EDICISA galvanising FOCCISA Communicators on HIV/Aids

Shupayi Mpunga, Communication Officer of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches who ran several sessions of the meeting.

Drawn from the regional Church Councils the communicators agreed to an unyielding strategy against the HIV/AIDS  and the formation of a committee of three people to spearhead the set up of a group of prominent Christian community leaders to draft a Kairos (Our moment of truth) Document an equivalent of the political Kairos Document which identified apartheid as an evil edifice and served as an impetus to its fall. The group will include prominent church leaders like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rev. Dr Augustine Musopole of Malawi, Prof Tinyiko Maluleka of South Africa, Dr. Musa Dube of Botswana, amongst others. Expected out in December, the draft document will be the basis for a theological grounding and reflections that will enable the Church to speak out against HIV/AIDS from a moral, theological and unified stance.

Another strategy adopted was the media-monitoring project for Southern Africa on HIV/AIDS reporting whereby all the Communicators in the Fellowship of Christian Councils in Southern Africa (FOCCISA) region will be monitoring their respective media for a one-year period, and this will culminate in a publication. Included in the spearheading committee are Zimbabwe, South Africa and Malawi who will coordinate the implementation of other resolutions which include the organizing of the training workshops on HIV/AIDS reporting, regional fund-raising, further networking, setting up of a website and a visit to Uganda (for a case study) under the auspices of the EDICISA which was mandated to spearhead the anti-HIV/AIDS campaign at the Johannesburg Workshop in October last year.

The participants observed that since Johannesburg there was little improvement on the HIV/AIDS reporting and that the Church was also to blame for the entrenchment of the stigma against those living with HIV/AIDS hence the multi-pronged regional strategy. Other issues dealt with at this meeting included communicating emergencies in the FOCCISA region as well as the possible role of Christian Communicators in accompanying the NEPAD process. Numbering 25 the participants included WACC'-Africa Region (AR)'s President, Rev. Dr Augustine Musopoli, WARR-AR's Secretary, Dorothy Munyakho, Paxy Watson Kayanula of the Baptist Media Centre, EDICISA Executive Director, Tendai Chikuku, Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) Secretary General and the FOCCISA deputy chair, Mr. Densen Mafinyani, Father Joe Mdhlela of the South African Council of Churches and editor of the Challenge magazine of South Africa and Sean Hawkey of WACC.

Contact EDICISA: edicisa@mango.zw