Singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka Campaigns Against Malaria
The singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka visits New Yorkto help campaign for the voices of Africa's women and children to be heard at the opening of the new session of the United Nations General Assembly, and for the leaders of the G20 countries not to forget their commitments to the continent. Chaka Chaka serves as a goodwill ambassador for the UN Children's Fund, for the Roll Back Malaria campaign and for 46664 (Nelson Mandela's global HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention campaign). She recently sat down to talk to AllAfrica in our Washington, DC offices. Excerpts:
Why did you choose fighting malaria as cause?
I wanted to do malaria because one of my musicians died from malaria. We went to Gabon to do a show and coming back she contracted malaria. She was misdiagnosed by doctors in South Africa. They thought it was a fever and she died of cerebral malaria….
It was an eye-opener. I needed also to be educated; I needed to know more and I starting saying, Ok, yeah, I'll start to give … all the effort that I have to make sure no one dies of malaria.
That's wishful thinking, but you know for me to go out there educating women and talking to ordinary people who may have just been sitting there or not having any knowledge about malaria… doing lots of advocacy… asking for more money, asking for transparency and political will from governments, has made me a better person, because I know there are other countries where you see positive reactions.
And people know what is supposed to be done and some of them just don't have resources to help themselves…. Phumzile's death was not something that was very good, but it's going to help other people out there.
I saw you last in western Kenya during distribution of malaria nets and water filters. Can you talk about some of the groups you are currently working with?
Working with UNICEF and Roll Back Malaria and Goodwill With Voices for me is so good – just to see that there are other [corporations] and companies who want to do their social responsibility, and want to go down to the people to help them and don't worry just about the bottom line …
Going down to Kenya, making this whole integrated program, was really very good because you just can't do one thing and say that we are concentrating on AIDS, we are concentrating on malaria, we are concentrating on TB. [There is a] synergy in all of those things. And I think what Vestiguard did was very commendable… We had so many people volunteering to test for AIDS … People cannot take their treatment if they don't know their status, but once you are aware of your status you will know to start your treatment ...
But I think the most important thing for me is to empower women, because I think they are the ones who are sort of disenfranchised, who are segregated and who are being pushed aside. But you know if you empower a woman you empower the whole nation because they know what to do with the nets. And even with the small grants … it is a good thing because whatever they have they will use it appropriately for their families and their children.
And the little that they can have [they] may use it to generate some income for themselves. But I don't think we have to leave [out] men. We also have to take them with us because I think they really have to learn that if they are not doing what they are supposed to do the whole family gets disenfranchised and they are the ones who suffer. So I think it is time to teach even our boys to be responsible so that they can be better men.
I had a quick question about eradicating malaria - what do you think is the biggest obstacle?
Well the very same effort that they put in eradicating polio, I think the same should be done with AIDS and malaria. Obviously funding is a huge obstacle. Political will – that's what we need as well. The funds should go to where they are supposed to as well … And I think it is important to have a civil society there and having their voices and …I think it is important that ordinary people know that the government received the money, where they received it, and how it should be used … If the money is not used well people will still suffer. So I think that there should be some accountability …
We don't have to despair because I know sometimes I actually feel disgruntled and say, "Why am I doing this?" because I don't see any results. But when you go to places like Zanzibar, you see that there was so much malaria and you see tourism is booming now… Nobody wants to get to get sick, so we need to get these leaders to show their counterparts that we did it this way and it can be done… and its good for the economy and its good for development as well.
In Africa, I think a huge problem is [bed net] distribution because of the infrastructure, but if we use ordinary people to do that I think it will be great thing to do. Tourists, they make means to go to the remote areas, and really if you work with people on the ground in those areas to distribute the nets … that would be absolutely great…
There are consistently things preventing them from using the nets, but if you go out there and say, "Here are the nails and we give you the nails, we will show you how to hang the nets and please once you see how it is done, help your neighbor do that," it really helps.
This would be different from the broad, massive net distribution – get more personal but get functional as well.
Exactly, do it correctly and you know that it's done. You know because by the time we left Ethiopia we had gone to different places and hung all those nets and some of the people that we had done it for had to go to their neighbors, to go and help them. So at least there was a lot of progress that we [saw] that the nets were going to be used and [people] will be sleeping under them because everything was done.
[Explaining how she insisted on women getting nets] My worry was that are they [the men] coming back to collect all those nets so that they can sleep under them or will they give them to their pregnant wives and their children under five? … I was happy to see them and I insisted to them to make sure that they give [the nets] to their wives to sleep under but … I knew. I am an African woman, I knew their women are never going to see those nets so it was very good to have women have their own nets...
It was very good when we were in Kenya. Obviously, men were sort of resisting. We had lots of women coming and … [eventually] men just came as well. I think another huge problem that we have is stigma. People are scared to be known to be having HIV. You know, if you have it and you just sit there and deteriorate, it's bad. Rather, know you have it and you're going to take precautions and take treatment and get better and you can start functioning – it's good for you and your family as well… I don't know how we're going to get around the stigma part…
So you were using your fame for this purpose – and how is your career doing?
It's doing ok, but my humanitarian [work] comes first for me. Twenty-four years in the music industry it's just been very good, but if I can use my face, my stage name, going out there to help people. I can sit down and say I can make all these records, but if people are dying whose going to buy them anyway? So let's entertain them as well as educate them.