I think you are going to have to do quite a bit in making this website far much more simplified, if at all you are going to get much out of the Zambian persons living with HIV and the general public as whole. For people like me that have been privileged to have walked the corridors of tertiary education, it is easy to follow. But I doubt that that is the same for the ordinary Zambians, among other ordinary nationals across the continent, whose interests Madam Mataka serves.

Please allow me to rephrase my wording. As opposed to using the phrase "…ordinary Zambians…" let me replace that with, an even longer one, "…an ordinary Zambian person living with HIV that has come out in the open about their positive status…”. In so rephrasing, I want to make particular reference to those positive persons that constitute support groups of persons living with HIV. The same support groups formed by the Network of Zambian People Living with HIV (NZP+) that are organizational members (the support groups that is) of the Treatment Advocacy & Literacy Campaign (TALC) and their individual members who also happen to be TALC volunteers run the numerous activities of TALC country wide. These are done in the various provincial hubs that have so far been established in 7 out of the 9 provinces of the country. Getting back, I make special reference to those persons that have had the courage to publicly come out with their status and get involved in the fight against HIV by encouraging others to do the same. I cite, as examples, the many people that I have come across at TALC and during my 3 years as a volunteer-paralegal with the Zambia AIDS Law Research & Advocacy Network (ZARAN).

Please do not misquote me. I do not, in anyway, wish to demean or defame anybody by so asserting. However, I wish to express my opinion on matters that affect these courageous groups of people that many times are unable to express themselves. And even when they do express themselves, no one ever bothers to hear them out! Generally speaking, it is no secret that the bulk of these people are either illiterate if not of significantly low levels of education, so much so that their contribution towards the fight against HIV does not go too far beyond being used by local nongovernmental organizations and like stakeholders as tools for grant proposals to foreign donors. They are also, in most cases, used as participants in researches that go a long way in ensuring sustained funding for those local nongovernmental organizations and like stakeholders that I have herein spoken of (all with a view to ensuring the sustainability of that clique).

Of course we speak of Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV (GIPA) and Meaningful Involvement of People Living with HIV (MIPA) but, to what extent are these people actually participating in the fight? Look at the National AIDS Council (NAC) structure e.g. that is filled with highly educated and affluent professionals that even though they too might be HIV positive, their status and corresponding immune system is nothing to bother them owing to their standing in life which enables them to ensure that they live healthy lives through having a piece of mind, good nutrition, ready access to quality health care and the likes.

Finally and in drawing to a close, I would like to bring to your attention the great works of Stephen Lewis, the former UN special Envoy to Africa on AIDS. He, in my opinion, had a direct connection with the people I have talked about. In Zambia, he would visit them in their support groups, a situation which I have observed to be rare with Madam Mataka. In my view therefore, this website might even negatively serve to further distance her from them. I would urge that ways and means be found to ensure that there be effective communication between these people, their corresponding marginalized groups and with her. For mind you she is after all their envoy and hence the great need that there be a two way kind of communication.

I am with TALC today transforming issues into policy, tomorrow I might be with NIPA teaching law and later with UNZA researching…Who then will speak for these people? They can only do it for themselves! I hope I have not said too much and that my points are clear. In the event that I have not made myself clear enough, I suggest we sit down and discuss these issues in greater detail.

Thank You.

- Daniel Libati