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Tragically, instead of hospitals or clinics, funerals are the popular face of AIDS in South Africa. While less than a quarter of the population has received an HIV test, nearly everyone has attended the funeral of a neighbor or relative who died of AIDS. Ministers and undertakers have more sustained and regular exposure to the epidemic than either the traditional sangomas (“witch healers”) or medical doctors. Because the stigma surrounding AIDS provokes fear and secrecy, funerals are the only means that communities have to face the AIDS epidemic collectively. Even at funerals, fear and secrecy remain ever present, silencing frank discussion and limiting their power to heal. Although the fact of death makes the specter of AIDS impossible to conceal, members of the community hardly ever acknowledge its presence explicitly. Instead, people refer to AIDS through euphemisms generated from a rich local idiom. In some communities, people signify AIDS by raising three fingers. When asked, “What did she die of?” a neighbor might respond, “Oh, I don’t know,” using three fingers to mop his brow. Rather than display the AIDS-wasted body of a loved one and confirm suspicions, families are increasingly opting against open-casket funerals, once the norm. Many ministers have described what Anglican minister and theologian Beverley Haddad terms an “atmosphere of conspiracy” at funerals. Invisible lines of division arise within the congregation between those who really know and those who are merely guessing.

Concerns about witchcraft at funerals further divide the community. Because they consider the death of a young person unnatural, Zulu communities often associate AIDS deaths with the work of witches, specific members of the community who are suspected of directing evil against their neighbors. At funerals, relatives place heavy logs on top of the coffin in the grave in order to prevent witches from continuing to torment the body in death or from stealing parts of the corpse for occult practices. Some try to detect the identity of the witch by carefully observing the members of the congregation during the traditional hand-washing that follows the funeral. An accusation can lead to reprisals; occasionally, such disputes degenerate into mob violence. In ascribing AIDS deaths to witchcraft, Zulu communities channel the fear and hatred the epidemic inspires onto an identifiable and traditional culprit.

Ministers face the difficult task of transforming this environment of suspicion and anxiety into one of healing and bereavement. At the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, founded by European missionaries in the nineteenth century, ministers receive formal theological training, including limited study of pastoral care and religious bereavement. The majority of the religious leaders in KwaZulu-Natal work out of indigenous African Christian churches without formal structures in place to educate clergy. As a result, many of these ministers lack the theological resources to address the scourge of AIDS in a constructive way. Instead, they resort to condemning the infected, suggesting that God has punished them for their sinful behavior. In one major indigenous denomination, the Church of Shembe, church elders often censure, or even expel, openly HIV-positive members.