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Since the 1990s, much of the Ugandan children’s fiction in a realistic mode focuses on the topic of HIV/AIDS. There are several narratives that put this topic at the centre of the plot and may, therefore, be referred to as HIV/AIDS narratives; other texts use it as a backdrop.

Uganda was one of the first African countries which reacted to AIDS and it is internationally celebrated as the African AIDS success story. In recent years, HIV rates, which had dropped drastically from 18 % in the early 1990s to 6.4 % in 2005 (Natukunda, 2014), are, however, again on the rise.1

HIV/AIDS is not only a medical issue which can be explained scientifically but it also reaches out far beyond this field: “HIV/AIDS cuts across discourses and involves a variety of aspects such as historical, economic, political, social, psychological, ethical and cultural issues” (Grünkemeier, 2013, p. 10). For people to understand this disease, it needs to be contextualised. This can, for example, be done through fiction. Fiction may be evaluated as particularly effective in the struggle against HIV/AIDS and connected aspects, such as stigma, since it humanises facts and figures. Readers get insights into feelings of people who are infected and affected by the disease and so develop a better understanding of it:

Fiction provides a repertoire of means to communicate what science cannot by providing a prism which puts medical issues on HIV/AIDS in sharper focus. This fiction tells the reader much about the anxieties and uncertainties that HIV/AIDS has wrought on individuals and into society in a way that a purely scientific discourse cannot. The writers make an important contribution to cultural production because their works comment on, and more importantly, offer possibilities of imagining and (re)creating new forms and practices of social and sexual behaviour in society. (Muriungi, 2007, p. 301)

Since HIV/AIDS has been one of the most pressing issues affecting Uganda for more than three decades now, it is not surprising that many writers deal with this topic. Since the 1990s, the different dimensions of AIDS have been explored in Ugandan literature, oral and written. Many Ugandan writers have reflected on the AIDS epidemic in their novels, stories, plays and poems and also songs and a large number of these literary texts are addressed to young people.

Today, HIV/AIDS narratives play a very important role in Uganda in educating young people about the disease. The first children’s narratives dealing with HIV/AIDS were published in the mid-1990s. The number of publications increased when the Ugandan government started to expand HIV prevention education to primary and secondary schools in 2001. Then, international and local publishers commissioned Ugandan writers to write HIV/AIDS narratives which were published in different series. Uganda is now awash with HIV/AIDS stories for children and young adults.

The fact that many of the writers who write about HIV/AIDS are commissioned by international or local publishing houses has an influence on their writing. The writers attend seminars in which they are given advice on about what (not) to write in the books.2 The Ugandan government set regulations that should be followed in HIV/AIDS education (President’s Initiative on HIV/AIDS Strategy on Communication to Youth, PIASCY). Like many religious organisations inside and outside the country, the government does not particularly encourage the use of condoms which may explain the near-absence of references to condoms in HIV/AIDS narratives in Uganda.3

The way HIV/AIDS is dealt with in children's literature has gone through changes in the last decades. Whereas early publications still focus more on shocking issues with the aim of deterrence, newer publications also increasingly take aspects such as living positively into account. This may be related to the development that HIV/AIDS affects society differently today. The Ugandan writer Beatrice Lamwaka states in an interview:

The days of my HIV time were not the same as today’s children’s HIV time. Then people would get skinny, the disease would really affect somebody and you would look at that person and know: Oh, my goodness. But that’s not the situation now. People just live with it today.4

Her novella, Anena’s Victory (2003) that vividly talks about the decaying body and painful death of Anena’s mother of AIDS, is still set in the former times, she explains.

The Ugandan HIV/AIDS narratives deal with topics which are relevant for children in Uganda. They are educative and talk about scientific issues such as the transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS, but they also address other dimensions of the epidemic: care, stigma and living positively. Peer pressure and sugar mummies/daddies are further themes reoccurring in the books. Besides narratives that focus on HIV/AIDS related topics only, there are various texts that use the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a setback (e.g. Voice of a Dream).

In many HIV/AIDS narratives, children are presented as victims of circumstances. They either give in to peer pressure and/or the advances of a sugar daddy or mummy, and this finally destroys them. In some of the stories the children manage to get back on the right track and escape the destiny of being infected with HIV but other stories end on quite a sad note. The pretty and intelligent Gwendolyn in The Unfulfilled Dream (Ocwinyo, 2003), for example, gives in her friend’s pleading to escape from school and accompanies her to a bar. There the two girls meet two elder men who buy them drinks. Next, Gwendolyn wakes up in the bed of one of the men. When the headmistress finds out that the two girls have lied to her, they are expelled from school. Soon after Gwendolyn finds out that she is HIV-positive and pregnant. She loses her baby because it is also HIV-positive and she is shunned by the people in her village.

Now when Gwendolyn Akello walks through Teboke trading centre, or goes to market, or to the well, people do not treat her with much respect any more. They do not admire her beauty, or her intelligence any longer. Instead they pity her. Sometimes they even laugh at her. They all know she is sick. They all know she will die soon. They call her the beautiful and brilliant girl who did not know what to do with her great promise. (Ibid., p. 53)

Gwendolyn’s story, starting off so well, is eventually a story full of disasters; it does not even end in a positive way. Stories of this type want to shock; they pass a strong warning to the young readers and also often attribute the blame to the girls.

In other HIV/AIDS narratives, however, children are presented as the heroines and heroes who overcome stigma, fight discrimination and courageously talk about their own HIV status. Julie in the short story “JJ” (Segawa, 2010), for example, is HIV-positive from birth. Nevertheless, she lives a ‘normal’ life, with medication. She goes to school every day and has friends who know about her infection and support her. One day she decides to talk openly about her infection in a school assembly. The other students, who were not yet aware about it, are impressed by her strength and braveness and her friends are very proud of her. The message of this story is entirely positive and intends to encourage young people to stand up against stigma and discrimination.

There is actually still a lot of stigmatisation linked to HIV/AIDS worldwide. Frequently it serves as a means to turn infected people into ‘the other’. Those who are infected or who have an HIV-positive family member often face denial and segregation. Sometimes HIV-positive people are feared by others; many people do not know how to deal with a person who is infected. The topic of stigma is also focalised in some of the Ugandan narratives. In, I Will Miss Mr Kizito (Sempebwa, 2005), for example, Mr Kizito is dismissed from his job as a teacher because he is HIV-positive. In the novella Voice of a Dream (Namukasa, 2006), Nanfuka and her siblings face exclusion from community because their father has AIDS. As Strauhs (2013, p. 173) states,“[t]he moment AIDS marked the body of her [Nanfuka’s] father […] not only stigmatized her father but in fact pushed her whole family, including Nanfuka – once the shining star of her village – to the periphery of the village community”. Nanfuka and her family become the secret “gossip charts” (Namukasa, 2006, p. 56) in the village.

HIV/AIDS is not only an issue that affects individuals but families and whole societies. This becomes apparent in the fact that the HIV/AIDS epidemic created many orphans in Uganda. It is amongst the countries with the highest numbers of children orphaned by AIDS.5 In a situation when the parents are dead, support is usually provided by the extended family in Uganda. It is the responsibility of the aunt, uncle or grandparents to care for the orphaned children. AIDS is, however, also a common factor behind child-headed households in the country (Witter, 2002, p. 64). The topic of children raising their own siblings is dealt with in Voice of a Dream. Nanfuka’s life changes all of a sudden when her father dies from AIDS and her mother abandons the family, leaving her alone with her four younger siblings. Nanfuka cannot go back to school but she has to care for her brothers and sisters now. She is responsible for them and the family’s income. Her only remaining relative nearby, Aunt Naka, does not assist Nanfuka in anyway, but instead wants to marry her off as soon as possible. She intends to make money with the land her brother left his children. The novella, therefore, also reflects upon the ineffectiveness of some traditional support structures (i. e. extended family) in the context of HIV/AIDS.