AWID: What is your name?

MB: Miriam Banda

AWID: Which region are you located in?

MB: In the Southern Africa region, in Zambia particularly.

AWID: Can you tell us about the work of your organization?

MB: I come from a national network. I represent people living with HIV through a network of Zambian people living with HIV. We deal in four main areas to create a safe space for people living with HIV. The support groups are the building blocks of the network. We deal with access to services, information particular to people living with HIV and advocacy which entails representing people living with HIV at different levels: community, district, as well as provincial and national. We also address livelihoods which is the most important area because if we don’t address the economic empowerment of people living with HIV, then we’re missing everything because when somebody is economically empowered, then their access to certain things is much easier.

AWID: Which movement or movements does your organization consider itself to be part of and why?

MB: It’s actually the whole society, mainstream AIDS service but particularly people living with HIV movement. So this - because I’m part of a process - is on an individual level. I believe that as an individual I’ve actually started the process of where I’m now questioning and challenging our members to actually think out of the box. Three quarters of our members are actually women living with HIV. We have a critical mass there.

AWID: Why does movement building matter?

MB: It’s important because as long as we’re boxed up, as long as we’re specializing and taking a silo approach, then we’re losing it. Movements have better impact in terms of voices. Thinking in terms of movements might be a bit more complicated, but like I said, it’s like a tapestry - different colours, different ornaments - but it’s one thing. So, as long as women’s issues are not at the core of all our different sectors, then we’re losing it, we’re missing it. Because everything is actually about patriarchy and that’s the oppression of women’s rights.

AWID: What does solidarity from and within women’s rights movements look like?

MB: I feel the solidarity. It’s these spaces that refuel solidarity. Coming from a community perspective, I see the solidarity when, for example, a woman needs help because she has somebody who’s sick or she’s sick herself. People go across the lines of tribe, religion. Women in particular do this because the burden of care is theirs. I’ve seen it at that level. But how to actually operationalize solidarity and take it from this big level and have it appreciated and actually have the transformation happen at the personal level for the woman at the grassroots, is the other aspect.

AWID: What have been some of the organizational experiences with other social movements your organization has had? Can you tell us a about your challenges and achievements and what did you learn from this experience about how you build stronger movements?

MB: Social movements – I’m still at the point where I’m in the mainstream, maybe fortunately or unfortunately. Although I think sometimes it is a disadvantage. I’m actually on the governance level, meaning I have to constantly be thinking as a representative of people living with HIV.
Through the process that I’ve been through I’ve now started thinking out of the box. Yes, we’ve spoken about the feminization of HIV but I’ve been forced to deal with it from a transformational, personal point. I’m now thinking, is this friendly for a woman? Is this not oppressive for a woman? I’m even challenging some ways that I’ve been socialized. I’m middle-aged and went through a catholic school.

As an organization what is good, is that from the process that I’ve been through, there’s actually a core coming from the women living with HIV themselves to say, ‘Yes, we want to be members of the Network, but we need our safe space, we need our safe structures as well.’ They need an indigenous association or network of Zambian women living with HIV. So that’s the challenge.

What other challenges? There have been many. I’ve been constantly reminding the women in the network that I won’t always be there. They must run the organization. I give the necessary technical support, but in my being so busy at the different levels it’s actually catalyzed them to actually be able to move with things. The organization continues to function even though three quarters of the time I’m not there.

Another challenge is that we don’t have enough women in decision-making positions and yet three quarters of the members are women. That’s linked to literacy levels and for me that’s what we have to start dealing with. Thankfully, one on one, there’s some women that I’ve encouraged. There’s one young woman who was able to go back to school and do adult education and she’s in the same class now as her younger son which is grade nine. For me that’s inspiring. I kept telling them that I can always be there to go with you to the offices but you guys have to start going out yourselves and you have to start educating yourselves. So, it’s about being able to foster change even if it’s just one woman’s life. For me that‘s the gratification that I get.

AWID: Women’s movements have achieved a lot in terms of policy change but less in the area of challenging norms and beliefs at the community and societal level. Would you agree?

MB: Yes. I come from a part of Zambia that is very traditional and very male pleasure driven. Even a woman who has had access to education will tell you that in the things she goes through everything still comes back to tradition.

If we use HIV as an entry point, what HIV has done, is made us look at things differently. We, as a people, have not been open in talking about sexuality, about what HIV has done. It has brought out all these challenges and what we have to do is to run with it, we must talk, talk, talk. No matter how uncomfortable we feel.

I’ve got two teenagers and thankfully I feel less and less uncomfortable these days with the questions they ask because now they’re able to read and so I give them information and they read. We have to start talking about our sexuality and what we have been told traditionally. We have a system where women and girls, at different ages, are told about how to pleasure a man so we need to make the space for us to dialogue with our children. Traditionally I never discussed sex, and I still don’t even today with my mother. That’s how I was brought up.

We need to move away from the way we’ve been socialized and let our children know that they can talk to us. We need to say that as long as you’re sexually active, always use a condom. I always tell my daughter this. I don’t want her to be another statistic. I am. I don’t want her to be. She has her whole life ahead of her.