[This is an excellent article which shows the depth of insanity in the Black African mind. Somebody should write a book about Black African AIDS Myths. One wouldn’t know whether to cry or to laugh as one witnesses the crass stupidity on the one hand resulting in extreme tragedy on the other. Here in Africa we Whites have seen so much of Black insanity that mostly, we just laugh and ignore it. But in reality, Blacks end up killing themselves. There is a price for crass stupidity – and many times the price is DEATH!

Take special note of the institutionalised Incest. This is a “custom” wherein the oldest son has sex with his mother when his father dies.

Look at how they are trying to replace this with a more moral custom of “jumping over cows!” I shake my head at the madness of it all. Jan]

PUTRAJAYA: Traditional practices like sexual cleansing of widows and widowers, unrestrained polygamy and myths that having sex with young virgin protects men from the HIV virus are among the many factors that contribute to the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

Another significant contribution is the belief among men there that a marriage contract is equal to an ownership contract.

It results in women not having any say in protecting themselves against the infection of sexually-transmitted diseases.

Several ministers from countries like Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Algeria and Congo who took part in the interactive session on HIV/AIDS at the Non-Aligned Movement Ministerial Meeting on the Advancement of Women related how some practices continued to haunt women in their countries.

Zambia Lands Minister Judith Kangoma-Kangoma said that in many parts of Africa, widows and widowers were still required to be œsexually cleansed of their dead spouses before they could remarry.

This practice, she said, required the person concerned to have sex with her husband™s male sibling in the case of a widow and the female sibling in the case of a widower.

œWe are now trying to encourage changes by substituting this practice with others like having them jump over cows or go through a herbal bath, she said.

She said polygamy “ once believed effective in limiting sexually-transmitted diseases as men had sex only with their wives in the village “ now posed a threat to women as mobility had encouraged men to seek spouses outside their village.

Malawi Lands Minister Joyce Banda said the myth that having sex with young virgins could cure men of AIDS and protect them from the infection of HIV virus was still strongly believed in most parts of Africa.

URL: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/20…/p>