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This paper draws on a series of qualitative interviews with 60 people living in economically poor communities of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, to provide new insight into the cultural landscape of HIV. While there has been extensive exploration of gender, sexuality, culture and HIV in Zimbabwe, there is a need to revisit these issues given the country's recent political and economic history. These questions have shaped the meanings that have been created around HIV (i.e., notions of HIV-as-death and as being produced by promiscuity) and the gendered mediation of cultural practices (i.e., forms of sexual expression and treatment uptake). Drawing on the accounts from a group directly affected by HIV, we illustrate the persistence of gendered and spiritualised ideas about ‘blame’, ‘transmission’ and ‘treatment’ and the disproportionate burden that still falls on Zimbabwean women. We conclude with an exploration of how everyday understandings of HIV may be shifting and the ways in which marginality, discrimination and stigma may be being challenged by openness, dialogue and attitude change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The reported reduction in the prevalence level of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in Zimbabwe has been represented as one of the most significant and rapid declines within any population since the epidemic emerged as a public health issue. This paper explains how this development has been reported, challenged and eventually owned by many of the diverse stakeholders who constitute Zimbabwe's overall AIDS response. The Zimbabwean government has claimed that the decline was brought about due to its own efforts and resources. However, while the country has received considerably less AIDS funding than its neighbours, external donations still account for the vast bulk of AIDS spending in Zimbabwe. In addition, instead of collapsing, as some predicted, the Zimbabwean state can also claim that it has presided over increased availability of antiretroviral therapy. In this paper we examine how various internal and external stakeholders deployed strategic explanations in an attempt to take credit for 'the decline'; this is an important case study of how epidemiological data can be used to construct and contest political legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]