VENI, VD, VICI - REASSESSING THE ILA SYPHILIS EPIDEMIC

The HIV/AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa has stimulated renewed inter est in the social, cultural, and epidemiological history of sexually t ransmitted diseases (STDs) under colonialism. Several authors have alr eady challenged the evidence behind colonial era narratives on syphili s and sexuality by noting that European observers often vastly overest imated the incidence of this STD among Africans by misdiagnosing commo n manifestations of yaws as syphilis. Yet few researchers have explore d the epistemological basis of pronouncements on the link between syph ilis and widespread infertility in rural African society. This essay d oes so by re-examining the historical origins of a well-known syphilis epidemic among the Ila-speaking peoples of Northern Rhodesia's Namwal a District. It argues that the epidemic was largely a colonial constru ction based on a misinterpretation of the role of sex in Ila exchange relations and an underassessment of other factors that may have contri buted to the perception that population growth was stagnant. On the on e hand, district officers and medics may have overlooked the demograph ic impact of other infectious diseases, malnutrition disorders, and co nsciously deployed birth-control measures. On the other hand profound changes in the social organisation of production and reproduction in N amwala may have seriously distorted census statistics. Evidence indica tes that long-term labour migration developed as early as the 1910s, a nd intra-rural resettlement in response to the end of regional warfare and the rise of commercial agriculture may have undermined the defini tions of 'village' and 'household' that colonial census-takers used in calculating Ila population.