This thesis critically examines one of the major hindrances to dealing adequately with the HIV and AIDS problem facing Africa – the issue of silence. The study has examined the hypothesis that there are cultural factors underlying the silence that surrounds the disease, which when investigated and identified, will provide cues for breaking the silence and a way forward for dealing with the HIV and AIDS epidemic. The study utilises the concept of ‘cultural context’ proposed by Hall and ‘dimensions of culture’ postulated by Hofstede, to investigate the cultural reasons behind the HIV and AIDS silence among the Zulu people in and around Pietermaritzburg in the Kwazulu Natal province of South Africa. Testing these theories in the field with participants in a community-based HIV and AIDS Project called the Community Care Project (CCP) the study found that cultural contexts strongly influence silence around HIV and AIDS. In terms of dimensions of culture, the area was found to exhibit high power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, high collectivism and is feminine in nature in terms of assertiveness, but having high gender inequality (high masculinity in terms of gender egalitarianism). The analysis of the results of the field research revealed that each of the dimensions of culture contributes in various ways to the silence around HIV and AIDS. The study argues that there are two kinds of silence, namely barren silence and fertile silence, existing on a continuum. In a low context culture, barren silence is the silence that exists as absence, because when people do not talk about the issue, then there is no communication at all about the issue. In a high context culture, fertile silence is the silence that exists as presence, because when people do not talk about the issue at hand, they may still be communicating about it – either through non-verbal signs, or through coded language. The concepts of barren and fertile silence provide new insights into the issues of stigma and discrimination. Reasons for the silence included stigma, rejection, gossip, witchcraft, shame, blame, discrimination, secrecy, judgement, suspicion and taboo. It was found that each of the themes had something to do with stigma and discrimination, and lead to infected persons keeping silent about their HIV and AIDS status. In the final chapter, the research shows that when an intervention such as CCP takes the question of fertile silence seriously, then it is much easier to break the silence around HIV and AIDS and to deal with stigma and discrimination. The research therefore concludes that the concept of ‘Fertile Silence’ and ‘Barren Silence’ has provided us with clues as to how to ‘break the silence’ around HIV and AIDS in a high context culture such as that of Africa. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

That natural resources (NRs) are important to those experiencing adversity, and, especially, vulnerability associated with HIV/AIDS, is well documented, particularly with respect to food and energy security. What is unclear is where HIV/AIDS ranks in terms of its significance in comparison to other household shocks, the role local ecological knowledge may (LEK) play in households' response to shock, a propos the types of coping strategies that are employed. Consequently, this research aims to bridge the knowledge gap between HIV/AIDS and the degree to which it is contributing to the expansion of NR commercialisation and to explore the unknowns surrounding the influence of LEK on people's choice of coping strategy. A two phase study was designed to provide quantitative rigour with qualitative depth. Phase one was an extensive, rapid survey of NR traders within urban and rural settings in five southern Africa countries. The principle objective was to profile the trade, the livelihoods of those involved and their reasons for entering the trade, to ultimately establish to what degree HIV/AIDS may have been a catalyst for this. Almost one third of the sample entered the trade in response to illness and/or death in their households, with 80% of deaths being of breadwinners. The findings illustrated considerable dependence on the sale of NRs; for almost 60% of the sample it was their household's only source of income. There was evidently increased blurring of the lines between rural and urban NR use with a greater diversity of products being traded in urban areas. Phase two involved in-depth interviews and work with a smaller sample at two sites selected based on the findings from the first phase. It incorporated three groups of households; non-trading, inexperienced trading and experienced trading households. Key areas of focus were household shocks, coping strategies employed in response to these and the role LEK may be playing in the choice of coping strategies. Within a two year period, 95% of households registered at least one shock, of which 80% recorded AIDS-related proxy shocks. Non-trading households were significantly worse-off in this regard, while in the case of non-AIDS proxy shocks, there was no such difference between groups. The most frequently employed coping strategy was the consumption and sale of NRs and was of particular importance when households were faced with AIDS proxy shocks. Trading households emerged as having superior levels of LEK in comparison to non-trading households, even for non-traded NRs, suggesting that prior LEK of NRs opened up opportunities to trade in NR as a coping strategy. Further inspection of the latter group however revealed that the portion of non-trading households who traded on a very ad hoc basis actually had comparable levels of LEK to the trading households. Despite the ad hoc trading households' vulnerable state and their disproportionately high level of AIDS proxy measures, they had at their disposal, sufficient LEK to unlock certain key coping strategies, namely the NR trade. In this sense there are apparent linkages between LEK, HIV/AIDS and the expansion of the commercialisation of NRs.

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