Led by Kate Wells, Design Lecturer, and housed in the Department of Design Studies at the Durban Institute of Technology, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the SIYAZAMA PROJECT - RURAL CRAFTS and HIV/Aids Awareness, sub-titled ‘Fusing partnerships in rural women’s development’ was initially funded in 1998 by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) and administered by the British Council, Durban, South Africa. Expert rural craftswomen from the Valley of a Thousand Hills, Inanda Valley, Msinga region, and Ndwedwe informal settlements, undergraduate and postgraduate design students, health workers, doctors, traditional healers, people living with HIV/Aids, medical anthropologists, performers, musicians and marketing outlets work together on a multiplicity of levels in addressing Aids awareness whilst engendering a ‘breaking of the silence’ and ‘straight talk’ approach. The Siyazama Project seeks to promote the pivotal role of design to affirm indigenous knowledge’s and skills as a means to disseminate vital information about HIV/Aids amongst the most marginalised and vulnerable of people in South Africa – rural women, the majority of whom practice ancestral worship.

Rural women hold a contradictory role in modern Zulu society. While they are primarily sole breadwinners in their rural homes, and have earned a degree of role-model status through their expert craft-making abilities and are thus regarded as opinion-makers in their communities, they are simultaneously highly susceptible to HIV infection through their biological make-up, gender imbalances, gender dynamics, illiteracy and cultural taboos. For the majority of these craftswomen, participation in the Siyazama Project workshops has provided them with their first opportunity to hear of Aids and its host of complexities other than via gossip and rumour. And even when they are thus informed, socio-economic barriers, a lack of formal schooling and cultural taboos related to the discussion of sexual matters can render them silent and disempowered, unless they can find an alternative and permissible mode of expression.

Currently HIV/Aids campaigns in South Africa tend to be very large scale and evasive, effecting little long-term impact on behavioral change. An in-depth focused ethnographic evaluation study in collaboration with University of Natal’s Dr Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala followed the initial intervention in 1998, providing fresh evidence of the dynamics at work in the Aids pandemic, and created scenarios for further research into the layers of prejudices, taboos and cosmological issues surrounding the disease.

What began in1998 as a simple exercise in upgrading craft design and production with the addition of important health related information, developed almost of its own accord into something much more complex with a far-reaching series of impacts on the communities involved.

The craft collection of the Siyazama Project, amounting to more than 200 beaded artifacts, is both stirring, evocative and in some cases unusually sexually explicit, is due to be exhibited in the United Kingdom at Middlesex University in the MODA Gallery (Museum of Decorative Arts and Architecture) in January/February 2003. Mini collections have been recreated and developed for museums in the USA, one of which recipient was Michigan State University Museum.

In 2000 Kate Wells completed her MA Design qualification through Middlesex University in London. Her thesis explores the background to the current and future scenario of this intervention that was positioned upon a number of years of on-going involvement with the rural women, which took place between 1996/2002. Importantly, the Siyazama Project has recently linked with a new British Council funded programme collaborating with the University of Strathclyde, Scotland and the University of Malawi, Southern Africa.

In August 2002 the Siyazama Project methodologies will be presented and tested amongst the traditional craftspeople in rural Malawi.

Fokisile, who is 64 years old, is reminded in this tableau of the Year of the War in 1906 in which people were being slaughtered unmercifully. Once dead they are pulled under the shade of the big trees, their shields left lying around them. Fokisile tells her story by emphasing that there is more care for the dead than the living. She remembers this war through oral traditions and likens it to the current situation in the Aids pandemic: one is assured of more care once dead.

Beauty Ndlovu – Virgin testing Tableau

Beauty Ndlovu’s beaded tableau records the practice of virgin testing. The young woman being tested - the ‘testee’ - lies on a covering on the ground - traditionally this would have been the hide of a beast. The woman performing the test - the ‘testor’ - kneels at the feet of the testee to perform the test. Close examination of the tableau reveals a red slit at the point of vaginal entry.

The Twins …

Twins in any society have particular significance, and Zulu society is no different. Traditionally twins are a bad omen in the Zulu culture, and it was customary to kill one of a pair of twins at birth. This changed when Shaka’s grandfather could not bring himself to kill one of his twin daughters. Twins are considered to have special powers of communication with the amadlozi (ancestors) and with each other: what happens to the one will happen to the other. These powers render them capable of healing under certain circumstances. What then happens when one tests positive for HIV/Aids? Does this mean that the other will test positive? Or does this mean that the connection will be broken?

Lobolile Ximba’s Twins Tableau

The twin on the left is married, which is indicated by the headdress and the cloak that she is wearing. The other twin is not married - note the difference in dress, which records her status as an unmarried woman. The married twin has tested positive for HIV/Aids. Will the unmarried twin get it? Lobolile Ximba said that the connection had broken down when the married woman had disclosed her HIV status to her unmarried sister and that they could no longer feel each other’s emotions. They are now separated.

Women crucified to Aids – Crosses made by Lobolile Ximba, Bonangani Ximba and Tholiwe Sitole

The women crucified to Aids are recorded in these beaded crucifixes each of which has a ‘J’ at the head of the cross. Human hair is used to adorn the heads

Women crucified to Aids

There is a high awareness of spirituality among the Zulu people, regardless of whether this is of a traditional cosmological nature or engendered in one or another form of organised religion. Some form of Christianity or another is common, even in rural communities where it can be practiced along with elements of traditional cosmology. Indigenous churches are numerous and varied. Notwithstanding the variety of religious beliefs and behaviours, the crucifix is a common image in rural Zululand, as a symbol of the sacrifice of the life of the Jesus for the sins of the world. The most frequently produced image in the Siyazama Project has been of the numerous individual women whose lives have been sacrificed for Aids. To date, four women have produced beadwork constructions of women sacrificed on the cross of Aids. That there is a connection with the sacrifice of Jesus, is made explicit in the beading of the letter ‘J’ at the head of the cross. Some of the beadwork crucifixes are worked with entoptic-type bead patterns implying their connection between this world and the next… ‘messages of life and death’.

Aids Orphans Tableau by Bonangani Ximba

Seven Aids orphans stand on a plinth. They all have human hair on their heads.Who will feed them? Who will clothe them? Who will house them? Who will take on the responsibilities of schooling and health, of moral development and careers, of ritual and ceremony? Who will nurse them if they develop full-blown Aids? Who will bury them?

It is apparent that although an immense amount of critical information has been transferred into the rural homes utilizing the red ribbon logo, the role model status of the craftswoman, her cosmology, her traditions, her opinions and her recognition in the community may not afford her much personal benefit. If she is sexually active, the project has evidenced that she is powerless in the face of Aids. The war is obviously far from won.

With recent funding received from the Raymond and Wendy Ackerman Foundation of South Africa a further initiative has been born out of Siyazama Project with regards the growing HIV/Aids orphan population in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The Siyazama Project has, with national and international partners, joined forces and embraced a whole new direction in dealing with this escalating problem. The intention is that the project‘s bead workers will produce thousands of little beaded Aids orphan dolls and that these dolls will be placed on or near every computer in the world. Each beaded orphan doll will need adopting and caring for by everybody in the corporate sector - thereby spreading the responsibility worldwide. The benefits of this exciting project will directly address the needs of the rural craftswomen who are increasingly becoming surrogate mothers for growing populations of young rural children.

It is hoped that such initiatives will transform lives in their transmission of messages of life and death.

Celani Njoyeza's Coffin Tableau - A rural family looks forward to the man of the house returning home for Christmas as it means a joyful celebration and at last some extra cash. Sadly this year he returns home from his work on the mines in Johannesburg in a coffin. AIDS is the cause of his death. (2002)