HIV positive asylum seeker Stella Zuze tells Amanda Elliot
how it feels to face deportation to a country where more than 3,000 people
a week die of Aids-related illness
Meet Stella Zuze; administrator, accountancy student and
committed volunteer. She is a handsome, dynamic 53-year-old with a strong
work ethic, desperate to pay her way and help raise her three young grandchildren.
But her good health, drive, skills and enthusiasm count for nothing, because
Stella is an HIV positive, failed asylum seeker from Zimbabwe. By the time
you read this, she may well be awaiting deportation in a UK detention centre
or desperately seeking scarce and expensive HIV drugs in Harare.
Skills and pills
Hers is an all all-too familiar story. Stella arrived in the UK in 2002, on
a six-month visa to be with her heavily pregnant eldest daughter. During her
stay Stella was admitted to hospital with vomiting and head pains.
Finally, a lumbar-puncture determined that she had HIV, cryptococcal meningitis,
PCP, and a CD4 count of 80.
She was immediately started on combination therapy and drugs for the PCP and
meningitis which she also still has to take.
“I am so well now and have no side-effects from the drugs. In Zimbabwe
they will not believe that I have HIV. They will say: ‘Stella you are
a ghost.’ They will not believe that someone with Aids can look so well.”
During her three years in the UK, Stella has not rested on her laurels. She
worked as a volunteer administrator with PN where she earned a reputation
for super-efficiency. But that ended when she was abruptly sent to live in
Cardiff under the asylum seekers’ dispersal system. She overcame the
loneliness and isolation of being sent far from her family by “vigorously
pursuing” her accountancy exams and counselling other African women
at THT Cymru. She even penned a regular African newsletter under her ‘Aunt
Rhoda’ pseudonym.
But time is running out; last April the Home Office refused her asylum application
and in January it lifted its ban on deportations of failed asylum seekers
to Zimbabwe. In February 2005 they also rejected her appeal. The National
Asylum Support Service has cut off its £38 a week support, her legal
aid has been exhausted and Stella has no idea how long she will be allowed
to stay in her bed-sit in Cardiff.
Worker, not shirker
“I want to work and pay taxes for my treatment,” says Stella,
“but they won’t let me. I agree with the HIV doctor in Positive
Nation last month who said that treatments are a success because they allow
all people to be productive members of society.
“Back in Harare I worked for the American company 3M for 15 years. I
joined as secretary and worked my way up to customer services co-ordinator.
But now I am HIV positive I can’t go back and work there. There is now
too much racism and prejudice in the firm.”
It is ironic that a month before rejecting her appeal to remain in the UK,
the Home Office published a five-year immigration and asylum strategy that
made big play of the UK attracting skilled workers. The document said there
were 600,000 unfilled job vacancies in the UK. But, unless you are nurse,
doctor or financier you don’t stand a chance.
Even this doesn’t dent Stella’s optimism or high opinion of the
British.
“I like what that MP Chris Smith said: ‘I’m HIV positive,
so what?’. HIV doesn’t stop me getting on with my life.”
A funny kind of ‘tourist’
Many would be quick to label Stella a ‘health tourist’, but like
73 per cent of HIV positive migrants arriving in the UK, she was unaware that
she was HIV positive. Now, returning to Zimbabwe in current circumstances
is unthinkable for Stella because, without access to life-saving HIV drugs,
she will die.
Stella says that, given a real choice, Africans would not all want to come
and live in the UK, a country which she says has “five seasons a day”
and terrible food.
“The only reason I’m here is I need to stay alive, support my
daughter and see my beautiful grandchildren.
“Africans who come here feel they are only doing exactly what the British
people did in Africa when they colonised it.”
Under new Home Office rules, the fact that Stella’s daughter is married
to a British man, and that her grandchildren are British-born, confers no
grounds for her to remain in the UK. If deported, Stella will be banned from
returning here to live with them until she is 65. But her HIV doctors predict
that without treatments for HIV and meningitis in Zimbabwe she is unlikely
to survive more than a year.
Going back - the implications
What kind of life - or death - does Stella face if she is deported? Few doctors,
nurses or NGOs will go on record about HIV services in Zimbabwe.
According to UNAIDS, one in four (around 1.8 million) adults in Zimbabwe are
HIV positive and there are more than 3,000 Aids-related deaths each week.
Average life expectancy has dropped from 52 to 37 since Aids cut a swathe
through the country.
Stella knows all too well about this. Last month her brother died of Aids.
“He had been on treatments for just weeks. He sold his car to pay for
his treatments. But you have to be very sick to get the drugs. But they stopped
the drugs and put him on a waiting list until September because others were
more in need.”
UNAIDS says just 5,000 people - just one per cent of those eligible - are
on antiretrovirals. Even then, drugs for HIV and cryptococcal meningitis (the
biggest killer of people with Aids in Zimbabwe) are only available with a
private prescription and are way beyond the means of the average Zimbabwean.
Healthcare is crumbling, with acute staff shortages and even the basics unavailable.
“You wouldn’t want to go into the hospitals back home,”
says Stella, “you think you might never leave. There are no tests for
CD4 and viral loads like here. So there is no way of knowing when you are
in danger of getting sick.”
Other factors make it unlikely Stella will find work on her return. Zimbabwe
under Robert Mugabe is regarded as a pariah nation by most of the Western
world. It receives no US funding to fight Aids and last year it was refused
two Global Fund grants. It currently has the highest inflation rate in the
world and healthcare is very limited.
I don’t want to hide
Such is the weight of stigma in UK African communities, it is rare indeed
to find an HIV positive African prepared to appear on the cover of Positive
Nation, let alone a woman and failed asylum seeker.
But for Stella, she felt it was important to send a positive message to other
African men and women in the same situation. From the moment she was diagnosed
with HIV, Stella was determined to not keep her family in the dark.
“All my family know, I talk to my daughter and my son-in-law. We don’t
have secrets.”
“I want encourage people to be positive. I want other African people
to see me and say: ‘She is HIV positive as well; she is not hiding;
stigma is not killing her. I want to encourage people to come to HIV organisations
and volunteer.”
Finding strength
Stella said her initial reaction after learning of her rejected appeal was
to: “throw myself under a train”. But she is not one to dwell
on her misfortunes and is now seeking a final ‘reconsideration’
of the Home Office decision with the newly established Asylum and Immigration
Tribunal.
What keeps her going? “I believe in God. God loves us all. I am a Roman
Catholic. I go to church every Sunday and do the rosary three times a day.
God cools me down in a certain way. And, of course, I still have hope.”
Zimbabwe HIV Fact File:
• There were 170,000 Aids deaths in 2003
• One of four adults is HIV positive (1.6 million)
• 5,000 people are on ARVS (fewer than one per cent of those eligible)
• 5 million are in need of food aid
• No ARVS are available in the public sector
• Inflation currently stands at 123 per cent
• Government has set aside some funds but external funding for antiretrovirals
is “very limited”
Source: UNAIDS
Asylum and HIV fact file
Having HIV is not on its own a reason to be granted leave to remain in the
UK. But people with HIV without other grounds (such as fleeing persecution)
can ask for discretionary leave to remain on the basis that they will not
receive adequate medical treatment in their own country.
Lawyers can argue that a deportation of someone with HIV in these circumstances
amounts to a breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
This stipulates “no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment”.
But HIV legal experts say the Home Office is now deporting people to countries
where HIV drugs are rarely available.
Meanwhile, UKC has called on the Home Office for a moratorium on all deportations
of people living with HIV and Aids unless the UK can guarantee upon return
that individuals will have speedy and affordable access to antiretroviral
medication in their home countries.
