From her 21 st floor office suite on Field Street, Princess Aisha estimates that she writes about a dozen prescriptions per day for fidelity protection medicine. As part of a large cornucopia of African solutions for the African HIV/AIDS crisis, substances that assist with HIV prevention have been largely overlooked in the wide media coverage of indigenous anti-AIDS treatments. Yet the booming market for muthis that help people to negotiate their way safely through an HIV-dense environment is well worth taking a look at. By examining what people are seeking in terms of support for HIV prevention, we might get a few good ideas about the type of HIV prevention messages that make sense to people and that speak to their desires.

Princess Aisha claims that the demand for fidelity protection medicines has skyrocketed in the past 3 to 4 years. “These days most of my customers look for love herbs. Its no longer married men leaving wives when they go to find work. Its now mostly single women who want their partners to stick to them. They are very worried about HIV.”

Unlike the ubejani-style tonics used to treat HIV/AIDS that are largely new mixtures developed to address the symptoms of this new disease, muthi mixtures used for HIV prevention purposes are mostly old ‘love-potion’ recipes that were once used sparingly and are now being used more frequently.

On a rainy Monday morning Princess Aisha’s small waiting room is filled with 11 twenty-something looking women and 3 older middle-aged men. Inside her ‘surgery’ there are two well-worn chairs, an old kudu skin rug, and a candle and mirror set on a small table. Aisha offers a 4-step treatment programme for securing the fidelity of a loved one. The initial consultation fee is R30 with a further R250 for the full course, which comes with a 3 year guarantee of partner faithfulness. The treatment does entail some risks however, and these are discussed before a client commits to the programme. Firstly, a client must be sure that he or she wants a particular partner for the entire 3 year period. Otherwise, should the client change his or her mind, the ‘treated’ partner will become obsessed and will stalk the client for a long time afterwards, possibly for the rest of their life. Secondly, if the client fails to renew the treatment at the end of the 3 years, then a difficult break-up can be expected, with the ‘treated’ partner becoming violent before leaving abruptly. According to Aisha, most of her clients are prepared to take these risks.

The programme starts with the client sprinkling a small amount of a powdery substance onto his or her private parts and around the marital or partnership bed before making love. For the treatments to be effective they must be done in secret with the partner never suspecting anything. Step two involves putting some of your bath water aside and using it from time to time to add to your partner’s food or drink. Step three is sprinkling another powder into your partner’s favorite drink. Step four, which consolidates fidelity, involves bringing the herbalist a piece of your partner’s clothing that is later returned along with instructions to bury it in your garden while repeating an incantation along the lines of ‘you are mine forever and only mine forever’.

For under three hundred rands this fidelity protection programme is relatively cheap when compared to what other herbalists in the Durban city centre are asking for a similar prescription. A certain Prophet Manna sells a set of 7 colourful strings to tie around the waist at R50 per string, or R3500 for the complete set. But the promise of ‘full spectrum’ treatment that works on multiple levels to create the kind of relationship that could protect both you and your partner against HIV is evidently worth the price. Not only are these mutis said to make your loved-one ‘blind’ to other potential rivals, but they also increase your own as well as your partner’s interest in sex, responsiveness to sex, and your desire to touch, kiss and fondle, according to Princess Aisha. In the unlikely event that a rival should take advantage of your partner against his or her will, that rival can expect to feel immediately fearful, sick or possibly even die, depending on the type and strength of the protection muthi used.

Princess Aisha thinks that while the high price of lobola is a factor behind the demand by men for fidelity protection medicines, fear of contracting HIV/AIDS is the primary reason for their current popularity. By offering a culturally familiar way to fulfill a desire for love, devotion and the type of fidelity needed to help guard against exposure to HIV, the bustling trade in these protective medicines makes perfect sense. For one thing they provide a countervailing force against the social pressures for and expectations of multiple partnering. Covert use of these substances may help to give some people confidence in their ability to control and maintain a monogamous relationship. A growing demand for fidelity protection medicine probably reflects a growing eagerness for faithful and stable relationships.

In this time of HIV/AIDS there is a real need to get people talking about things like love, sex, desire and expectations in relationships including marriage. Using fidelity protection medicines is a convenient way to avoid the difficult task of verbal communication and negotiation for safe sex. Muthi peddlers like Princess Aisha who sell the illusion of HIV protection to desperate and vulnerable people are little more than criminals. The only real solution to the social disease of HIV/AIDS is a conscious effort to change behaviour and norms. Medicines, whether they are African, western, traditional, modern, or otherwise will never percolate into the roots of this disease.

* The authors are the recipients of the HIV/AIDS and the Media Fellowship of the Perinatal HIV Research Unit and the Journalism Programme at Wits University