Resilient Westerhof fights stigma

NDAMU SANDU

The late Scottish author Samuel Smiles once said that hope is like “the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of burden behind us”.

Since testing positive to HIV and declaring her status, 19 years ago, HIV/AIDS activist Tendayi Westerhof (pictured) has encountered roadblocks; had to deal with stigma and her world turned upside down.

She clung to hope and has encouraged other women to be tested and know their statuses.

“I took a calling that I felt I could not talk about HIV when I have not disclosed my status because I could not preach a message of disclosure to others without doing it myself. This is one reason that made me disclose my status,” Westerhof told Business Times this week.

“Once you know about your status, whether positive or negative, you plan your life positively, to live with HIV or to live longer with an HIV negative status.”

Yet there was a “price” to pay: her modelling agency collapsed, so were the health and beauty as well as ladies clothing boutiques in Harare. At one time she was homeless and was called names.

In the fight against stigma, Westerhof formed a group Models Against Aids which used fashion to destigmatise HIV/AIDS.

Westerhof formed the Public Personalities Against Aids Trust (PPAT) where she encouraged public figures to be at the forefront and also to come out and disclose their HIV positive status to beat stigma and discrimination. 

“In 2004, we saw through PPAT a group of parliamentarians from the portfolio committee on Health and Child Care who undertook public HIV tests in a project called Resolve Face to Face with Aids. This was a way to beat stigma,” Westerhof said.

“I would talk on radio, TV, newspapers and that was meant to break the stigma. This was instrumental in the formation of support groups of people living with HIV.

The story of a Ugandan musician who disclosed his status emboldened her.   I was motivated to come out about my status because I have read about the people who had come out from other countries during that time.”

She added: “I knew very little but I recall reading about a Ugandan musician whom I saw a documentary about him, where they showed how he was living with HIV.  He fought, he was resilient. He spoke about his HIV status in the face of stigma.”

“I said to myself if we had people like him who have lived with it, I could also live with it. There was nothing wrong to disclose the status. A number of people are living with HIV, they have tested positive but they cannot disclose their status because they are afraid of the environment; afraid of stigma, certain barriers in society. They are also afraid to lose their status.”

She said back then society thought that to be HIV positive was for the poor people and “we had seen ordinary people coming out but very few on the high profile people”

Disclosing her status, Westerhof said, came with advantages: she would walk into any public health system and get help.

How was the message of her status received?

“There are people who think because of the way I looked at that time, I looked like a model I was trying to beautify HIV/AIDS. I was trying to show off. They expected a person living with HIV to be miserable to show the world that they are experiencing difficulties,” she said.

“I said I don’t want people to be sympathetic about me. I wanted them to be empathetic to say if they were in my conditions how they were expecting the society to respond to them and to treat them. So this is how the message was received.”

The activist has written a book, Unlucky in Love, which has received rave reviews as it dissects issues of gender, her upbringing as a young person, love and relationship, marriages and the fact that her life started in the rural areas.

“I was merely a rural girl who came to the city later on and met all these kinds of people without getting empowerment on issues on sexual and reproductive health or without being prepared for city life,” she said.

“I shared my experience. A story had to be told and to me it was a journey towards my healing because I could just not keep it inside. I was so heartbroken. It’s unfortunate that I was misunderstood by certain sections of society.”

Westerhof has worked with captains of industry, personalities and high profile married women preaching her gospel about hope and the need for people to be tested and use “these opportunities as entry points to get treatment”.  

Despite her modelling career ending in 2006, Westerhof has been featured in the African Woman magazine, the “Vogue of Africa” and appeared on several billboards and a number of publications.

Westerhof draws support from her mother who has been a pillar of strength.

“My mother stood with me and opened her home for the first support group for people living with HIV in Rimuka. Up to this day people living with HIV gather under her mango tree to discuss the work of the support group and that is where the Pan African Positive Women’s Coalition Zimbabwe chapter was founded. She was supportive,” she said.

Women living with HIV, Westerhof said, walk through rugged terrain.

“If HIV is discovered, the blame is on the woman. They also face gender based violence, where they fail to negotiate for safer sex practices. They are affected by treatment access, living in hard to reach areas in the rural areas and sometimes the healthcare facilities are far away,” she said.

“They face economic hardships. HIV carries the face of the woman. 60% of people living with HIV are women and you have to face challenges. Women living with HIV are more prone to cervical cancer.”

She said the women are champions and community mobilisers and have to be supported.

Westerhof also leads the Pan African Positive Women’s Coalition-Zimbabwe (PAPWC) founded in 2005 by a group of women living with HIV from Rimuka suburb in Sanyati district in Mashonaland West in Kadoma.

“Over the years, these women used to meet under a mango tree at my home and we would strategise  about various issues such as treatment adherence, preparedness,  treatment literacy, issues positive living, nutrition living and also to offer each other psych-social support,” she said.

This is how PAPWC was started by the women of Rimuka in Kadoma. The organisation has spread to all of Mashonaland West and from then it became a national network of people living with HIV.

“It became a national network of women living with HIV and has in all 10 provinces in Zimbabwe. It has young women living with HIV and women living with HIV and disabilities.

“We have our structures, we build capacities for women living with HIV in research about the issues about their health, women’s capacity in treatment access, treatment literacy, and the capacity of women living with HIV as advocacy on the prevention of mother to child transmission agenda and also Gender based Violence as it affects them in the community”, Westerhof said.

“We build their capacity around that and economic empowerment through income generation projects such as gardens, herbal gardens, sewing, peanut butter making and goat rearing, among other projects.”

She added: “We also promote the leadership of women living with HIV in positions of governance like sitting on the National Aids Council (NAC) board and to sit on other influential boards where their matters are discussed in programme planning, programme design, programme implementation, monitoring and evaluation of issues to do with their health and their communities.”

They  are promoting the issues of women living with HIV.

Women living with HIV should also hold positions of responsibility to influence decision making.

Westerhof was last year appointed to  the board of NAC chaired by health specialist Margaret Mehlomakhulu. She said the appointment signifies the meaningful involvement of people living with HIV in the national Aids response. NAC was created by an Act of Parliament following a petition by a group of people living with HIV who had marched from Marondera to Harare.

“It is within that Act that there is representation of people living with HIV on the NAC board because we would want to ensure that issues of the people living with HIV remain at the centre of the response to the disease especially accessing treatment, prevention of new infections, care and support and mitigations at all levels,” Westerhof said.

She is a mother of four, has five grandchildren and is “happily single”.

Westerhof said women in PAPWC are community volunteers, driven by passion and sometimes work for many months without funding.

“Even this year since the coming of Covid-19, we have continued to work, we have been into certain communities where we have conscientised them on Covid-19. We ensure that the voices of the women living with HIV continue to be amplified,” she said.

So passionate about her work that Westerhof has declared that she is “unstoppable with or without funding”.

“I do not have goods to give to an ordinary person but the fact that I keep going and looking strong is an encouragement to many given my condition. It is the best encouragement to my condition because of a lot of stigma around HIV and Aids and a lot of people do not want to be known that they have the virus,” she said.

“People living with HIV, with the advent of treatment and if well taken in good quantities and on time, a person living with HIV can be productive like anyone else.”