused existential despondency for humanity in the sub Saharan African region. Whereas the HIV infection among adults is principally accounted for by heterosexual intercourse, virtually all infections in infants are due to mother-to-children transmission (MTCT) largely through breast-feeding. A study of this nature is essential and desirable because child feeding and breast feeding in particular has become a source of anxiety and psychological distress among HIV positive mothers. Cultural beliefs and indigenous practices are still influencing what constitutes appropriate child feeding even when they are contradictory to the recommended modern child feeding practices in the contemporary era of HIV and AIDS epidemic. The paper observed that breast-feeding is a complex process governed by psychological and physiological factors which in turn, are conditioned by a wide spectrum of socio-economic and cultural circumstances. The study reflected on the indigenous cultural practices among the Shona people in southeastern Zimbabwe which could be used to compliment modern public health education in the advocacy towards reducing the transmission of HIV virus from mothers to children and thereby improving their maternal well-being. In the context of the HIV and AIDS, the study established that a child born to an HIV-infected and affected mother is stigmatised to the extent that the child is labelled as totem-less and thereby disrupts the legitimacy to survive well both in the family and society as a whole.

Keywords: breast-feeding, child-feeding, culture, HIV and AIDS, ritual, Shona, Zimbabwe

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